The clock tower in the Sonic Plaza at ECU is different from most clock towers... It has 4 cuckoo functions: sunrise (rooster), noon (horns), sunset (cannon), and midnight (jester). Here are all 4 for you to see!
(If you're only interested in the creepy jester, that starts at 7:04.)
Some of the information below is a bit outdated, such as what the clown/jester says. Watching the video will correct the errors for you. ;-)
Sorry for the helicopter at the end of the first cuckoo, but it was the sunrise one and I wasn't going back to record it again, lol.
URBAN LEGEND: At midnight on nights with a full moon, an evil clown emerges from the clock tower at Joyner Library and shouts weird things.
True, except for two things. First, the clown emerges from the clock tower every night at midnight, not just on full-moon nights. Second, the clown doesnt shout. Most likely a philosophy major, he simply states: Time is futile.
This urban legend has cropped up occasionally since the 1997 opening of the new library and the courtyard between it and Joyner East. It gained renewed currency last year when the student paper ran a front-page story about the mystery.
The story began: A motley crew of onlookers and students not yet old enough to drink gathered in the cold Saturday at midnight to catch a glance of the fabled clown that, legend has it, appears in the clock tower across from Joyner Library.
At last, the clock struck midnight, and as all present leaned into the cold, eerie carnival music began to play, accompanied by maniacal laughter. One could hear the gears inside the tower grinding and an opening slowly appeared. The face of a jester emerged and slowly moved forward. The music grew louder, and a voice recording began to drone about how futile time is.
What the students saw was one of the four cuckoo clock features of the 85-foot-tall tower. At sunrise a rooster emerges from the tower and crows. Brass horns poke out at noon and a musical sound track plays. At sunset a cannon booms and emits smoke. The clown performs at midnight.
The crowing, tooting, booming and philosophizing occur, that is, when the mechanism inside the clock tower works properly, which is a sore point to the maintenance crews charged with keeping the apparatus running. The crews also spend time tinkering with the three other features of the courtyard that give the space its name, Sonic Plaza.
When the new Joyner Library was being planned, a state law (since repealed) required a small percentage of the cost of all state buildings to be devoted to public art. ECU commissioned noted architect and jazz musician Christopher Janney to come up with some ideas. His brainchild was Sonic Plaza.
The plaza would have chimes that would ring whenever someone passes beneath the old library columns at one end of the plaza, a percussive water wall intended as an aquatic symphony, and a ground cloud wall to spray an ethereal mist from underground jets. Janneys fourth idea was the so-called media glockenspiel in the clock tower.
Of the four features the chimes are the most dependable. The water wall has proved to be difficult to maintain and often sprouts mold. It and the ground cloud wall can only be turned on during warm weather out of a fear of frozen pipes and icy walkways.
One assumes that the media glockenspiel remains a mystery to students for obvious reasons: Theyre not awake at dawn. With iPods and cell phones constantly in their ears theyre not likely to hear the brass horns or the cannon. And whatever they are doing at midnight rarely involves a trip to the library.
Source: http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/mktg/east/Urban-Legenda-Fall-2006.cfm
More info: http://www.theeastcarolinian.com/2.5280/multimedia-clock-tower-grabs-attentio...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Carolina_University
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ECU Campus Living and Diningby SAmarketingComm5,642 views
Thanks! I'm an alumni and I never got to see anything besides the clown.
SarahDavisSings 1 year ago
This is pretty fucking cool. Im on campus all the time, and never noticed this...
567Unity 1 year ago