Laughing in the Dark

This week Aileen kicks off the third season of Are You Afraid of the Dark with the first episode, The Tale of the Midnight Ride. There's a major shake up at the Midnight Society as we lose both Kristen and David but we gain a new friend when Gary initiates his little brother Tucker. To commemorate the occasion, Tucker tells a terribly familiar tale. If you've ever read or seen the Disney animated...

This week Bryan brings the second season to a close, telling the 9:30 Society all about the season 2 finale of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of Old Man Corcoran. In this episode, Kiki spins a tale of two new kids in the neighborhood who just want to make some new friends but the only ones available are a bunch of antagonistic locals who are obsessed with playing hide and seek in a nearby ce...

This week it's Dave's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about twelfth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of The Hatching. In yet another case of Nickelodeon kids being ditched by their parents and laid upon some sinister and mysterious institution we find the rule-crazy Auggie and his incredibly cool anarachist sister Jazz left at a boarding school run seemingly by tw...

This week it's Aileen's turn to tell the 9:30 Society all about the 11th episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Magician's Assistant. In yet another Gary story about stage magic, we hear the tale of a kid who takes a part time job working for a hobo magician who is unfortunately not Sardo. The kid learns the mystic arts and spends a lot of time cleaning up this...

This week it's Mikie's turn to tell the 9:30 Society all about the tenth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Shiny Red Bicycle. Mike Buckley is haunted by the trauma of losing his best friend some years ago in an accident. He's surrounded by people in his life who wish that he'd just get over it, parents, teachers, adults who really ought to know better abou...

It's Bryan's turn this week to tell the 9:30 Soiciety about the ninth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Full Moon. This one's a real doozy. Maybe it takes place in the 90s. Maybe it takes place in the 60s. Who can say? It's another tale of a young kid misunderstanding the entire situation and putting a potentially deadly plan into motion to reveal that the...

This week it's Dave's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about the eighth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Whispering Walls. This episode finds a brother and sister adrift in the wild on the way back from an ausement park with their babysitter. When the car breaks down outside of a weird house with whispering walls, brother and sister must rely on their wits t...

This week it's Aileen's turn to tell the 9:30 Society all about the seventh episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Frozen Ghost. This episode, a fan favorite, introduces Melissa Joan Hart ahead of the premier of her own show for Nickelodeon, Clarissa Explains it all in a story about a babysitter sent to live with the child she watches and his two weird aunts in...

This week Mikie tells the 9:30 Society all about the sixth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Dark Dragon. In this story we find a young man who severely lacks in confidence, blaming the squeaky victorian-era leg brace he has to wear following a terrible car accident. A pretty girl at the library wants to go to the homecoming dance with him but he has his e...

This week it's Bryan's turn to tell the 9:30 Society all about the fifth episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Dream Machine. In this episode a nice young man who loves to write short stories about his friends comes upon a mysterious typewriter in a hidden room in his new house. When he uses it to write a story, he finds that that story influences the dreams o...

It's Dave's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about the 4th episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Thirteenth Floor. In this episode brother and sister Karin and Billy find the thirteenth floor of their apartment building, an unoccupied floor that they play hockey in, suddenly taken over and made over by a New Wave band who may or may not be aliens. Under the disgu...

It's Mikie's turn this week to tell the 9:30 Society all about the third episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of Locker 22. In this episode Julie has the grave misfortune of attending the worst high school in Canada. The walls are covered in spray paint and the halls are prowled by menacing bullies who have no problem cornering a teenage girl in a part of the school...

It's Aileen's turn to tell the 9:30 Society all about the second episode of the second season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Midnight Madness. In this episode a struggling movie theater gets a second chance when a certain riddle-loving pervert appears mysteriously with a silent horror film that's sure to put asses but this revival comes with a price. The horror turns up when the su...

It's Bryan's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about the season 2 premier episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Final Wish. In this episode a young girl on the edge of being a teenager must navigate the unforgiving real world, nasty boy crazy girls, a horrible older brother who is constantly sneaking into her room. Wouldn't it just be easier if she could just disappear into a fairy ta...

It's Dave's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about the Are You Afraid of the Dark first season finale episode, The Tale of the Pinball Wizard, an episode about a teenage degenerate and his crippling addiction to pinball machines, or maybe it's a video game, we're honestly not sure and we're not confident that the show's writers know what a video game is, or pinball for that matter.  When Ross is too...

This week it's Mikie's turn to tell the 9:30 Society about the twelfth episode of the first season, The Tale of the Prom Queen. It's a familiar ghost story but filtered through the lens of Are You Afraid of the Dark. It's the story of two jerks who meet a pretty young girl in the cemetery, as one does, and then proceed to terrorize her and treat her like a jerk as they stumble their way through a...

In this episode, Aileen guides The 9:30 Society through the 11th episode of the first season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Dark Music. It's a tale of revenge, a family curse and, nominally, music.  Andy, his mother, and sister are moving into a house they mysteriously inherited from a distant uncle that nobody in the family seems to remember. There's work to be done in the basemen...

In this episode, Bryan tells The 9:30 Society about the 10th episode of the first season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of Jake and the Leprechaun, in which a kid who just wants to fulfill his dream of acting in a play ends up groomed by a creature of Irish folklore (sort of) and gets magical help from another creature from Irish folklore. There's bad accents, a hideous subtext about a gr...

In this episode Dave takes the 9:30 Society through the 9th episode of the first season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Sorcerer's Apprentice in which a dorky loser named Dean falls under the wicked spell of an ancient wizard who promises him power, influence, and a cool leather jacket in exchange for his help in bringing him back from the great beyond. Lucky for Dean, his unshakeab...

This week, Mikie tells the 9:30 Society about the season 1 Are You Afraid of the Dark episode, The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors in which Emma and her brother Dayday witness the new neighbors moving into the house next door in the middle of night. When they next meet them they turn out to be a couple and their young son. They also have Eastern European accents and claim to be from "The Ukraine". O...

Aileen takes the 9:30 Society through The Tale of the Captured Souls, a movie that has us raising eyebrows at movies like Get Out and Weapons since they bare more than a passing resemblance to this episode, a resemblance so strong that Dave is outraged on behalf of the Are You Afraid of the Dark writers.  This week's episode pits our audience stand-in, Dani, at the worst Air BnB in Halifax where t...

This week Bryan takes the 9:30 Society though the sixth episode of the first season of Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Super Specs. In this episode the most annoying teenager in Canada, a. boy named Weeds, is so obsessed with pranks and practical jokes that he accidentally saddles his girlfriend with a pair of prank glasses that can see into a parallel dimension seemingly inhabited by...

This week it's all about horse girls, generational trauma, and spiritual possession. Dogs come along eventually but the title is fairly misleading. End of the day, though, don't go climbing spectral staircases in the woods and definitely don't be honking your horn around horses. It's another classic Are You Afraid of the Dark set up as city girl meets country girl when two cousins spend the summer...

This week Mikie recounts the fourth episode of the first season of Are You Afraid of the Dark, The Tale of the Twisted Claw. In this episode a couple of thirteen year olds up to no good play an ill-advised prank on the local witch, causing her to break her own vase. Seeking ironic revenge on Halloween she gives them a dessicated animal claw instead of candy which is guaranteed to grant three wishe...

Aileen walks The 9:30 Society through the third episode of the first season, The Tale of the Lonely Ghost. Are you a zeeb? Don't know? Brother, you don't want to be one. In this episode a bookish country girl, Amanda, is sent to the big city to spend the summer with her heinous cousin Beth and her clique of Heathers. Desperate to fit in and go to the pool party, Beth and her hyenas challenge Amand...