A ranking by Brooks Rich
When I was a kid, my go-to channel was Nickelodeon. I am a child of the '90s and I will fight anyone who says Spongebob is better than Rocco's Modern Life or Ren & Stimpy. Days home sick from school were spent watching Nick all day, starting with Nick Jr, it didn't matter if the shows were for little kids, you watched it, then finally switching to the live-action shows and Nicktoons later in the day. Occasionally one of the awesome game shows would come on and the TV goes off when Nick at Night starts. At least for me.
Back then the best night of the week was Saturday. Not because I went to the movies with friends or went to play Goldeneye 64 multiplayer. Ok, I did do that sometimes. (Goldeneye is better than Halo and you're an asshole if you used Odd Job.) No Saturday night meant Saturday night Nickelodeon, or SNICK.
There was nothing more awesome than SNICK. It was the best shows Nick had to offer in a two-hour block, four every night. It felt so much longer than two hours to me. I'm thirty-four now so my memory of the exact lineups at what times is not clear. But I do remember one golden age where the first hour, eight to nine, was the comedy hour with the shows below back to back.
I loved both these shows but Kenan & Kel will always hold a special place in my heart. I can't be the only one either. Kenan Thompson and Kel Mitchell reunited on Jimmy Fallon a couple of years back and the place went fucking apeshit. Nostalgia was strong that night.
Nine 'o'clock was a variety of shows I remember pretty well. I think it changed week to week. The Secret World of Alex Mack, Adventures of Pete & Pete, The Roundhouse, and Space Cases. They were fine, save for The Roundhouse, that sucked, and I watched them. But that was only because I was waiting for my favorite show as a kid. The one true headliner of SNICK.
The show was essentially Tales from the Crypt for kids. Instead of the Crypt Keeper for our host, we have a bunch of Canadian teenagers called the Midnight Society sitting around a campfire, with one of them telling a story each week. I adored this show and back then I would swear there was no bad episode. In hindsight, yeah, it was pretty silly. This show doesn't do much for me anymore if I rewatch one but I still remember most of the episodes. Also, that theme song is still creepy as shit. But I have a very special place in my heart for this show. As a kid, my favorite television show was an anthology show. Now my favorite show is an anthology show, a little show called The Twilight Zone. The original run, not the '80s, early '00s, or most recent one.
So for this ranking of my eleven favorite Are You Afraid of the Dark episodes, I am doing it purely by nostalgia. I have not rewatched any of the episodes featured recently. This is how much this show is burned into my memory. Again I don't think any of these holds up to a modern rewatch but I will give props to legit spooky moments and creative ideas that were in these episodes. Make sure you keep reading after the final entry for a quick breakdown of my watching of Nickelodeon ending. It's bittersweet. So submitted for the approval of Cinema Basement, I call this ranking, the Top Eleven Episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark?
11. The Tale of the Chameleons
I am going to put this one at eleven because I actually think this is one of the few episodes that might be creepier the older I get. This is the episode with Tia and Tamera Mowry from Sister, Sister. I never watched that show. Anyway, one of them is bit by a chameleon and according to some random kid, she's going to turn into a chameleon herself. Sure. This one is kind of a body horror episode and I don't think I fully grasped it as a kid. David Cronenberg should remake it for the new Creepshow series on Shudder.
10. The Tale of Laughing in the Dark
This is an episode a lot of people are going to remember, featuring the ghost of the cigar-smoking Zeebo the Clown. In this episode, a kid named Josh is dared to steal the red nose off the animatronic clown in a carnival's haunted house. Of course, the clown gets pissed and comes for his nose. I remember the clown and I remember some creepy moments but I don't really remember the pacing of the episode. I don't think the episode does anything special with the premise and there's really no excuse for that as the show could be creative. But Zeebo is kind of a mascot for the show so this has to go on the list.
9. The Tale of the Unfinished Painting
This episode I remember being really creeped out by. This one bothered me and in a good way. A young girl is struggling to finish a painting she's working and finds a really weird art gallery with an obviously evil woman. I think she's a witch or something. I don't know. This one is all about atmosphere and mood. The gallery is creepy without being overboard and I think the pacing is pretty good two. We're left wondering what's going on and the payoff is mostly satisfying.
8. The Tale of the Whispering Walls
This episode was always on reruns. I do not remember a thing about the story or really what's going on. Something about leap year and the spirit world and I don't know. A woman is driving the two bratty siblings she is babysitting home from something when her car stalls next to a creepy-ass house. The woman goes inside and doesn't come back out. The kids go in after her and it's a pretty effective creepy house episode. I think the overall plot is silly but I remember this one being pretty creepy. The villain is absurd though. I mean look below. Look at that dude. He looks like if the 19th century had a goth band.
7. The Tale of the Quiet Librarian
Do not remember the characters. Do not remember the plot really. I just remember the creepy-ass librarian ghost who stole people's voices and imprisoned them in an old room in a library. As a dorky kid of the '90s, I spent a lot of time at the library. No thank you, creepy dead ghost librarian lady. Jesus!
6. The Tale of Old Man Corcoran
OK now we start getting episodes I not only remember the most but have some great moments. This episode about the creepy caretaker of a cemetery where two brothers are invited to play hide and seek was terrifying. This was legit one of the scariest episodes of the show. The atmosphere, the build-up, the jump scares with that old creep, it all works. But this one also stands out for a pretty solid twist ending. I imagine it's a little obvious now but as a kid it surprised the hell out of me. Good stuff.
5. The Tale of the Midnight Madness
As a movie lover, I approve of this episode. A Nosferatu like vampire escapes from the movie he's in and stalks an old creepy movie theater. I'm in. Before Samara came out of the TV in The Ring, Canadian Nosferatu came out of the screen in The Tale of the Midnight Madness. By the way the show was made in Canada if you couldn't guess. I think most people will remember an episode with a vampire at a hospital during the night shift more fondly, I think it was called Tale of the Night Shift, but I got to go with this one.
4. The Tale of the Dead Man's Float
Jay Baruchel as a little kid gets drowned in a pool by a ghost to open this episode. Um, what? Of course we didn't know who he was so we just watched a little kid drown at the start of a children's television show. Damn, the '90s ruled. This episode about a pool haunted by the most fucked up thing ever in a kids show is one of the scariest episodes of the show. I'm going to come back to this episode in an upcoming entry but man this was a messed up episode when it first aired. Look at that thing. This was a show meant for children!
3. The Tale of the Water Demons
Oh God, this one. '90s Brooks hated this episode because it scared the shit out of him. It's basically John Carpenter's The Fog but I didn't know that. The story involves an old sea captain who is haunted by the ghosts of the shipwrecks he plundered. Whenever he goes to sleep, they emerge from the water to drag him to a watery grave so he can only sleep for a minute or so at a time. Damn. The effects aren't the best but this one terrified me back then.
2. The Tale of Station 109.1
So referencing back to the Tale of the Dead Man's Float. In the frame story, this story is told by a kid trying to join the Midnight Society. His name is Stig and no one likes him because he's weird. The rule is a possible new member has to tell a story while blindfolded because their secret location is secret and then the rest have to unanimously vote to allow them in. For some reason, the hellspawn in the pool doesn't get him in, weak ass sauce, Midnight Society, but they agree to let him try again. That works for me because we get this gem of an episode. Ok, getting it out of the way, a young Ryan Gosling is in this episode. Great. But this is legit a great little short horror story. In it a young boy is obsessed with death and while stuck in a hearse, picks up a weird radio station, 109.1. Turns out it's a radio station for the dead to help them pass on and soon the bouncers of the afterlife are after him as well as a pissed off Gilbert Gottfried because they think he's dead. Pretty solid concept.
1. The Tale of the Frozen Ghost
So this is the episode I remember the best. It's not a great episode and it's probably a bad episode but I remember everything about it. It starred Melissa Joan Hart from Clarissa Explains It All not explaining anything as she takes the snotty rich kid she babysits to visit his weird aunts. The writing is corny and the acting meh but no moment in the show's run struck me more than one from this episode. The snotty brat wakes up, hears a noise outside his window, looks outside the said window, and sees the ghost of a young boy staring up and saying, "I'm cold." No joke, I just got goosebumps thinking back to that. It's an evocative image and one right out of Gothic literature. I vividly remember that moment from my childhood and the chills I got, all the puns intended. I wish it was in a better episode but I'll always remember that one scare. I don't know why exactly but it's always stayed with me. I can't give the top spot to any other episode. That one moment alone seals the deal. Gives me the shivers, again all the puns intended. "I'm cold."
Writing this list has been a nice nostalgic trip. We all grow up eventually but I like to think Are You Afraid of the Dark gave me the early inspiration I needed to start writing stories of my own. Eventually, I gravitated away from not just Are You Afraid of the Dark but Nickelodeon and children's geared programming in general. I remember the night it happened. Occasionally the last hour of SNICK was a Nick News special and every kid turned it off. Read the room, Nick! No one watches the Nick News specials. One night I'm bummed because my favorite show isn't coming on so I start flipping around. I stumble on something that looks spooky. I've wracked my brain and I can't remember the specifics of what I was watching. I just remember within two minutes I was more creeped out than I'd ever been watching Are You Afraid of the Dark. This show lasted an hour and scared the hell out of me. Like legit scared me. Not kid scares, more like oh my God, I have never been this scared in my life. That opening I stumbled into just threw me into a whole new world of fear and right after the screen goes dark, the title card below pops up, and I'm a changed kid.
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