Record-breaking collection of clowns

A 61-year-old German woman will spend Halloween at home with her collection of 2,053 model clowns. Her unsettling collection is featured in the new Guinness World Records 2012 book.

For many people the idea of going to sleep in a room full of clowns would be the stuff of nightmares, but not 61 year-old Ortrud Kastaun from Germany who is recognised for the first time in the latest edition of Guinness World Records, 2012 book for having the Largest Collection of Clowns.

Ortrud, known to her friends as ‘Orty’, has been collecting model clowns for over 15 years, and in that time amassed 2,053 different models. The collection is so large that Ortrud has had to move to a larger flat to accommodate them, and even set up her own museum at her home in Essen, Germany. Ortrud goes to sleep each evening with hundreds of clowns smiling back at her.