the Fourth of July (1958)

The Fourth of July in 1958 was a day of celebration and terror in Derry, Maine. The town's annual Independence Day parade wound through the streets, a spectacle of marching bands, floats, and patriotic fervor. For the Losers' Club, however, the day marked a crucial turning point: the moment when the seventh and final member, Mike Hanlon, saw the monster face-to-face and brought his own terrible secret into the group's shared knowledge, completing the circle that would eventually confront It.

The Parade and the First Sighting

Mike Hanlon marched in the parade as a trombone player in the Neibolt Street Church School Band. As the procession passed the three-way intersection downtown, Mike saw a clown in a silver suit with big orange buttons, handing out balloons to children. The clown's face was painted white with a large red smile that looked like blood. Mike recognized him instantly from a photograph in his father's collection of Derry memorabilia—a picture of a clown juggling pins in a muddy street from the 1700s. The clown turned and waved directly at Mike, as if reading his mind, and then winked, a gesture that felt like a shared secret. The terror was so intense that Mike momentarily could not play his instrument; the sun seemed too bright, the music too loud, and the sky too blue. Later, as the parade continued up Main Street Hill, Mike saw the same clown again, still handing out balloons, though he could not understand how the figure could have moved so quickly. He knew then that there was not a team of clowns but a single entity, and that it had marked him.

The Giant Bird and the Hidden Truth

Mike's encounter with the clown was not his first brush with the supernatural that summer. Two months earlier, in May of 1958, his father had sent him to explore the ruins of the Kitchener Ironworks on Pasture Road. There, Mike had been attacked by a monstrous bird—a creature that looked like a cross between a robin and a sparrow but was larger than a house trailer. Its breast was orange, its eyes were black and ringed with gold, and its tongue was silver and cracked like volcanic slag, with orange puffs on it. Mike had escaped by hiding inside the fallen smokestack, throwing pieces of tile at the bird until he struck its eye, driving it away. He had told no one, fearing he would be thought crazy. The sight of the clown in the parade, with its orange pompom buttons and silver suit, forced him to connect the two horrors. The bird's tongue had borne the same orange puffs that now seemed to be the clown's signature. Mike realized that the same malevolent force was behind both manifestations.

The Circle Closes

The day after the parade, on July 5th, Mike went down to the Barrens, drawn by an instinct he could not explain. He found the Losers' Club—Bill Denbrough, Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak, Ben Hanscom, Beverly Marsh, and Stanley Uris—already gathered, discussing their own encounters with the clown. They had been waiting for him. When Mike hesitantly told his story of the giant bird, the others did not laugh or disbelieve. Stan Uris, who had faced the dead boys in the Standpipe, recognized the pattern: each of them had seen a different face of the same monster. With Mike's story, the group's knowledge was complete. They had all seen It, and they were all committed to stopping It. That same afternoon, they began digging the underground clubhouse that would become their base of operations, a symbolic act of beginning. The Fourth of July parade had been the catalyst: the day Mike Hanlon saw the clown, confirmed his worst fears, and joined the Losers' Club, transforming a loose collection of frightened children into a unified force ready to fight back.