Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Any child of the 90s remembers the big orange couch and spending Saturday nights watching SNICK. For two hours, from 8:00pm to 10:00pm, watching "Clarissa Explains It All," "Roundhouse," "Ren & Stimpy," and "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" was pure joy.

Of course over time, some of these television shows ended and replaced with new shows excepted for one. "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" was a staple of SNICK for four years. It was a classic way to end a great night of weekend television.

A group of six friends, who call themselves the "Midnight Society," gather together in a secret location in the woods to tell ghost stories. One member of the six-member (at one point seven-member) team tells the rest of the group a story.

 Sure when the original series ended after six seasons in 1996, Nickelodeon tried to bring it back in 1999 but like many sequels, it did not have the same effect.

"Submitted for approval of the midnight society," here are my favorite as well as scariest episodes of "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" (There may be some overlap in the scariest episodes as well as my personal favorites.)

The Scariest Episodes

Season 1, Episode 12 "The Tale of the Prom Queen" -- Storyteller: Kristen

"The Tale of the Prom Queen" is arguably the scariest episode of the 91-episode series. The storyteller in this episode, Kristen, has always had a flare for the dramatics. Before the story even begans she sets the tone early, freaking out the "Midnight Society" arriving in a long, white "prom" dress with a vale. The two teenage boys who were trolling around in the cemetery and run into DeeDee, who is actually our prom-queen ghost, Judy, think that the prom queen story is just that, only a story. Boy were they in for a real surprise when Judy's boyfriend's car rounds a foggy, corner in the cemetery  and DeeDee is all of sudden is wearing a prom dress. It was the first episode I have ever watched. It scared me at the age of six and still scares me now 23 years later. I still can only watch this episode during daylight hours.

Season 3, Episode 10 "The Tale of the Dream Girl" -- Storyteller: Sam

M. Night Shyamalan credits this episode giving him the idea for the Academy Award winning movie the "Sixth Sense." Figure that out. A Nickelodeon television show leads to one of the most watched movies of the late 90s and help spark the career of the youthful Haley Joel Osment. The plot sequence is the same, the main character, Johnny/Dr. Crowe, is dead but does not know it and only one person can see him,  his sister, Erica and the young boy Cole who is terrified of the dead people he sees. It isn't until one night, Johnny finds a girl's school ring in his locker then all of a sudden nothing's in his locker and his mother doesn't acknowledge him. He doesn't know what's going on.  Only later to find out that the girl he has been "seeing" is a ghost, dying in a train accident. Erica shows him half of a newspaper article about the accident telling him she's dead then later in a cemetery shows him the rest of the article that has his picture next to her. That's when, and only when, he discovers he's dead too. Chilling ending. And so surreal. And again another episode that I can barely watch with at night.

Quote: "You're ghost and you don't know it." - Tucker

Season 3, Episode 4 "The Tale of Apartment 214" -- Storyteller: Kiki

Not an episode that makes my top favorite episodes but it does make my top scariest episodes. A mother and her daughter move into a new apartment building. Not knowing anyone, the daughter befriends a little old woman, who is really a ghost, across the way in Apartment 214. She makes a promise to the old woman that she would come by every day and visit with her. But one day when the young girl finally starts making friends and spends an afternoon with her new friends and abandons the old woman, the old lady becomes angry. The plot itself is not entirely scary but the little actress who plays the little old lady is certainly scary enough to warrant this episode making its way to the top of my list.

Season 2, Episode 13 "The Tale of Old Man Corcoran" -- Storyteller: Kiki

It starts with two brothers, Jack and Kenny, who just moved to the neighborhood and do not know anyone. While playing around with water-guns in their front yard a group of kids, led by Marshall McClain come riding up on bikes. They invite Jack and Kenny to play hide-and-seek with them later that night...but in a graveyard where one of the kids tells them the story of Old Man Corcoran, the cemetery groundskeeper.  Later the boys while playing the boys run into Old Man Corcoran who tells them that the kids they were playing with were all dead and that he buried each one of them. Yeah now if that isn't scary for you, I don't know what is.

Season 3, Episode 11 "The Tale of the Quicksilver" -- Storyteller: Kiki

An episode in which Tatyana Ali, Ashley Banks from the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air," guest stars playing twins, Connie and Laura, who previously lived in the house Aaron and his brother, Doug, move into. Connie and her family moved out of the house after a sick Laura was killed in fire in the house - which Aaron sees in a dream of her trying to get rid of a zombie. Doug soon becomes sick and all of a sudden it's like the past is repeating itself so Aaron and Connie decide to finish the job Laura started. Although the episode ends well, the two-ghost storyline and having to figure out what Laura did wrong the first time she tried to do the magic was stomach-turning to sit through both the first time and even multiple times afterward.

Favorite Episodes

Season 2, Episode 10 "The Tale of the Shiny Red Bicycle" -- Storyteller: David

Not the scariest episode out there but it certainly had its moments. Mike and Ricky were best friends always going fishing together until one day when Ricky is killed on falling over a lose railing on foot-bridge over dam. Years later, Mike has nightmares about Ricky's death and even sees Ricky's ghost and bike in school. But Ricky was not coming back to hurt Mike, he was actually coming back to warn him that Mike's younger brother, Ben, was in danger when  he went fishing with friends one Saturday morning.  

Quote: "Get going. It's a long ride and we don't want Ben on this side just yet." - Ricky

Season 2, Episode 12 "The Tale of the Hatching" -- Storyteller: David

Two siblings, Auggie and Jasmine, are sent to boarding school when their parents have to travel out of the country for work. They soon learn weird things about the school between the weird bells that signal class changes, what they serve for dessert and waking up in the middle of the night to feed a bunch of eggs in water. The two learn that their headmasters are not human but reptiles and find themselves trapped in the basement with their "mother" which Auggie eventually kills with his walkman. It's not real scary but when I watch "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" I'm reminded about this episode at the end of the movie.

Season 2, Episode 7 "The Tale of the Frozen Ghost" -- Storyteller: Kristen

Not a very scary episode but I probably like it the most because Melissa Joan Hart, Clarissa from "Clarissa Explains It All," guest stars. It is one of the hottest nights of the summer for the "Midnight Society" but Kristen, the night's storyteller, comes still wearing her jacket which the rest of the gang can't believe. By the end of the episode the rest of the group is wearing their jackets.

Season 3, Episode 8 "The Tale of the Guardian's Curse" -- Storyteller: Tucker

Just like "The Tale of the Frozen Ghost," the Guardian's Curse is not entirely scary. I mostly like it because "Salute Your Shorts" star Danny Cooksey (Budnick) guest starred. I can also vividly remember re-watching this episode every morning for at least two weeks before school.

Season 5, Episode 1 "The Tale of the Dead Man's Float" -- Storyteller: Stig

After Frank's family moves away it leaves a hole in the "Midnight Society" so Tucker nominates a friend, Stig, who tells this story as part of his initiation into the group. A science geek (Zeke) starts to tutor one of the more popular girls in the high school in science and in the process the two find and re-open the high school swimming pool. When teaching Zeke to not be afraid of the water, they two discover the pool is haunted by a zombie. They eventually get rid of the zombie thanks to Zeke's knowledge of science. Not very scary but the plot is there.

Season 5, Episode 6 "The Tale of the Prisoner's Past" -- Storyteller: Tucker

Good story that has its "scary" moments but for the most part it the reason it's on this list is for its guest star, Christopher Castle (Ted Newton from Beethoven). Two step-brothers, who are nothing alike, visit an old prison and accidently unleash the ghost of an old prisoner - the only prisoner to have "escaped." But they come to realize he actually died in tunnel while trying to escape.