I’m a major fan of horror movies to the point that I rarely watch a movie that isn’t in that genre. But that wasn’t always the case. When I was ten, I saw two minutes of the original Night of the Living Dead (part of the graveyard scene) and didn’t sleep through the night for two months. I broke myself of the fear by watching every horror movie I could get my hands on, dealing with the emotional fallout until I eventually became desensitize to the frights (not- as the media would tell you- to violence in general). 

“Are You Afraid of the Dark?”, a children’s show that started airing on Nickelodeon in 1991, scared the wits out of me when it first came on air. It centered around a group of children- dubbed The Midnight Society- that met at night in the woods to tell ghost stories that they could all visualize thanks to a magic powder that was thrown into the fire. Hi, non-subtle drug reference. 

I recently rewatched an episode and even though it is obviously meant for pre-teens, it stands the test of time. And the intro still creeps me out a little: 

If I were the sort of person to recommend that others watch totally illegal, bootlegged copies of shows online- and I’m not- I would mention that you can find full episodes of the show here.