Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Anyone else watch this fantastically cheesy Nickelodeon campfire scary story show?? It ran from 1991-1996 with a brief return from 98-99 and watching it as a 5 year old was quite scary for me. And now? Easy breezy. 

What I find pretty cool about Are You Afraid of the Dark? is all the celebrities who once guest-starred on the show: Will Friedle (Boy Meets World), Melissa Joan Hart (Sabrina, Clarissa Explains it All, Melissa & Joey), Tia & Tamara Mowry (Sister Sister), and the best one, Ryan Gosling (The Notebook, Crazy Stupid Love). They were all around 10 at the time.

The show followed The Midnight Society, a group of kids who met up in the middle of the night to each tell ghost stories. Looking back on them now, they're not scary at all, not one bit. But through the eyes of a 5 year old, AHHHHH!!!

If you're up for a "scare" check out the episode posted above, "The Tale of the Dangerous Soup."

Moving on, when I was around 12 maybe, I was flipping through the channels on TV and came across a genre I love: mystery and horror. Don't ask why a little girl of 12 loved horror...I'm not sure myself. But anyway, I stumbled upon the TV edited version of I Still Know What You Did Last Summer. Plus, who doesn't love a little Jennifer Love Hewitt and Freddy Prinze Jr.?! And HOLY CRAP I was scared out of my mind. One scene has especially stayed with me. This one right here:

The murderer killer guy LOCKED her in the tanning bed to toast her to her death! Now, I've never felt any inclination to use a tanning bed, but after this movie, I will NEVER set foot in a tanning salon. NEVER. 

I akin the series of I Know What You Did Last Summer to an old school Pretty Little Liars. It's got all the same stuff--a shadowy killer, notes left everywhere, killing anyone who knows too much...great stuff right there.

So I took a break from scary movies for awhile. And I thought I'd stick with Lifetime movies, those couldn't do much harm could they? 

WRONG!

I give you 2006's Glass House: The Good Mother. This movie starts off really sweet when Eve (Angie Harmon) and Raymond Goode adopt brother and sister pair Ethan & Abby Snow, about a year after their own son died. They live in this fabulous lake front mansion and all is well. Until Eve proves to be deranged, locks the kids in the house, and tries to kill them. Happy, huh?

I don't even remember what ended up happening. I'm pretty sure the little girl escaped though...I don't have the courage to watch it again to find out. 

Lesson learned: do not trust Lifetime movies just because they're Lifetime movies. You will be scared (I was 15) and you will no longer be able to look at any pictures of Angie Harmon or watch her in Rizzoli & Isles for fear she will stab you to death.

And lastly, when I was 17 and fresh out of junior year of high school (like literally, we had just finished the last day of school), my friends and I went to go see Prom Night starring Brittany Snow, in theaters. Another lesson learned: do not watch scary movies in a massive theater, the huge screen is wayyyyyy too big to hide from. And why I ended up buying it on DVD when it came out, I have no idea. To this day, I'm pretty sure I've only SEEN the movie once...I peek every now and then, but mainly, I'll just listen. I find it much easier to listen than to watch. 

But anyway, the scariest parts of that movie, for me, were:

1. she closed the folding mirror and the killer was there standing behind her! 

2. she got into bed with her boyfriend that night, thinking she was safe, and found her boyfriend DEAD next to her!

3. she opens the closet and the killer just slowly appears from inside it!

4. one second, the killer is standing and staring at her from across the street, a bus passes in front of him, and then he's gone! 

5. I really hate blood spatter. 

Well, now that I have elevated my heart rate just thinking about these movies, I'm going to go watch something happy to forget about them...even though I love the thrill...