 Item No. SCP-1379 Object Class Safe Special Containment Procedures SCP-1379 is to be kept in a dedicated object containment locker at Site-19 off the floor and covered by a sheet. Personnel should never make any remarks regarding SCP-1379's appearance in order to avoid contamination. Personnel who find themselves contaminated with SCP-1379's influence are to report to the Superior for evaluation and reassign the non-experimental work if deemed fit to continue their service of the Foundation. Further action will be taken on a case-by-case basis. At this time, cross-testing is forbidden between SCP-1379 and other SCP objects with contained child-like abnormal entities, such as SCP-097, SCP-747, and or SCP-899. Description SCP-1379 is a canvas painting of a clown with two children, held in a frame roughly 1.2 meter by 1.5 meters in size. The object appears to be wholly destructible and shows some minor scuffling and wear on the edges of the frame. Estimates put the data creation somewhere in the mid-to-late 1980s. If any person or persons make disparaging remarks regarding the content of the painting, they will feel a sharp, severe pain in the center of their chest within the following 5-10 minutes located roughly behind the sternum. This pain will persist for roughly 20 minutes before suddenly ending, as of yet testing has not determined a biological process or pattern responsible for this pain. After the cessation of pain, the person or persons who remarked on SCP-1379's content will be irreversibly mentally changed, depending on their biological age. Adult subjects greater than 16 or 17 years of age will become unable to experience certain mental stages of nostalgia and simpler forms of curiosity. Relativability is also dramatically cut, with more creatively inclined subjects losing the will to create or perform as they did before exposure. Additionally, their sense of humor will be dulled, though not completely removed. They simply will no longer find most humorous situations as such. It should be noted these individuals may find certain forms of humor such as specific kinds of sarcasm and more sophisticated jokes or puns entertaining if they did so before exposure. Adult subjects afflicted by SCP-1379 are capable of living relatively normal lives post-exposure and this effect diminishes the later in life when it is affected. Prefubescent subjects younger than 12 years will be affected more dramatically by SCP-1379's effect. After the cessation of the pain associated with SCP-1379, young subjects will permanently become subdued and highly suggestible, with little interest towards anything not directly related towards their physical survival. The affected subjects will no longer show signs of any imaginative ability or creative potential, as well as an extremely stunted capacity for learning non-physical, non-critical skills such as mathematics. Emotional response is extremely subdued as well, with individuals losing the will and ability to form bonds with others, react to humorous and depressing situations, or feel any sort of fear response. These traits will carry into adulthood with individuals showing little to no change in mental state as they progress in age. People between 12 and 16 years of age will be affected less predictably than those age groups discussed above, though the effects of this age group appear to vary in accordance with mental maturity levels. Recovery SCP-1379 was recovered from a yard cell three miles west of Port Huron, Michigan in 1999 after a high number of civilians were affected by its effects. A vast majority of afflicted were aged 60 or older and thus were treated with mild Class C amnestics and released. The owner of the property where SCP-1379 was recovered had not seen the painting before, and did not know where it came from. The ultimate origin of SCP-1379 is unknown.