A circus that displays
people with abnormal or unusual oddities. Examples of such
people include bearded women, Siamese twins, or in the case of The Saga of Darren Shan, a woman who can bite through steel, a man with two bellies, a vampire and his spider, a snake boy, a man who is afraid of the ground, a monkey
girl, et al. Legal back before television was invented.
A freak show back in those times had evil con
men rounding up
people who had physical deformities, putting them in cages, paying the public to stare at them and forcing them to perform insane tricks that could hurt or kill normal
people who imitated them. The
people who saw these freak shows were just as disturbed as the
people who ran them. These shows are now illegal because of the abusive nature, and the discrimination these performers faced because the public were conned into thinking that they were freaks, which meant that they were misunderstood by those who realized that they were entirely normal and that the real freaks were the
people who ran these human circuses. Although there are exceptions like American Horror Story: Freak Show, and Cirque du Freak where there would be actual freaks running the shows, these were in the minority. Today, there might be shows like this which we call reality television, which displays people like Abby and
Brittany, who would have qualified to be in a freak show if they were around when those things were legal. They are scary depending on the acts that are performing.