Bendigo Senior Secondary College principal Dale Pearce said his school had been made aware of a post online, calling on people to dress in creepy clown costumes and frighten BSSC students. 

“We’ve no idea whether it is a real thing, whether it’s a hoax or people mucking around,” Mr Pearce said. 

“But we’ve issued advice to our students on the matter and we did, as a matter of precaution, contact local police to ask them to be aware of the situation.” 

Mr Pearce said the school was not overly alarmed but was alert to the potential threat. 

“We don’t know whether to take it seriously, a lot of stuff on social media is just people having fun,” he said.

“But it could be serious and – if people came along dressed as scary clowns – that would be of concern to us, were it to occur. 

“We would deal with [intruders on school grounds] in the same manner we always deal with it, but we are in quite a public place and we understand the suggestion was that these people might be in the park, hence the reason we’ve contacted police.

“We hope they [police] will be wandering around, having a presence.” 

The same online forum also issued a call out for the creepy clowns to converge on another Bendigo secondary school.  

The clown fad began in the United States, with numerous sightings of people wearing threatening clown costumes have been reported across America in recent months.

The first reported sighting is believed to have come in August from Greenville County in South Carolina, where police were told by children that someone dressed in a clown suit was enticing kids to follow them in to the woods.

Last Friday, Victoria Police said on its Facebook page that it was aware of people parading in public wearing clown masks.

"The clown purge appears to be a copycat of incidents being seen in the USA recently," Victoria Police's Facebook post said.

Any intimidating, threatening or anti-social behaviour would not be tolerated, police said.

Anyone who sees a scary clown should contact police.