Rhi Axtell – Writer

Nyctophobia is the fear of the dark.

My wife is endlessly annoyed at me because I seem to have the opposite. I LOVE to sit in the dark. I just find it relaxing. Probably because I am staring at screens all day and my eyes are grateful for the rest…

Anyway, I might not be afraid of the dark, but I was definitely afraid (when I was much younger) of the kid’s horror television show Are you afraid of the dark?

Every episode began with a group of teenagers gathered around a fire in a forest and one of them begins to tell a ghost story, which is then the remainder of the episode. Some of the episodes were legitimately scary to little me – and of course I kept watching them. Of COURSE. And now I live with the nightmares. Thanks, past me.

One episode which sticks with me, which is apparently titled The Tale of Laughing in the Dark is a story where a boy called Josh, trying to prove his bravery in a carnival fun house, steals the red nose of a freaky animatronic clown. You’ve probably already guessed that this was what is known in literary circles as a bad idea.

Josh is then pursued by the clown. But not in a ‘being chased down the street by a freaky robot clown’, kind of way. More in slow, spooky. little nudges so the boy knows that what he has done is wrong and will have consequences.

Whenever I remember this episode, a particular part sticks out in my head: Josh, cowering in his room (with the nose – a bad idea) hears a strange sound from his bedroom door. He turns to look, just in time to see a balloon being inflated under the doorway.

Written on the balloon are the words GIVE IT BACK.

Josh screams. I scream. My mother tells me off for being so noisy. I develop a new childhood fear and have nightmares for the next few weeks.

I googled the episode while writing this and… well, Are you afraid of the dark? is a television show from the early nineties and it LOOKS like a television show from the early nineties. It’s actually quite hilarious to think I could ever be scared of something like that now. But then I have seen a lot of scarier stuff in my time. Also I am old enough now to know not to take noses from animatronic clowns. It’s a…

You guessed it: BAD IDEA.

Pretty sure this is how the whole Five Nights at Freddies story began too. Don’t quote me on that though.

See you tomorrow!