Are You Afraid of the Dark? is the name of a Nickelodeon fantasy anthology series. The program horrified its younger audience during its original run, which lasted from 1990 to 2000. Despite the fact that it has been more than two decades since the show’s protagonists lit their final ceremonial campfire, some of the most terrifying stories they have told are still vivid in the minds of fans. This disturbing kids’ show was like a Nick take on The Twilight Zone meets Tales from the Crypt, with a myriad of otherworldly themes and creepy manifestations. It gave birth to some of the best horror fares the genre has to offer in its infancy.
Do you have a phobia of being alone in the dark? Each episode began with a gang of teenagers known as “The Midnight Society.” shacking up. One of the group members would sprinkle a brown, powdered material known as Midnight Dust on the fire after polite banter or small talk as they gathered around a warm fire, before giving their allegorical narrative for the evening. From creepy clowns giggling to ghouls in swimming pools, these are the top 12 Are You Afraid of the Dark? photos. Whether one likes it or not, these episodes are here to terrify current and former viewers!
The Tale of the Laughing in the Dark (season 1, episode 3)
When a shy high school guy called Josh is challenged by his sister and her friends to take the red nose off of a clown in a haunted funhouse who has a comparable grin to Sweet Tooth in Twisted Metal, he rapidly learns the hard way exactly how haunted the local attraction actually is. Initially, he acts bold and brave but at the end of the day, he also gets freaked out by the haunted house attraction and chickens out.
His sister and her friend read up on the history of the place and found out all about Zeebo the clown. Turns out, he stole $4,000 from the circus’s salary. When the cops pursued him, he rushed inside the Playland and hid in the Laughing in the Dark haunted house. He almost got away with it as well, but while hiding, he dropped his cigar and unintentionally caused a fire that destroyed the spook house with him inside. Then, a few years later, a new Laughing in the Dark ghost house was created, complete with a Zeebo dummy to scare anyone who walked through it. According to urban mythology, Zeebo still haunts the location.
Josh works up the courage and completes the haunted house challenge the next night and returns victorious, but not before opening the door to the Zeebo dummy and taking its nose as proof of victory. Things only go downhill from here as the clown starts haunting him to get his nose back.
Generation after generation in the community have passed down the legend of a circus clown who died in an accident after reportedly taking the touring act’s salary and became the nasty spirit who stalks Josh. This narrative particularly appeals to fans because it revolves around the theme of Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, and is even more relevant today post the clown killer era of 2016.
The Tale Of The Night Shift (season 5, episode 13)
Night shifts can be exhausting. But how about a night shift in a barren hospital with a spooky vampire roaming the halls infecting patients? Despite the fact that it was a late-season 5 episode, this terrifying, innovative tale demonstrated to viewers that Are You Afraid of the Dark? had not yet outstayed its welcome and still had some eerie tricks in its sleeve. “The Tale of the Night Shift” is not just one of the more inventive episodes, but also one of the darker highlights. This is due to some creepily convincing vampiric makeup, strong performances, and a little more brutality than you’d anticipate from a kids’ show.
On a frigid night at the United Hospital, a volunteering nurse called Amanda realizes that several of her colleagues have vanished, while several of her patients get progressively unwell. However, as time passes, she realizes that the employees strolling the corridors aren’t simply typical orderlies—they’re vampires.
Turns out that they had all been bitten and turned by a vampire who had mailed its own coffin to the hospital to feed on all the patients and blood packets. The story is high octane as we see many chase scenes and the vampire is finally defeated when a couple of them band together and burn its coffin to ashes. Soon after, all of the workers, nurses, and patients were healed and returned to normalcy since none of them had been killed by the vampire, only drained of blood.
The plot twist here is that a new shy and pretty nurse was in fact the ugly and dangerous vampire who nearly caused the death of everyone in the hospital. As far as visuals go, the blood effects in this episode may look dated by today’s standards, and the notion of a hospital staffed by seductive vampires haunts some people’s minds.
The Tale Of The Dead Man’s Float (season 5, episode 1)
Swimming in huge pools can be a daunting experience for young children. Try a pool with a terrifying swamp-like monster that terrorizes children who enter it. Taking on a Blair Witch-esque approach, much of the terror in this one comes from the absence of what is shown, as well as the growing build-up that eventually leads to a spectacular finale. This episode has it all: an enthralling plot, excellent acting/characters, and a particularly terrifying monster to cap it all off. “The Tale of the Dead Man’s Float” feels like it could have been adapted into a short horror film.
40 years after a teenage boy drowns mysteriously in a high school pool, a quiet wiz-kid named Zeke Matthews strives, with the support of his friend Clarice, to overcome his childhood phobia of drowning. He finds the old and abandoned pool behind a false wall and soon the school restores it because of demands made by the students and this means that whatever killed the young boy all those years ago now has new kids to prey on.
It is on one fateful day as Zeke and his friends are swimming together, they are severely attacked by an unknown entity in the skeleton shape of a zombie. The school janitor tells them that in order to create the pool, they had to first demolish an old cemetery and relocate all of the dead. As a result, he believes they overlooked one of the bodies. As a result, the spirit is enraged. As a result, it seeks vengeance on everyone which disturbs its eternal sleep. However, they do manage to defeat the enraged zombie corpse with the help of science and make the pool safe once and for all.
The Deadman’s Float blends coming-of-age characteristics with horror for a beloved storyline about how one confronts their own anxieties, providing some of the show’s most well-known jump scares.
The Tale Of Vampire Town (season 6, episode 11)
This season 6 episode, one of the most exciting episodes that have come out of this epic program, contains a slew of exciting aspects that set the atmosphere for a great watch – hilarious, over-the-top performances, inventive, atmospheric settings, and, of course, vampires!
The protagonist, Adder, gets himself into a bit of a pickle when he decides to visit a hamlet known to be a vampire haven and searches out the coffin of the mythical beast Dreyfus. Adder is a frightening, Gothic individual who is infatuated with vampires. Adder even dresses in their attire, including makeup and sunglasses. This is for him to understand how they think and behave.
However, this is what makes him suspicious and the hotel manager of the hotel he was staying at begins to think that he is the vampire responsible for the attack on the town a week ago. Adder soldiers on with his plan to find Dreyfus and decides to explore the underground catacombs in the town. The tombs are dirty, decaying, and dusty, with skulls and skeletons scattered everywhere.
He walks inside a little burial chamber with a massive casket. He brushes away the dust, and sure enough, the name is “Dreyfus,” and he is amazed, taking photos, convinced that he will become renowned for his find. Stanley and Carl charge in, armed with hammers and stakes.
Adder flees as they angrily tell him they’ve captured him and that they thought they’d seen the last of his type aeons ago. However, Dreyfus’ coffin soon begins to open on its own! Adder manages to defeat Dreyfus but in a plot twist, the active vampire who was attacking civilians was none other than Stanley, the hotel manager himself and the scene closes before we can see if Stanley killed Adder or not.
In an entertaining plot twist, the hunter becomes the pursued as the population gradually suspects Adder of being a vampire. Fans found this premise to be both engrossing and scary to watch.
The Tale of the Lonely Ghost (season 1, episode 3)
Amanda Cameron has a sleepover at her tyrannical cousin Beth’s house, and she discovers that the only way to please Beth and her cousin’s pals is to walk into a haunted house in the area and stay the night. Legend has it that many years ago, there was a small girl who lived in that house and was often teased by the other kids since she couldn’t speak.
Her mother learned one day that her foreign husband was ill. While she went to help him, the mother left her daughter at her grandmother’s house. However, as the girl walked, she was surrounded by obnoxious children. They pursued her back home and imprisoned her in her bedroom. Because she was unable to alert anyone, the girl died of starvation and is claimed to haunt the location like a ghost.
When Amanda explores the lonely house, she discovers that the spirit within the walls isn’t some malevolent poltergeist, but the solemn ghost of a deaf girl who died there. She sees “Help me” written backward on the wall. In the mirror, the little girl’s spirit appears.
After being scared, she slowly finds out that the little ghost girl’s mother was Beth’s nanny and all she wanted was to be reunited with her mother thus, Amanda helped reunite them, also teaching Beth a lesson in the process. All’s well that ends well and here, both mother and child were at peace along with Beth becoming a much nicer and more kind version of herself.
This 30-year-old narrative defies expectations by beginning as a terrifying ghost story and progressing to a more sincere love parable before concluding.
The Tale Of The Midnight Madness (season 2, episode 2)
Dr. Vink, the always-entertaining recurring villain, returns, this time around as a producer of ancient horror classic films in this episode. An aging movie theatre is on the verge of closing, but he has different ideas to keep the crowd interested. He claims that his films were well-received and that they always had a certain enchantment to them.
Then, as Dr. Vink spoke magic, he drew away from his long hanging coat, revealing an old-fashioned octagon film canister. Dr. Vink explains that it is a horror film he created many years ago. It’s a vampire film, and the vampire comes out on top. Dr. Vink assures the manager that if his film is displayed in a theatre, people will throng to see it. Then their luck will change.
The first screening of the film is well received and subsequent screenings drew in immense crowds putting the theatre back in business again. However, the real terror is yet to come, and, in a scene reminiscent of The Ring, a disgruntled Vink tries to unleash his imaginary movie monster, a Nosferatu-like vampire from his black and white film, into the real world, terrifying all in his path. Pete enters the black-and-white world of Nosferatu’s film. When the film begins to play, Nosferatu is compelled to watch it again.
Nosferatu reappears before Pete can move the casket into the sunlight. Katie becomes terrified and declares that she is considering turning off the movie. When Pete hears this, he warns her not to do so since he will become caught inside it. Then, just as Nosferatu begins closing in on him, Pete manages to open the window curtains, allowing sunlight in. Nosferatu starts to scream, after which he begins to smoke and burns to ashes.
The movie monster is undoubtedly the star of the show, thanks to some intricate, ghastly makeup and a powerful performance by Christopher Heyerdahl, making for a particularly unsettling episode.
The Tale of the Doll Maker (season 3, episode 5)
A teenage girl named Melissa longs to kill boredom with her neighborhood friend, Susan Henderson, during a weekend stay with her Aunt Sally and Uncle Pete. When she arrives at Susan’s home to see her, she discovers that everyone has left, but there is nothing inside.
She eventually lets curiosity get the better of her and lets herself in and discovers a miniature dollhouse that closely matches the Hendersons’ home. The thrills begin as a tiny door within the dollhouse slams shut. This catches her off guard, and she moves away, knocking down a curtain. This displays a lovely blue and yellow door on the attic wall.
Melissa appears to be in a daze as she stares at the door. Then she carefully moves closer to it, about to open it. Then her Aunt Sally abruptly stops her and brings her back home. She’s made a pledge to herself that she’ll never go into Henderson’s house again. This is due to a horrific incident that occurred there. Susan was at home one night a few months ago. Susan was there one minute and then abruptly vanished the next.
Nobody knows what occurred. Melissa then becomes hellbent on finding and rescuing her friend from the evil dollhouse. She goes to the Henderson house at night, armed with a hammer and rope, and bravely steps into the doorway. She ends up finding Susan who has now almost transformed into a porcelain doll and she realizes that the dollhouse was evil and trapped innocent victims. However, with her brains and immense willpower, Melissa is able to save Susan and returns home safely with her friend safe and sound.
With an unnerving concept and clever production design, this episode is one of the few that has managed to frighten fans far into adulthood when they rewatch the show.
The Tale Of The Dangerous Soup (season 3, episode 13)
Season 3, possibly the zenith of this colorful kids’ show, finished with one of the most gloriously bizarre and imaginative episodes. The episode stars the cartoonishly called Dr. Vink, who whips up a strange soup for his restaurant’s customers. But, because this is primarily a horror show, Vink’s soup has a sinister, ominous side effect: liquified visions of others’ terror. He extracts these from the minds of his staff by locking them in a room with a terrifying gargoyle and sharp pendulums that swing right over the poor victim’s heads as they are bound to their seat.
We watch as a restaurant chock full of people fawn over a 100-dollar bowl of what looks like green pea soup and on the other hand, the servers in the restaurant are not allowed to taste it under any circumstance. Things go wrong when a new employee called Reed sneaks multiple spoons of the soup to taste it when he thinks that he isn’t being watched.
When he is confronted by Vink, he lies and is also helped by the manager to cover up his misstep. They decide to stand up for another employee who becomes Vink’s target and in the process, discover the history of the gargoyle. However, they also manage to let the gargoyle escape thus, an ancient demon is on the loose. Vink successfully recaptures the Gargoyle but this means that this episode doesn’t end on a positive note as he can continue making his sinister soup forever.
It’s a neat and mind-bending concept that you’d expect to see in the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery, and it provides for a great premise to play with, which this episode excels at in a Stephen King’s It sort of way.
The Tale of the Quiet Librarian (season 4, episode 4)
“Silence is golden,”, particularly at the library. A long-dead librarian stalks the book stacks, listening for strange noises that she absorbs in a magical box. Jace and Laurie must solve the riddle of the library and release other youngsters who have been imprisoned by the librarian before they can be physically sucked dry by the vengeful ghost.
The tale follows two young students who have been paired up for a group project. One of them leaves some books in the basement of the library and they go back after dark to retrieve those books when they bump into the Quiet Librarian. As they search the basement, they come across a creepy-looking elderly lady in a black gown and purple-tinted sunglasses The woman is the Quiet Librarian, the vengeful soul of a rigid and harsh librarian who despises noise and confines it in her small magical box. She also confines any unruly individuals to the silent reading room, seeing it as a prison. The steals one of their voices and this happens to be her special ability, forcing children into silence by stealing their voices.
Laurie throws a little statue at the Quiet librarian after much effort and heart-pounding suspense. She screams in agony and drops her magic box to the floor. Laurie tries to seize it, but it refuses to move. The box she had been using to steal kids’ voices then overloads due to the incessant, unpleasant, and deafening siren sounds, and a beam of violet light flashes out. “NOOOOOOOOO!” exclaims the librarian. All of the people whose faces she has collected over the years have been liberated from the box. The librarian also perishes because as the box overflows, it annihilates the Quiet Librarian, charring her to ashes.
The Tale of the Many Faces (season 7, episode 12)
When a photoshoot does not go as planned for Emma, an aspiring model, she feels jealous of one of her peers who gets a new magazine cover girl. Emma is approached by a talent scout shortly after her audition, and she is offered the opportunity to see a successful model named Madame Visage, who offers her a special substance to make her face the fairest. What is the problem? Those that use the powder gradually lose their faces.
She uses the powder and immediately becomes strikingly beautiful and when she goes to Madame Visage to share this with her, everything goes downhill. She asks her assistants to bring a book. Madame Visage taps Emma’s face and the book. Then her picture appears in the book. The two masked chicks keep their cool. She turns around to approach Emma, who is taken aback when she notices Madame Visage has no face. Madame’s face is pale and blank, with no pigments, nose, lips, or eye color.
Madame Visage is a horrible sight, Emma yells as she approaches her and caresses her face. When she touches it, her visage instantaneously changes into Madame Visage’s. Then, while looking in the mirror, Emma discovers that her face has been taken and that she now serves Madame Visage as a slave. It turns out that Madame Visage is a malicious witch with great power. For ages, a witch has been taking the faces of young women in order to stay young. She also wants the faces to stay young because she utilizes them for acting in her plays. However, Emma and the rest of the girls are successful in defeating her once and for all.
This simply constructed allegory about the troubles of low self-image gets under the viewer’s skin and draws them into the beauty industry, and is regarded as a bonafide classic among the series’ fanbase.
The Tale of the Water Demons (season 4, episode 5)
Shawn MacKenzie, a disturbed youngster, and his cousin, Dean Wilson, go to make a coffee delivery to Captain Abraham Westchester, his cantankerous elderly neighbor. They come across a glass display case filled with riches, and Shawn takes the opportunity of stealing a gold pocket watch. The captain informs the youngsters that he is unable to sleep because he has been cursed by the sea for what he has done. Water Demons visit him whenever he falls asleep.
They are the vengeful spirits of those who died at sea, and they have returned to seek what was stolen from them. In addition, the Captain claims that they intend to bring him back to their murky grave as retaliation for robbing their riches; they aren’t at rest, so they won’t let him rest. Later, he discovers that the watch, along with the other valuables, was extracted from the bones of deceased sailors when Shawn’s dreams are soon plagued by their spirits.
The slimy water demons attack Mark Shawn, calling him a grave robber as they try to get their revenge. However, they manage to figure out a solution and decide to throw all of the loot that the captain had collected over the years, back into the ocean, returning them to the sea and the people that drowned in it. This works and finally, the captain can rest again.
Finally, the theme of this story is to warn the audience about the significance of self-accountability; to accept one’s truth, irrespective of the unpleasant repercussions. In this sense, diehard fans were always left with one of two takeaways: if the zombies didn’t haunt their dreams at night, the lesson imparted in this episode would.
The Tale of Watcher’s Woods (season 3, episode 3)
Long ago, three campers got lost in the woods, leaving only their whistles behind. At the same time, a camper went insane and began talking about a Watcher in the woods, giving rise to the term Watcher’s Woods. Watcher’s Woods is an area where individuals inexplicably vanish and disappear. It’s been going on for ages, according to legend. Indian tribes, colonial soldiers, and pioneers had all vanished and were never seen again. The Watcher is in command of it, a terrible demon who dominates the woods and chooses its victims.
When two modern-day campers go lost in the woods, they discover that there is definitely something horrible in the woods. They encounter the Watcher and get lost in the woods where they then bump into three hags that turn out to be the three young campers who had previously gone missing all those years ago.
Facing their fears, both the girls make their way through multiple obstacles that both the Watcher and The Hags had laid down for them and then realize that the hags only wanted to be free from this eternal curse of being trapped in the watchers’ woods. They help the Hags break the curse and manage to get out of the sinister woods alive and well.
This episode plays on age-old tropes of something sinister hiding in the forest that kidnaps and traps people in the woods, never to find their way back into civilization again. The suspense is ever-present and this one will definitely put you off camping expeditions for a while.
This leaves no doubt as to why this show is so popular and continues to be a fan favorite even though it aired 30 years ago. Which ones are your favorite episode from the show and did it scare you? Let us know in the comments section below!