Nightmare Fuel / The Haunting Hour

aka: The Haunting Hour The Series

And there come more of those after that episode.

Think of this show like Goosebumps (1995) but Darker and Edgier.

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• The Evil Thing from Don't Think About It, although maybe it was the second-most frightening thing in that movie after Tobin Bell.
• Human Lilly D in "Really You" is the very epitome of a Creepy Child. Her voice, her Troubling Unchildlike Behavior... Bailee Madison should've won some kind of award, because she sold the hell out of that performance. Also, Lily's slow transformation into a plastic doll is rather horrifying, as for the majority of it, Lily is fully aware of what's happening to her, to the point that the last part of her to transform is one of her eyes, which can be seen darting around the room in a panic. As she transforms, she dashes for the door, trying to alert her mom, but her hands turn just in time to prevent her from turning the knob. After Human Lilly D throws Doll Lilly in the trash bin, you actually hear the doll crying "Nooooo!", invoking the And I Must Scream factor.
  • Lilly D as a doll is no slouch in the Nightmare Fuel department either. From her destructive pranks and framing her human counterpart for it, to somehow forcibly switching bodies with her, and even casually readjusting her head after Brandon unscrews it and puts it back incorrectly, Lilly D made a truly bizarre impression with this two part pilot. In "The Return of Lilly D", she becomes a full blown Yandere towards Natalie, and attempts murder on a baby bird and Natalie's grandfather, to keep Natalie's love all to herself. Throughout "Really You" and "The Return of Lilly D" she makes numerous facial expressions that make her look disturbingly more human than she already does, all thanks to being a living life sized plastic doll with zero facial expression.
• The entirety of "Catching Cold": The young boy that mail man was talking about? He was the creepy old fat guy. He was trapped in the truck for over thirty years, waiting for someone as obsessed with ice cream as he was to take his place since the ice-cream truck "needs a soul" in order to survive. Imagine putting up with that demented ice-cream jingle for over thirty years. And of course "It's all you can eat!" repeated over and over.
• In "The Red Dress," a poor girl who works at a country club named Jamie steals the titular dress to impress a cute rich guy at the club dance, but she stole it from a blind witch who magically stalks her warning her that she'll pay for stealing from her. In the end, the witch gets compensation by ripping out Jamie's eyes to steal her sight and giving the girl her blind dead eyes in return, with the story ending as Jamie screams in horror and the witch placing the protagonist's glasses in her store cabinet as a trophy.
• In "Alien Candy", the main character has one of his pinky toes bitten off and the ending is rather nightmarish, with the aliens being killed and mistaken for chicken nugget meat… which the hero and his friend eat for school lunch.
• "Fear Never Knocks" - take your pick: the rabid dog, the hideous maniac lady in the closet, or Fear himself.
• In "Afraid of Clowns", the dream scene where the clown cuts off his hand, even though it was a dream and the hand looked like a cake when it was cut into. And the end, in which the boy's family reveals that they're all clowns and the whole circus act is his rite of passage into becoming a man. Usually in stories like "Vampire Breath," the kid simply accepts the fact and likes that he'll be a vampire when he hits puberty, but in this story, the boy is coulrophobic and absolutely hates the idea of becoming what he fears most.
• How about "Scary Mary"? Mary in the mirror, the masks, The Faceless Girls and Scary Mary's face were all terrifying. There's also something very disturbing about being so obsessed with beauty that you're oblivious to burning to death.
• In "Headshot," Cassandra Hobbs is the Devil—tempting her clients into unknowingly selling their souls to her so they can be "the most famous face on the planet," after which she steals their faces (causing Facial Horror in the process) and hangs their headshots on a wall. However, she didn't really do anything to turn Gracie Wild into the episode's Villain Protagonist. Gracie sassily lied to her mother about Lexi tutoring her. Gracie convinced Dylan to help her cheat on her midterm math test and let him get suspended. Gracie caused Flynn to be hospitalized by making sure she got a smoothie with Red Dye 3, which made her skin break out in boils. Gracie effectively told Lexi that she was a jealous butterface. All Cassandra did was make an offer to Gracie and then subtly persuade her to show her true colors. It makes you wonder just how cutthroat and vain anyone's so-called "friends" could really be.
  • There’s also the Jump Scare where Lexi confronts Cassandra, asking her who she really is. Cassandra’s response is to irritably ask “Haven’t you figured that out yet?” before roaring at Lexi with a Nightmare Face.
• John's Painful Transformation into a tick monster in "Creature Feature". Especially bad is one of the scenes leading up to the transformation, where John finds that he has something growing out of his fingernail. He tries pulling on it, and his whole nail just slides right off.
• At the end of "Brush With Madness" it's revealed that the entire episode was a comic written by an eccentric graphic novelist named Allan Miller who was upset over having an obsessive fan, so he decided to get rid of him — and the fan's friend who didn't do anything to Allan Miller (and even tried to convince her comic book geek friend to return the brushes) — by having the work run through a paper shredder. The episode ends with the two screaming for help as the scene turns into a black and white sketch and gets sliced into ribbons. Possibly mitigated by the implication that these aren't the real fan and his friend, who would only actually have been present in the first scene of the episode, just comic versions of them. Although the fact that the comic versions of them still seem to have sentience within their world and have to face up to a Tomato in the Mirror before dying isn't much better.
  • Compared to previous shows dealing with living-comic villains(ex.the Ghastly Grinner or the Masked Mutant), there is nothing campy, funny, or even cool about the Mad Artist whatsoever. He's played as a normal looking man stalking the protagonists, and the effect is shudder-inducing. Oh, and the episode ends with him about to gruesomely murder them with a circular saw.
• "Sick": The idea of a little boy trapped with an unseen Eldritch Abomination, and the government being willing to sacrifice him and gas his whole house just to kill it. And the final scene where the boy wakes up and thinks it was All Just a Dream... Until the morning-news show hosts come back suddenly on TV (again) and tell him that—nope, this is not a dream and the government really is gonna explode his whole house and everyone in it. The last thing the boy sees and hears before getting killed is a bright white light and a loud flat-line noise.
  • Easily one of the most unsettling parts of that episode is when Alex is watching the television and the newscaster switches from casual banter to speaking to Alex without missing a beat. It's Mood Whiplash at its most chilling.
    Alex: (is busy barricading his door; trying to move his large dresser)
    Male Host: Mmm hmm, and then it's off to France, where a large children's choir- Alex, that's not a good idea.
• Sir Maestro in "Long Live Rock and Roll", otherwise known as Satan. He makes deals with up-and-coming musicians to give them fame and fortune, but in exchange they die young and he takes their souls. The climax involves the protagonist having a battle of the bands against him for his friends’ souls, during which all of their eyes glow supernaturally.
• "Mascot", which has Willie trying to get rid of the school's old mascot Big Yellow, and somewhere down the line wonders who's under the costume. There's no one under the costume, because the costume is alive and also eats Willie. It also appears that the people inside the costume either don't die or at least aren't digested immediately after they're eaten.
• "Scarecrow" has the most messed up ending ever (next to the twist endings for "Uncle Howee," "The Girl in the Painting," and "My Old House"), in which a scarecrow — who turns out to be the man who sold the scarecrow to Jenny and her brother — rids the world of everyone and everything in the world, except for Jenny's brother. The scarecrow man tells Jenny's brother that he was spared so that way he can join him in watching the world come to an end. In the original ending, the brother sets fire to the scarecrow and walks away. In an alternate ending, the brother is turned into a scarecrow.
• "The Perfect Brother" Matt and Josh are brothers, very nice brothers — but Matt seems too perfect and their parents are always complaining about their grades and not being perfect. Josh sees Matt's legs 'taken away' by the facility as he's a non-functioning robot. He escapes from the robot facility and the staff take a protesting Josh home to his own parents. It soon turns out that Josh is the only human in their family and that his friend was fake. It isn't long before Josh's robotic parents declare him defective and 'just an experiment' as they toss him in a crate (presumably headed to the same facility to be turned into a robot).
• "The Cast": Take your pick: the revelation that the Cat-Lady cursed Lex into making his cast into a rats' nest for her pet cats, Lex later sawing his own cast off- and his arm, according to paramedics- just to get the cast off, the rats afterwards appearing in the ambulance, or the fact that, even though Lex confessed that he was the one who threw eggs at the cat lady's house, he's still haunted by those rats. In the end, we don't really know whether the Cat-Lady really did curse Lex or the guilt is making him go crazy.
• "Red Eye": A little girl named Georgia has been getting pictures from her father who's doing work abroad. Eventually, a shadowy, demonic figure called an Alp begins appearing in the background of each photo, steadily getting closer (and closer) to her father. Every time the Alp appears in general makes a person feel afraid of their own shadow. Special mention should go to all the times where the Alp's shadow form appears right behind Georgia, ready to reach out and grab her with its claws. As Georgia gets more and more scared, and her mother refuses to listen to her concerns, she's worried that the monster followed her father home. The truth, revealed in the last second of the episode is far worse:
  Georgia's Dad: Daddy's not here.
  • What's worse, that's the final scene of this episode. The screen blacks out as we hear Georgia's screams. According to The Other Wiki, an Alp is related to the Incubus; a male demon known to seduce women and break into their homes to rape and kill their targets when they least suspect. With the ending showing the Alp cornering Georgia in the dark of night alone with no indication of where her mother is and the fact that he's been trying to get his hands on Georgia all day only adds more nightmares and unpleasant ideas.
• The villain in Girl in the Painting; it's a dragon — or some kind of green reptilian creature — that basically holds the young girl and her mother hostage, and they have to lure people from the real world into the painting itself so they can feed the beast and not end up as dinner themselves!
• "Checking Out": A family on vacation stop by this really fancy hotel run by a cult that brainwashes parents into forgetting that they have children and sacrifice the children by tossing them into a room with a white void in it hidden behind a large painting of the hotel's founder. The story itself is a more twisted version of the first episode of The Nightmare Room episode "Don't Forget Me." The good news is the family came out alive and defeated the cult. The bad news: all of the kids who have been sacrificed in years' past pretty much died with the hotel.
• The Director's Cut of Spaceman. Whereas Aaron was sympathetic to the woman trying to cling to the memories of her deceased, space-loving son in the original version, the Director's Cut had him realize that the woman was insane, but before he can do anything about it, she locks him in with her son's corpse and Aaron is forced to play "Spaceman" with the dead boy forever.
• "Terrible Love": Maggie having a tarantula crawling over her face, and Brendon's mental break when Maggie confesses that Cupid hit him with two love arrows (which Cupid ethically can't do, as the chemicals in the love arrows drive whoever's been hit into a love-induced insanity, but does anyway because he's a god and he's bound by ancient law to do whatever mortals say, even if it means their downfall) and that it's driving him crazy. What's even scarier is the fact that there are people out there who really do go insane in the name of passion.
• From Dead Bodies - Jake Skinner, you belong to me now!! - and the curse the Grim Reaper puts on Jake, causes him to decompose. During the climax, half his face is rotted away. Also, Jake's attempts on Anna's life. As if that's not scary enough, the way he talks comes off as a blatant abusive boyfriend vibe, if not a flat-out rapist, making him one of the scariest villains this show has ever had.
  Come on babe, I just need you to do one thing for me.
• From Uncle Howee, Uncle Howee transforms Jared into a full body marionette who is introduced as a "new friend" on the show, all while Cynthia, his sister, giggles at the new edition to her favorite TV show. Consider the mother—who was just gone to do work and has no idea what was happening at the time—it makes you wonder the full extent of Uncle Howee's powers. Also, the fact that we don't know who or what Uncle Howee is (a demon, a Reality Warper, a living cartoon character, the ghost of a long-dead children's entertainer whose spirit lives on because his show has been rerunning for years and the love and devotion of kids who watch his show keep his spirit alive, or an ordinary human with extraordinary powers are the most common conclusions to draw). All we know is that he has omnipotent powers, can interact with viewers, can slip between the TV world and the real world, can appear in many places at once, and turn people into characters that would be at home on his show. The fact that the episode ends with Cynthia cheerfully pointing out that Jared's now starring in her favorite show and her laughing in glee while the mother looks on at the screen very shocked.
• The 1952 doctors planning on amputating Sean's foot all because they think he's a boy named Martin in "I'm Not Martin."
• The end of "My Old House," which is in the same vein as "The Girl in the Painting" and "Uncle Howee" in that the main character gets sucked into another dimension and will never escape. In this episode, the house comes to life and sucks Alice inside of it when she realizes that she shouldn't have left her family in favor of the house... Now she lives forever as an facial imprint on the wall, which is discovered by a new girl moving into the same house. Alice's Nightmare Face was the creepiest part, especially upon realizing that the House is forcing her to smile and owns her forever. Even worse, after Alice's face is seen in the wall by a new girl moving into the house, she turns to see the house smiling at her and it speaks: "WELCOME."
  "Mom!"
  • How about this? Before the reveal, the new girl's mother finds Alice's teeth in the fireplace!
• The title character in "Mrs. Worthington" certainly qualifies. A prime example of a Babysitter from Hell and Psycho for Hire, she's a prim, proper older woman who dresses in Victorian-era clothing and insists on proper manners... and she has no problem enforcing those manners with voodoo dolls, scorpions, black magic, and tools including knives, highly lethal poison, a bear trap, and a badly rusted tooth-pulling device. As is the case with Uncle Howee and Big Yellow, the viewer has no idea where she comes from or how her powers work, though it is implied (if not outright stated) that she was willed to life by a boy named Nate, who drew her as an outlet for his frustrations with his bullying older sister Molly. At the end of the episode, Mrs. Worthington starts threatening Nate's mother for ignoring Molly's teasing, and, when Nate tries to stand up to her, comes within an inch of cutting out his tongue. Thankfully, Nate destroys her by ripping up his drawing of her... but The Stinger reveals that her hand survived, and is redrawing the picture. Brrr. Mrs. Worthington's (Margot Kidder) ability to remain completely calm while discussing horrific Cold-Blooded Torture adds to the creep factor. She's either totally placid or, even worse, barely contained in her glee at imagining inflicting massive physical harm on others. Nate's own behavior has traces of The Sociopath as well; all of Mrs. Worthington's punishments and tools come from his own drawings of things he'd like to do to his sister (including punishments that didn't come true in the episode, like locking Molly in a closet filled with spiders, shoving a jack-o-lantern on her head, and catching her leg in a bear trap). He even hides those particular drawings, as if he knows he shouldn't let his mother see them. Luckily for Molly, the second half of the episode largely centers on realizing that he went too far in his desire for revenge.
• The ending of Return of the Pumpkinheads: "Our children..."
  • There was also the Creepy Child dressed in a skeleton costume, who lives next door. He tells the protagonists the story of the Pumpkinheads and what's happened since the prior episode. With Palmer dead, the Pumpkinheads still lurk around the farm and (according to the kid) occasionally scratch at his window trying to get in. It gets worse later that night when the kid's mother comes looking for him. She finds her son off-screen and asks what he's wearing on his head, only to then let out a horrific scream...
• The ending of "Lotsa Luck" has Greg losing his soul to Seamus, with the last shot showing Seamus lunging at him to rip out his soul by force. What's worse is that the episode implies that Seamus planned this out in his favor all along. So he went out of his way to dedicate his life to making sure that Greg's soul would be his no matter how things would play out by purposely giving the guy a false sense of reassurance just to knock him down in a cruel way For the Evulz. However, the worst part is the reason why Seamus got Greg's soul. Greg's great grandfather, the man who became famous for outsmarting the leprechaun, didn't outsmart him at all. All he did was save his own hide by letting Seamus claim the soul of his next male descendant. Greg was just unlucky enough to be born a boy.
  Seamus: So, then, I’ll just be taking your soul… NOOOOOOW!
• While the ending of "Argh V" is mostly a Tear Jerker, several moments are also extremely creepy, including the Applebaum children suddenly resembling corpses and the Jump Scare that occurs when the camera cuts back to Mr. Applebaum. But the creepiest part of all is the voice of Sam's father as he is revealed to be a zombie. "Loosen up, Sam...Enjoy the ride..."
• Melvin's family slowly turning into mindless, fungal mutants in "Spores." And Melvin would have been spared if the creepy park ranger didn't capture him and blow spore clouds in his face...
• As cheesy as it sounds, "Pool Shark" has a pool boy with a phobia of sharks named Kai seeing a shark demon appearing in the local swimming pool, questioning his own sanity over whether or not it's really there. When he tells this to his cousin, he tells him a legend about a shark demon named Nanaue, who has the power to turn human and adapt to alternative waters, making Kai realize that the shark that traumatized him as a child has followed him from his home state Hawaii to his new home. Forcing Kai to confront what's essentially a Were-shark.
• Intruders. If there's any lesson to be learned here, it's that you do NOT piss off The Fair Folk. These aren't your usual, Tinkerbell-esque, cutesy fairies, either; these fairies are more in line with creatures like Maleficent. Turn down their offer, or even worse, come at them with Cold Iron, and they will summon whole legions of their kind to descend upon your house, perfectly willing to wipe out your family.
• The fact that it is never explained why Mangler is alive in "Near Mint Condition". At least with things like Slappy and Lily D, we knew why they were alive. However, with Mangler, we know exactly jack.
• "The Most Evil Sorcerer": Grizelda establishes herself as an even worse mentor for Ned when she gouges out his eyes completely onscreen and places them in a glass jar as a trophy. What's worse is that his eyes are still working just fine while removed from his body. Earlier in the episode, Sara had her tongue ripped out by her master so he could torture her for information on her whereabouts. Luckily, she got it back without any physical damage, but the mental scars are still there. The end of the episode reveals that Grizelda is still alive and well in the present day, still holding a grudge against humanity.
• "Lights Out" has a group of kids exploring a haunted mental asylum to film ghosts, only to get trapped inside of said hospital with a Psycho Psychologist ghost running around to hunt down victims to torture in his illegal experiments. The ending has Teddy captured by Dr. Sturgess and tortured into insanity, repeating "lights out" over and over again. However, a group of kids watching their video online think that they faked the ghost encounters and decide to go to the mental asylum themselves to prove that ghosts aren't real, very likely repeating the exact same horrors that just occurred in the episode.
• "Flight" closes out with the Grim Reaper saying that she will see Josh "without a doubt." We don't know if this was just a dark joke about how death eventually comes for everyone or if the kid actually has a short life expectancy. Given the themes of the episode, it's almost certainly the former.
• The credits theme is nightmarish.
• "Wrong Number" has the scene where a large spider appears on a phone out of nowhere, as well as the ending, where the ghost of the elderly woman appears in physical form and has increasingly large spiders attack the girls before capturing one in a cell phone and texting it to her granddaughter, who deletes it, erasing the girl from existence.

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