Are You Afraid of the Dark?
A group of Canadian kids, from elementary to high school ages, of different cultural and economic backgrounds, come together once a week at night and share their love of horror by telling scary stories. Their ritual is that each week one kid in the group tells a story. He/she throws sugar into a campfire and declares their story's title. The rest of the episode features the story on-screen. Some of the stories are meant to be scary, others are meant to be funny, but each one usually has a lesson on various topics (bullying, science gone wrong, animal rights, respecting the elderly, friendship, good manners, poverty, moving to a new place, etc.).The show was in competition with Goosebumps, Eerie Indiana, The X-Files, Tales From the Crypt and several other similar shows from the Nineties. At one point, all the members of the midnight society, excluding Tucker, are replaced with younger and very immature kids, and this was the point when the show began to go downhill. Some members of the Midnight Society only lasted two or three episodes, most notably Stig (his name may be short for Stigma). He's a chubby, overweight and lazy kid who never changes his clothes. Nonetheless he told the story 'The Tale of the Dead Man's Float', which became one of the most popular episodes of the show among fans. Two recurring characters were Dr. Vink (a jolly but evil and sadistic old man) and Sardo (a sleazy and shady but benevolent magic shop owner). Both characters often get involved in stories. Dr. Vink usually has dark schemes to lure kids into things, and Sardo usually gets caught up in helping the kids he sells his junky products to.
good versus evil, paranormal, psychedelic, horror, storytelling