Gacy is one of the reasons I used to be scared shitless of clowns.
Not to mention Pennywise.
For some reason I lumped clowns and those people in those cartoon suits at theme parks into the same category of freaky.
Both freak me out still, but less so. There's something about people being payed to always be happy for other people is just wrong in my book.
Anyways, I think my most traumatic experience with dolls was at this cabin I went to stay at for an overnight thing when I was a Campfire girl. Like ratbastid, there were these glass cases with ancient Japanese puppet dolls in them. They were mounted on the wall such that their arms were splayed wide open, as if they were trying to welcome you, but it just wasn't warm and happy... CHRIST ON A CRUTCH were they freaky as hell. They looked sinister, like they were waiting for us to go to sleep, plotting our deaths. By the end of the night, no one could sleep because we were all so freaked by the puppets that we just huddled into a big mass on the couch farthest away from the puppets. I tried to find a picture of something resembling the dolls, but I couldn't find anything from the right era and I can't remember what kind of dolls they were. So instead, here is a head-only picture of a Japanese tonda puppet.
So once again, I must conclude with: I'm a scaredy cat.