History Main / MundaneGhostStory

* In "Camp Cutthroat: If It Bleeds, We Can Skillet" from ''Series/CutthroatKitchen'', one of the sabotages was to force another of the chefs to stop cooking and sit and listen to Alton telling a lengthy one of these.

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[[folder:WebOriginal]]

''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries''. Yugi's attempt at a horror story.

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A joke:

* There was a particularly disturbing (by its standards) ''ComicStrip/FamilyCircus'' Sunday strip with Jeffy asking his dad about monsters, the dad assuring him there were none, and the final frame showing the dad walking out of Jeffy's room with Not Me ghosts marked "taxes", "recession" and "war" floating around him.

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* ''Series/{{Seinfeld}}'' had the similar scenario of Frank Costanza's war story of the terrible losses his unit suffered due to his own bad cooking. Runs in the family: his son George's life is apparently so tragic that he can use his life story to get more pity than the survivor of a famous shipwreck.

This type of scary story usually bypasses fantastic and / or supernatural horrors found in the common ghost story, for something that tends to actually happen in real life to sane people.

* ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'': [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yNaHQZrZ90 Quagmire would find this story scary]].

* The ''WesternAnimation/{{Daria}}'' episode "The Teachings of Don Jake" had Jake tell a story about a boy who hears weird splashing noises in his sleep and wakes to find his father gone. [[spoiler: Turns out it's yet another HilariouslyAbusiveChildhood story about Jake's father getting drunk during a father-son camping trip]]:
-->'''Jake''': Then, lying there in the darkness, the boy heard a tiny splashing sound. ''Psh''! ''Psh''! Like waves on a faraway shore. ''Except''...the nearest ocean was a hundred miles away. The boy reached out for his sleeping father...but he was gone. Shaking with fear, the boy stumbled out of the rickety lean-to, and that's when he saw it: his father, sitting alone at the campfire. ''ALONE''!...with a whole case of beer! Psh! Psh! ''(pantomimes drinking)'': The selfish old bastard was WASTED AGAIN!
** And then there's Quinn's ghost story:

Someone tells a GhostStory in classic fashion, probably around a campfire or with a flashlight aimed up under the face, only the ghost story is about something that is not really scary in the traditional nightmare sense, but is more like [[AdultFear Adult Fears]]: being stuck in a loveless marriage, living an unfulfilling life, sexual inadequacy, and so on. This is usually played for laughs, avoiding anything involving physical pain or death, dealing with [[FauxHorrific something sillier]] like having to wear a stupid outfit to school, having a bad haircut, or eating something terrible.

Someone tells a GhostStory in classic fashion, probably around a campfire or with a flashlight aimed up under the face, only the ghost story is about something that is not really scary in the traditional nightmare sense, but is more like [[AdultFear Adult Fears]]: being stuck in a loveless marriage, dying alone, bigotry, living an unfulfilling life, being homeless after losing your job, sexual inadequacy, or the death of offspring. However, this is usually played for laughs, avoiding anything involving physical pain or death, dealing with [[FauxHorrific something sillier]] like having to wear a stupid outfit to school, having a bad haircut, or eating something terrible.

* ''LiveActionTV/SaturdayNightLive'' had a skit where Stuart Smalley tells a "scary story" that starts out like the urban legend about the babysitter getting calls from inside the house. Instead of vague threats the person on the phone just incoherently rambles for a few minutes, and as it turns out [[spoiler: it's the girl's drunk father. Stuart says they stage an intervention for him.]]

-->'''Leela:''' Pfft! That's not scary.

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* On ''ParksAndRecreation'', the TwistEnding of Ron's ghost story is a mandatory government inspection of private property. As a libertarian, this is truly horrifying to him.

* Konata's scary story from ''LuckyStar''.
* In the GhostStory episode of the ''Anime/KeroroGunsou'' anime, Dororo's story involves an incident in his childhood when, after he refused to let Keroro play with an expensive toy, ''someone'' mysteriously made a long-distance phone call to another planet. "The phone bill we got was certainly terrifying."

* There was a particularly disturbing (by its standards) ''FamilyCircus'' Sunday strip with Jeffy asking his dad about monsters, the dad assuring him there were none, and the final frame showing the dad walking out of Jeffy's room with Not Me ghosts marked "taxes", "recession" and "war" floating around him.

* An editorial cartoon from... I want to say the 90s... had a father telling his kids a campfire story that ended with "...and we sat on the runway for hours with only peanuts to eat!" (dramatic hand gesture)

* ''[[Series/TheAddamsFamily Addams Family Values]]'': Wednesday's ghost story at the Summer Camp.

* ''{{Cheaper by the Dozen}} 2'' did this. The rich kids were reading about a family that was worrying about how to pay their car payment that month, and then they all shuddered in fear and disgust at the thought of not being super-rich.
* ''RoleModels'' included a scene where Paul Rudd's character told the "true scary story" about the facts of child slavery and abduction around the world.
* ''Film/FridayThe13thPartVIJasonLives'', one camp counselor scares the others with the story of Jason Voorhees, and then follows up with, "I can only think of one thing even more terrifying." That thing is a bus load of rowdy, bratty kids. "I think I'd rather deal with ol' Jason," [[TemptingFate replies]] another camp counselor.
* ''TroopBeverlyHills'', with a story about a trip to the salon.

* In the ''KenanAndKel'' Halloween special "Two Heads Are Better Than None," Kel mishears "ghost stories" as "toast stories." Cue his attempt at a scary campfire story:

* ''{{Seinfeld}}'' had the similar scenario of Frank Costanza's war story of the terrible losses his unit suffered due to his own bad cooking.
** Runs in the family: his son George's life is apparently so tragic that he can use his life story to get more pity than the survivor of a famous shipwreck.

* The first series of ''Radio/JohnFinnemoresSouvenirProgramme'' had a parody ghost story OnceAnEpisode, with a couple of them falling under this trope.

* ''VideoGame/{{Portal 2}}'': While exploring [[BlackoutBasement an unlit part of Aperture]] with Chell, Wheatley relates a story about how a crew of robots were dismembered by an insane robot and in certain parts of the facility you can still hear the screams... of their replacements. He {{lampshade}}s this with his next comment that it's not really supernatural at all. (Though still [[HellIsThatNoise creepy]].)

* In ''UnwindersTallComics'', Unwinder seeks to exploit his friend Barbecue Sauce's greatest fear. Turns out Sauce's greatest fear is DyingAlone; so Unwinder tells him a campfire story about the dreaded Dying Alone Snakes.

* ''PennyArcade'' features [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/10/31/ every gamer's worst fear]].

* This Youtube video called [[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ttz3Twr_Bus Disney Horror]], about overcrowding at Disney World during Christmas.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': The season eight episode "The Springfield Files" (the BizarroEpisode-cum-{{crossover}} episode with ''Series/TheXFiles'' that had Creator/LeonardNimoy narrating it for the first two acts) had Homer and Bart out in the woods in search of the alien. Bart asks Homer if he can have some beer, with Homer telling him that beer is only for "...daddies and [[CallBack kids with fake IDs]] [[note]]Ironic, considering that Bart had a fake ID on a previous episode and ultimately refrained from buying beer with it[[/note]]" then Homer suggests that they tell ghost stories to pass the time. This was Bart's:

** There is an alternate scene on the season eight DVD set in which the original mundane horror story was about the contents of an Oscar Meyer weiner, with Homer reacting the same way.
** ''The Simpsons'', again, featured a carnival "house of horrors" ride that presents an old woman in a rocking chair who says, "Behold! The ravages of age!"
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Arthur}}'', Arthur was the carnival barker at a "house of horrors" that featured the most embarrassing moments of his friends, such as the Brain wearing pajamas to school.

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* ''VideoGame/Portal2'': While exploring [[BlackoutBasement an unlit part of Aperture]] with Chell, Wheatley relates a story about how a crew of robots were dismembered by an insane robot and in certain parts of the facility you can still hear the screams... of their replacements. He {{lampshade}}s this with his next comment that it's not really supernatural at all. (Though still [[HellIsThatNoise creepy]].)

* The Yuletide ghost stories in ''KingdomOfLoathing'' usually do involve ghosts, but most of them have incredibly mundane endings, like an IndianBurialGround being dealt with by lawyers, but cursing all burgers cooked on the site to be raw on the inside but burnt on the outside.

* ''ICarly's'' bra. He seems to be scared of things like washing machines, and Spanish as a primary language, as seen here - [[http://www.frightening.tv/ Scary Videos]].

-->'''Wednesday''': And so, the next night, the ghost returned to the haunted cabin, and he said to the campers — "None of you really believe in me, so I'll have to prove my power." And the next morning, when the campers woke up... [[WhatDoYouMeanItsNotHeinous all of their old noses had grown back]]. ''*Cue screams of terror and a smirking Wednesday*''

* ''[[Series/TheAddamsFamily Addams Family Values]]'': Wednesday Addams tells a tale of reversed nose job.

-->'''Bart''': ...and ''that'' is how much college will cost for Maggie.
-->'''Homer''': [[BigNo No! NO! NOOOOOO!!!!!]]
*** There is an alternate scene on the season eight DVD set in which the original mundane horror story was about the contents of an Oscar Meyer weiner, with Homer reacting the same way.

* Done in ''TheBigBangTheory'', where at the ending of "The Adhesive Duck Deficiency" Raj was finishing up what seems to be your standard campsite ghost story (complete with flashlights to the face), only for the twist ending to be "He slept with his cousin!" (a CallBack to Howard admitting that [[KissingCousins he'd unknowingly done just that]] during his youth), and proceeded to laugh hysterically, with a humiliated Howard telling them that it wasn't funny to begin with.