Tonight is All Hallow's Eve, where the dead... take the night off, because it's hard to go around scaring when everyone's dressed up as a zombie or demon. At least, according to our resident Slayer.
Tonight is also the night for the writers to tell horror stories about when they were children and scared themselves whilst watching TV. Read on to hear more...
Ren and Stimpy was creepy at the best of times, but the episode 'Black Hole' was downright horrific. It opens with our titular heroes being sucked through a black hole into an alternate dimension, where their bodies constantly mutate into increasingly disturbing forms. As if Ren and Stimpy weren't grotesque enough already. The strange new planet they explore is a masterclass in creepy, full of giant toe plants, disembodied eyes, a ground of human hair and pimples, and a mountain of missing left socks from the tumble dryer. Eventually, Stimpy learns that they have five minutes to reach the inter-dimensional gateway back to Earth or they'll be trapped forever. Their mutant selves make it, but are kicked off the bus back to Earth for not having exact change. Rather than have their bodies continue to mutate until their atoms dissipate, Ren and Stimpy choose to simply implode, but just as this happens, Stimpy realises he has the exact change after all. What happens next is that the two slowly implode before our eyes, first losing limbs, then torsos and heads, until they are nothing but eyes, which are the last to go. The freakiest moment is at the end of the episode, where the normal title card appears, except in this one, Ren and Stimpy's eyes have imploded.
I grew up in the 90s and one of the hottest shows on television that dealt with weird and supernatural elements was the X-Files. Even as an adult I watch certain episodes and I cringe, cower, and wait for it to be over, but as a child I was genuinely in fear the entire time, every week. It was the only thing on television that could creep me out on a consistent basis and I enjoyed every minute of it.
The television show, "Are You Afraid of the Dark?" freaked me out. Midnight societies telling spooky stories, which revolved around things like haunted video games, haunted theatres or living puppets was enough for me. It bothered me for a good long time, giving me nightmares and my parents had to put a stop to me watching it for a little while. I love the show now (oh, the memories), but it definitely stood out as a tv show that freaked me out.
Although Doctor Who is my favourite TV show of all times, it has at times, throughout my childhood, been the scariest. There have been those episodes that, as a child, left me hiding behind the sofa in fright and having nightmares for the rest of the week leading up to the next episode, my parents vowing to never let us watch it again, but going back on that when we begged to watch the next episode. And there weren’t just ones that make you jump. There’s the downright creepy too. But above all there was one episode in particular that scares me to this day. The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances.
Now bear in mind that I was 9 when this episode was first aired. And the first time I watched it was in school. When we walked in to class and were told we would be watching the newest episode of Doctor Who as it had themes about the war, I was ecstatic. But let me tell you, once the episode started, I was frozen to my chair in horror. Who knew that a child in a gas mask could be so terrifying? I have never quite been able to put my finger on what quite scares me. Perhaps it’s because it was it was something so simple but so dangerous, like a disease. If you get touched by one of them then you too will get a gas mask fused to your face, transformed by the nanogenes that think they are actually doing good. Or perhaps it’s just the fact that Jamie’s voice (Albert Valentine) is extremely creepy. It also didn’t help that after watching this episode some children liked to randomly walk up to you in gas masks and make the whole situation much more lifelike.
So I would like to congratulate Steven Moffat for writing the episode that still haunts me. I have hardly watched it since, but I think, perhaps, I will re-watch it this Halloween.
When I was a child, my family would gather around television to watch particular programmes. That is nothing special, in fact, I would wager that most families would do this; it’s not entirely frightening. However, my family thought that an emergency television programme depicting harrowing life threatening real life stories called 999 was adequate Saturday night viewing. Similar to shows such as When Animals Attack and When Good Times Go Bad, it was the kind of show that proved exactly how much life sucks and you will die. I see why it was such an important television story. After all, if you’re a parent and you want to teach kids not to fool around with fireworks or climb trees, then you scare them out of it. For a sensitive soul like me, 999 taught me to be afraid of EVERYTHING because EVERYTHING brought DEATH! So when these people, were in quick mud and it was surrounding their heads, my brain went “oh that’s fine, I’ll just avoid mud.” Living in England, that’s everywhere.
One particular episode springs to mind about a man who set himself alight when he climbed a lit bonfire, mistakenly thinking that it was dead. And why? Because he was a friend of my extended family. Yes people I know were on the show.