History NightmareFuel / LittleHouseOnThePrairie

* "May We Make Them Proud": It can be chilling, downright frightening to watch the scene where Alice Garvey is trapped in the burning house and – beating her arms on the window to try to break it and escape – screams for help. Then the flames swallow her and the crying baby, Adam Kendall Jr., she is holding. Also, hearing the baby stop crying as he and Alice are overcome by the flames and intense heat – indeed, there is a cut scene of a huge fireball shooting out the window of the room where they were just standing – is horrifying. [[NoAnimalsWereHarmed This, despite the fact that the scenes of Alice crying for help]] were shot on a soundstage, Heresha Parady (Alice's portrayer) was holding a doll and the baby crying was just sound effects perfectly stopped on cue and added in post-production.

** Meta example: Carrie isn't mentioned in the malaria scenes, as in RealLife, she hadn't been born yet. Dr. Tan, the doctor who helped them, actually has his assistance of the Ingalls family noted on his gravestone. He helped them in 1870, implied in the book to be in the summer, and Carrie was born in August that year. There's some FridgeHorror to the math that means not only did Ma get malaria with the rest of the family, she was also heavily pregnant at the time and miles away from medical care.

** Meta example: Carrie isn't mentioned in the malaria scenes, as in RealLife, she hadn't been born yet. Dr. Tan, the doctor who helped them, actually has it noted on his gravestone. He helped them in 1870, implied in the book to be in the summer, and Carrie was born in August that year. There's some FridgeHorror to the math that means not only did Ma get malaria with the rest of the family, she was also heavily pregnant at the time.

** Interestingly, Baby Carrie isn't mentioned in the malaria scenes at all, which makes sense, because while Carrie exists in the narrative, she wasn't actually born yet; the books being a somewhat fictionalized account of Laura's life. So while some readers might get some FridgeHorror regarding who exactly was taking care of the baby while the family was bedridden and hallucinating, it's good to know she wasn't actually in danger. However, that brings up some RealLife FridgeHorror regarding the incident. Dr. Tan, the doctor who treated the family, is noted on his gravestone as having done so in 1870. ''Little House on the Prairie'' puts these events solidly in the summer, when the weather is hot and the mosquitoes are out. Carrie was born on August 3, 1870. Put this information together and what do you get? The horrifying realization that Ma was ''heavily pregnant with Carrie'' while nearly ''dying'' of malaria on the high prairie. Since real-life Carrie was small and frail throughout childhood, it's possible this might have been part of the reason why.

* Laura's time at the Brewsters' in ''These Happy Golden Years.'' Laura is forced to board in a house thirty miles from the nearest neighbor with a woman slowly [[GoMadFromTheIsolation going insane from isolation]]...and she doesn't like Laura. And she has a knife. It's easily one of the darkest moments in the series, particularly when the woman's openly threatening suicide, if not murder-suicide: "If I can't go home one way, I can another."

** After a cyclone, Pa comes home with a story of two brothers who were traveling home with their mule when the storm hit. One of the boys was picked up by the cyclone, which somehow stripped off every piece of his clothing down to his high laced boots before slamming him to the ground, where he ran home otherwise unharmed. His brother and the mule are found days later with the grim sentence "Every bone in their bodies was broken."