A rickety canoe gently rocks on a shore against a misty midnight sky. Unoccupied swings creak over windswept leaves. A storm-jostled shutter flaps against a lonely window. A clown figurine stares blankly in a dusty attic, soundtracked by a child’s ghostly laugh. A box fan pulses in slow-motion as mysterious light floods in through a key hole. An untethered hand strikes a match against the black.
These are the images of my childhood nightmares. They also comprise the opening sequence of Are You Afraid of the Dark?, the ’90s horror-fantasy anthology show originally broadcast to Americans on the kids-and-teens network Nickelodeon. For many Millennials of a certain age—too young to watch real horror, old enough to crave it—this low-budget series served as our first exposure to onscreen scariness, tapping into a primal dreamworld through its ambitious use of makeup, set design, costumes, music, and narrative presentation. (For those not in the know, the series stars a group of teenagers, “The Midnight Society,” who gather around a campfire to share eerie tales, which are then shown to us, the viewers.) The performances and dialogue could be stiff and clumsy—I think most of us, even as pre-teens, knew they weren’t batting 1,000. But when everything clicked, the effect was truly unsettling. And there’s no better example than the second episode, “The Tale of Laughing in the Dark,” which aired on August 15, 1992.
The nostalgic rewatch
I often reminisce with my friend Calep about the pop-culture of our youth, and we talked for years about having an Are You Afraid of the Dark? marathon—an effort to answer our age-old questions once and for all: Was this show actually scary to begin with? Does it hold up now to grown-ass men who’ve since savored their fair share of brutal horror films? So we finally make it happen one Friday night: settling onto his couch, stuffing our faces with pizza, and streaming as many installments as we reasonably could. Some of the episodes, like 1992’s “The Tale of the Prom Queen,” we find unintentionally campy but still enjoyable, given the sheer nostalgia and filmmaking ingenuity. But “Laughing in the Dark” holds up in every way.
I immediately feel that ol’ chill down the spine during the intro credits, but the sensation multiplies as the camera zooms in on the setting: an amusement park called Playland, home to a supposedly haunted “spook house.” Against disorienting carnival music, we see two little girls walking through the space, past a series of creepy monsters to ultimately stare down several misshapen, boldly colored doors. They must choose one of these pathways to find their way out—but when they choose wrong, they’re greeted by Zeebo: a massive inanimate clown with yellow teeth, frizzled red Bozo hair, a white-painted face, and piercing, hollow eyes. They scream. I squirm.
Why are clowns so scary anyway?
The rest of the story is clever and well-crafted—I won’t spoil the whole thing, but it involves a teenage dare, cigar smoke, a terrifying stalking incident, and a mysterious backstory involving a circus fire. But what’s always stuck with me—and continues to stick with me as I re-watch the episode—is the demonic-looking visage of Zeebo and the neon-tinted hellscape of his “spook house” stomping grounds. But shouldn’t I be too old for this stuff? Well, turns out I’m not alone, at least to some degree. In a 2016 poll, Vox found that 42% of respondents were at least somewhat frightened by clowns, and that number was even higher—62%—in those between the ages of 18 and 29. (At the time the episode first aired, I just barely hit that top number.)
Eliana Bonaguro, a Florida-based anxiety disorders specialist and licensed mental health counselor (LMHC), tells GOOD that she, like me, also grew up watching Are You Afraid of the Dark?—and also felt uneasy with another famously creepy clown: Pennywise from the 1990 TV adaptation of Stephen King’s It. “To this day, the clown’s images still make me feel uneasy because they were frightening,” she says. “I don’t have a phobia; I just have the uneasy feeling when I see a clown, that creepy feeling that you feel crawling under your skin. I’m a therapist, but I’m also human.”
And Bonaguro says there’s a logical reason why we, as adults, might still feel the ghosts of frights past. “When we see a frightening image as children, our amygdala and hippocampus, which are parts of the brain associated with emotion and memory, not only store the picture of what frightened us, but also the entire emotional state we were in at the time,” she says. “Years later, a similar sound or face may reactivate the same neural pathway. We don’t just remember the clown but also the emotions associated with with it, leading us to re-experience a slice of the original fear.”
“Visceral” horror
Plus, as Bonaguro notes, there’s a lot to unravel with clowns. “[They] embody a deeper psychological contradiction—while they are supposed to be safe and playful, their exaggerated smiles and unpredictable behavior make them unreadable,” she says. “That unpredictability triggers an adaptive evolutionary vigilance. In short, clowns frighten people because they combine stored emotional memories with ambiguous intent and safe-turned-unsafe imagery (happy clown at children’s party turning evil). This makes the fear unusually visceral compared to other kinds of horror.”
I wasn’t thinking about my hippocampus when I first saw Zeebo. I was just a kid being drawn, almost subconsciously, into this unnerving yet alluring world. Watching Are You Afraid of the Dark?, it felt like there were no boundaries to my imagination. I also felt that same way as a grown dude on a random Friday night, slurping gas-station soda in his buddy’s living room. Some things never change—including Zeebo. In a way, it’s weirdly comforting to know he’ll always be there, just waiting for the chance to haunt me yet again.
