Recap / The Haunting Hour

The Haunting Hour was a Canadian-American half-hour horror anthology series adapted from R.L. Stine's The Haunting Hour and The Nightmare Hour anthology books (though most of the episodes aren't based on either of them and play out as Goosebumps stories with a dark side to them^note "Scarecrow," "Brush With Madness," and "My Imaginary Friend" are pretty much Darker and Edgier takes on "The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight," "Attack of the Mutant" and "My Best Friend is Invisible" respectively or are based on legends and myths^note "The Weeping Woman," "Red Eye," "A Creature Was Stirring," "Pool Shark," "Terrible Love," "Argh V," and "Lotsa Luck" or classic literature^note "Headshot" and "Bad Feng Shui" are based on The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Joy Luck Club, respectively). The series started on October 29, 2010 with the two-part episode, "Really You," but the actual series started on Christmas (December 25) of 2010 with "A Creature Was Stirring." Because of The Hub's transformation into Discovery Family, the show has been taken off the channel's schedule and will not have any more new episodes. The last episode aired on November 29, 2014 with the Christmas episode "Goodwill Toward Men."

Seasons one and two are currently available on Netflix.

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Pilot/Sneak Peek

1. "Really You": Spoiled brat Lily gets her own life-sized doll from the "Really You" life-sized doll company and names it, "Lily D.," but when her mom starts to care for the doll more than her own daughter, the doll begins making Lily out to be the villain and turns her into plastic.

Season One

1. "A Creature Was Stirring": All Timmy wants for Christmas is for his soon-to-be-divorced parents to stop fighting and come together — and a demonic present known as the Krampus may be the solution to the problem.
2. "The Dead Body": Will meets a new boy named Jake Skinner, who helps him fight back against some bullies, but Will soon learns that Jake isn't exactly a new student...or a living one.
3. "Nightmare Inn": Following her father's mysterious disappearance, a girl named Jillian stays with her mother at an inn run by werewolves.
4. "The Red Dress": A teenage country club worker named Jamie accidentally makes off with a beautiful red dress she finds at a vintage shop run by a blind woman with a strange payment plan for those who steal her merchandise.
5. "Ghostly Stare": Lauren and Mark visit a cemetery that's about to be moved to make room for a mini-mall — and they learn that it's not a good idea to disturb the dead.
6. "The Walls": Jeffrey and his family's new house may still have a visitor in it — one that lives in the walls and may have murdered its previous owner.
7. "Game Over": Video gamers Kelly "Kell-Raiser" and his friend, Gooch, buy a game called "Zee Town" that comes to life and pits players against each other in a Zombie Apocalypse.
8. "Alien Candy": Walt is a nerd obsessed with aliens, so naturally, he has few friends and is a constant target for the bullies at his school. That all changes when he befriends Greg and Bonnie, two students who share his belief in aliens and want him to join their club — so they can put him on the menu for real aliens.
9. "Fear Never Knocks": Jenny and Jack, the grandchildren of a renowned psychiatrist, play around with an ancient recording device that has the power to bring people's fears to life — and summons a man known as Fear incarnate, who reveals an embarrassing truth about Jenny and Jack's grandfather.
10. "Best Friend Forever" (a.k.a "My Best Dead Friend Forever"): In this, the series' first comedic horror story, Jack Pierce accidentally resurrects a zombie (after using a car battery and jumper cables to get some worms) and decides to keep him as a pet, since a zombie is already dead and Jack's mom won't be mad at him for killing yet another pet — but Jack soon learns that caring for an undead human is just as bad as (and grosser than) caring for an animal — especially when said undead human has an ulterior motive.
11. "The Black Mask": Three troublemakers (Bill, Julie, and Robbie) break in to an old house and find a mask that shows visions of colonial-era kids dying in an accident caused by a repairman, so they set out to break the mask's curse by changing the past.
12. "Afraid of Clowns": Chris' childhood coulrophobia (fear of clowns) is put to the test when the circus comes to town and the clowns begin stalking him. Is Chris just anxious over his upcoming 13th birthday or do the clowns have something sinister in store?
13. "My Sister The Witch": Pete's sister, Alice, comes home from boarding school — and a chain of strange events makes Pete think his sister picked up a new hobby while in boarding school: witchcraft.
14. "Wrong Number": The two meanest girls at school, Steffani and Taylor, use their cell phones to crank call an old Russian woman who dies the next day — and doesn't let a little thing like death keep her from teaching these mean girls a lesson on respecting others.
15. "Catching Cold": A fat kid named Marty becomes obsessed with tracking down a ghostly ice cream truck.
16. "Pool Shark": High school hunk Kai is haunted by images of a shark lurking in the rec center's new pool — but the shark may be the key to Kai finding his long-lost father.
17. "Lights Out": After watching a low-rent paranormal reality show, three kids decide to create their own ghost-hunting show. Their first site: an abandoned mental hospital said to be haunted by an evil surgeon who punished his patients with late-night operations (and continues to do so even after death).
18. "The Perfect Brother": Nobody's perfect, but try telling Josh and Matt's parents that, especially their mother, who only cares about perfection and will settle for nothing less. And when Matt begins acting weird, Josh's mother takes him to a strange warehouse laboratory where there are no boundaries between man and machine. Can Josh save his brother from being scrapped?
19. "Scary Mary": In this two-part finale, a self-conscious girl named Hanna becomes possessed by a mirror ghost named Scary Mary (who once was a vain girl who died in a house fire), who abducts girls from the real world and steals their beauty.

Season Two

1. "Creature Feature": In this two-part season premiere, a classic film addict named John, his friend, Nathan, and John's crush, Lisa, go to an abandoned drive-in theater showing a 1950's B-movie called I Was A Teenage Tick, and John finds himself in the film (without so much as an actor's union card) and fighting a pun-spouting Mad Scientist and the teenage tick he created.
2. "Swarmin' Norman": Geeky bug lover Norman discovers that he has godlike powers over insects and uses his ability to get back at the bullies who push him around — and learns the hard way that absolute power corrupts absolutely, especially when creepy crawlies are concerned.
3. "Flight": A boy on his first plane ride discovers it may be his last, as he's in the middle of a battle between a millionaire playboy who refuses to accept that he's dead and an old woman who may be The Grim Reaper.
4. "Pumpkinhead": Despite the recent incidents of kids vanishing, three siblings visit the pumpkin patch of a crazed farmer who may be behind the disappearances on Halloween.
5. "Brush With Madness": Corey meets his favorite graphic novelist, Alan Miller, at a comic book convention, but when Miller gets mad over Corey's obsessive questions, Corey steals the brushes Miller left behind, and sets out to create his own graphic novel, but the brushes hold a power that may be bringing a dangerous figure to life.
6. "Sick": Reality and imagination get very blurred in this tale of a sick boy named Alex, who is forced to stay home and uncovers a government plot to have his home obliterated to get rid of an alien creature that may have infected him. Is Alex's fever getting to him or is he doomed?
7. "Big Yellow": Willie and Drake hate their school mascot, Big Yellow (a freaky, yellow nondescript monster), and decide to replace him with something more traditional (like a gray wolf). But after the gray wolf mascot disappears, Willie and Drake must break into the school after hours to find him — and soon discover what happened to the wolf and what Big Yellow truly is.
8. "Bad Feng Shui": It's The Joy Luck Club as envisioned by R.L. Stine when a Chinese girl named Jessica and her mother's strained relationship worsens when Jessica rearranges the feng shui in her room and conjures up demons who possess her mother.
9. "The Hole": In this homage to The Amityville Horror (with a little bit of Paranormal Activity thrown in for good measure), a new family discover a strange hole in the yard that may have been behind the deaths of the family who once lived in their new house.
10. "Scarecrow": Two farmers' kids, Jenny and Bobby, are having trouble removing the crows from their corn crops, so they buy a scarecrow from a mysterious vendor — who's planning on ridding the world of all life.^note the first of two episodes to have an alternate ending. The premiere episode ended with Bobby striking a match, burning the salesman after he reverts to a scarecrow, and walking away into an empty world. Most reruns of this episode air a different ending, in which Bobby and the salesman turn back into scarecrows and are the only things left in an empty world. The original ending with Bobby burning the scarecrow is available on some video websites and was available on Xfinity's On-Demand program for a limited time.
11. "Dreamcatcher": Girls at a summer camp are too scared to sleep, thanks to a recurring shared nightmare about a mutant spider who traps people in their dreams.
12. "The Most Evil Sorcerer": Another two-part episode, in which two teens (Ned and Sara) in a medieval English town set out to dethrone a corrupt sorcerer, and end up battling the sorceress who taught the deposed sorcerer everything he once knew.
13. "Stage Fright": A high school drama club is doing a musical play based on Hansel and Gretel, but a chain of strange events all point to a witch who may be cursing the production.
14. "Night of the Mummy": A rare Egyptian exhibit comes to town, and Seth takes a job as a museum volunteer. However, the more Seth becomes drawn to the exhibit, the more he finds out that he may be connected to the Boy Pharaoh (in more ways than one).
15. "Headshot": In this homage to/modern-day retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray, a teen ice cream shop worker named Gracie Wilde leaps at the chance to enter Teen Teen'' magazine's Prettiest Face contest, but the excitement of the contest and Cassandra's coaching are turning Gracie into a cutthroat diva who will do anything to win — even if it means giving up her soul.
16. "The Return of Lilly D.": In this Sequel Episode to "Really You," a kind-hearted girl named Natalie finds the discarded Lilly D. doll and brings her home to restore her. The dollmaker from the first episode commends Natalie for purifying Lilly D's soul with her goodness...until strange things begin happening around Natalie's house.

Season Three

1. "Grampires": Christopher Lloyd stars in this two-part season premiere about a brother and sister who come to visit their grandfather in a retirement neighborhood where everyone is out for their blood — literally.
2. "The Cast": A dorky kid named Lex gets in trouble for egging an elderly cat lady's house, but gets out of trouble by pinning the blame on the two bullies who pushed him to do it. Despite a broken arm, Lex seems to be in the clear — until his cast begins itching, he sees a skinny tail slithering in and out of the plaster, he hears rat-like squeaking, and the neighborhood cats begin haunting him. And the more Lex sticks to his story, the worse it gets...
3. "The Weeping Woman": A Mexican boy named Chi stays over his friend, Danny's, house, despite Danny's mother being overprotective, bitter, and depressed over her husband not being home — and things get worse when her negative feelings inadvertently bring to life the spirit of a hooded woman known in Hispanic urban legend as "La Llorona" (The Weeping Woman)^note a beautiful woman who killed herself and her children by drowning them and now walks the Earth trying to drown children who have been neglected by their parents.
4. "Intruders": Feeling left out ever since the birth of her baby brother, a girl named Eve runs away to the woods, where a forest fairy named Lyria reveals that Eve is a changeling (a forest fairy adopted by humans) and must kidnap her baby brother in order to return to her true home.
5. "Spaceman": A lonely boy named Aaron (Will Shadley) is given a vintage 1950s toy space helmet from a neighborhood woman who is cleaning out her attic — and ends up hearing a voice from someone — or something — trying to make first contact.^note The second of two episodes to have an alternate ending. In the premiere episode, the episode ended with Aaron volunteering to hang out with the dead boy who has been contacting him through the helmet. The alternate version's ending is similar, only Aaron is forced into hanging out with the dead boy. The alternate version also includes a scene where the boy explains to Aaron over the helmet that he can communicate through the helmet with advanced technology since there are no batteries in it
6. "Red Eye": A girl who gets postcards from her traveling father (who's in Germany on business) discovers a shadowy figure in her father's latest collection of pictures and fears that he may bring it home.
7. "My Imaginary Friend": Shawn's brother, David, is worried that his brother's new friend, Travis, is a bad influence, but what's an older brother to do when his younger brother's best friend is a figment of his imagination?
8. "Poof de Fromage": In this light-hearted (yet very cheesy) episode, Bobby and his family are chosen to house a French exchange student named Jean-Louis, but the exchange student's bizarre behavior and late-night calls to the mothership all point to signs that Jean-Louis is an exchange student from another planet, but is Jean-Louis out to destroy Earthlings or is there a more sinister alien bent on annihilating mankind? And why would it be hiding in Bobby's kitchen pantry?
9. "The Golem"^note another two-part episode: When Jeremy's great-grandmother, Nadia, dies, she leaves Jeremy her ashes and orders to return to her Russian village and spread them, but the villagers (who have been living in fear of the Golem they created to fend off German soldiers in World War II) believe that Jeremy's sister, Bonnie, is Nadia (who looks young because she used witchcraft to keep herself young forever) and plan to have her murdered to keep the Golem from tormenting them.
10. "The Girl in the Painting": Tired of her drab room (which her mother doesn't want to spend money on beautifying, as she's in between jobs), a girl named Becky finds a painting of a girl looking out the window of a Victorian-era bedroom and becomes so enamored with it, she decides to go inside the world of the girl in the painting — only to find that life on the other side isn't as perfect as what's been painted.
11. "Checking Out": On a family trip with their parents, bratty kids Jeremy and Chelsea stumble upon a strange hotel headed by a cult of child-hating adults who have brainwashed their parents into despising them and are planning to have them sacrificed to a white void hidden behind a large painting of the hotel's founder.
12. "Terrible Love": The Cupid mythos gets a dark, yet hilarious R.L. Stine twist in this tale of an insecure girl named Maggie, who takes up Cupid's^note depicted as a middle-aged man in a red and white suit rather than a cherub or Greco-Roman hunk with wings, as those are how Cupid used to look, implying that despite being a god, he does age like a mortal offer to make a boy in class fall in love with her, but when Maggie worries that one Cupid's arrow may not be enough, she asks Cupid for another hit — and Brendon ends up going insane for Maggie.
13. "Séance": Naomi tries to scare her little sister, Carla, by summoning the spirit of an evil man named Cyrus Clayton (a violent sawmill worker who was fired for drinking alcohol on the job and killed his boss before he lost his leg and bled to death) in a fake séance, but the joke's on her and her friends when Carla goes missing and the spirit is let loose in the house.
14. "Detention": A snooty homecoming queen (Kate), a loveable, but dim jock (Halftime), and an apathetic Goth girl (Audrey) are stuck in detention, and when Kate goes missing and strange images and noises begin haunting them, Audrey and Halftime soon realize that their after-school punishment is from a higher power, who wants them to atone for a homecoming voting scandal and a parade accident they caused that claimed their lives.
15. "Funhouse": Bitter and angry over his father abandoning his family and his mother too busy with work to care, a boy named Chad becomes addicted to visiting a traveling funhouse, where he can let out his frustrations with sadistic glee by smashing a model replica of a family arguing at the dinner table, but the more time Chad spends at the funhouse, the meaner and more addicted to the violence he becomes. Is the funhouse turning Chad evil or are his inner demons making a monster out of him?
16. "Worry Dolls": As a souvenir from her traveling parents, Jordanna receives a box of knitted figurines known as "Worry Dolls" that magically fix people's worries — which prove disastrous when the worry dolls' magic does too good a job at fixing frets, like smashing Jordanna's violin, making the live-in nanny disappear, and turning Jordanna's parents from jet-setting business workers into clingy and obsessed stay-at-home parents.
17. "Lovecraft's Woods": Three kids take a shortcut through a haunted patch of woods that trap all of them into a "Groundhog Day" Loop while an unseen ghoul scratches and infects one of them.
18. "Coat Rack Cowboy": After his father creates a coat rack out of the old tree in their backyard, Ethan and his brother, Brett, find themselves back in the days of the Wild West, where an outlaw named Mad Dog McCoy, who was hanged on that same tree for killing the town sheriff, challenges the boy to a showdown at high noon.
19. "Long Live Rock and Roll" (f.k.a "Doom Metal"): Holden is a boy with a garage band, but no talent when it comes to playing lead guitar, so when Sir Maestro, a Keith Richards-esque former rock star^note who left the music business because "they're the real evil..." and they turned him into a bitter, overly-competitive has-been-turned-music shop owner offers him 50% off a golden electric guitar that was the first guitar for such legendary rock stars as Jerry Garcia from The Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, and Kurt Cobain from Nirvana, Holden takes it — only to learn that Sir Maestro wants more than cash for his wares and that Holden's friends have been tempted with similar offers.
20. "Dead Bodies": In this, the highly-anticipated sequel to "The Dead Body" from season one, Jake (now mortal) is being haunted by Will (who is now a ghost) and a Grim Reaper-esque wraith curses Jake to rot. And when Jake has Will's crush, Anna, targeted as his latest victim, Will must muster the energy to not disappear in order to save her.
21. "My Robot": Phillip is a middle school science nerd with a big secret: he has a robot that he ordered online and programmed himself, but the robot turns out to be the one ordering Phillip around^note (to the point that even Phillip's real parents have run away) and Phillip needs his friend Tim's help in destroying it.
22. "Bad Egg": When a batch of mutant eggs from a government biochemistry lab accidentally get shipped to a school for use in an egg-sitting project, an irresponsible boy named Jason (who must pass his egg-sitting project or risk getting shipped to military school by his strict father) discovers the monster inside and must keep his father from knowing that he accidentally broke the egg and keep two government agents posing as pest control workers from taking the monster back.
23. "Toy Train": Logan and his father head to their grandfather's house to clean it out, and Logan discovers a train set and a weird local kid that are connected to a train accident that Logan's father wants to stay buried.
24. "Uncle Howee": Voice actor Tom Kenny guest stars as a loud, energetic kids' show host who escapes the family television after he sees his biggest fan (a girl named Cynthia) being bullied by her apathetic older brother (Jared), who's planning on leaving her home alone while he goes to the movies.

Season Four

1. "I'm Not Martin": It's a tale of mistaken identity, missing limbs, and time travel when a boy named Sean (played by Sean Giambrone, who voices Jeff the square-headed kid on the Cartoon Network show Clarence) is sent to the hospital for a tonsillectomy and finds himself back in 1952, where the staff thinks he's a boy named Martin Charles who needs his rotting foot removed.
2. "Grandpa's Glasses": While visiting his deceased, estranged grandfather's house, Bo discovers his grandfather's glasses, which give him the power to see a demon that may be haunting the house — and uncovers why his mother hates talking about her father.
3. "My Old House": Alice and her family are moving to a new house, but Alice doesn't want to leave — and Alice discovers that the house doesn't want her to leave it...ever again.
4. "Mrs. Worthington": Nate is a young artist who's being bullied by his sister, Molly, so he draws up an evil old woman named Miss Worthington (played by Margot Kidder), who comes over with a bag of sadistic punishments and black magic to set Molly straight.
5. "Return of the Pumpkinheads": In this sequel to season two's "Pumpkinheads," Karen's family move into a broken-down farm that turns out to be the home to Old Man Palmer (who died) and the pumpkinheaded monsters he created (who are still alive and out to create more pumpkinheaded zombies).
6. "Near Mint Condition": Ted is a teenaged geek obsessed with buying vintage toys online, and discovers his habit may be costing him more than what he has in his bank account when he buys Mangler, a rare robotic teddy bear from a Merchandise-Driven 1980s action cartoon (that plays out like a cross between The Care Bears and Transformers) connected with a string of maimings and murders.
7. "Argh V": China Anne McClain (from The Disney Channel's A.N.T Farm) stars as a responsible girl named Sam, whose irresponsible parents' latest impulse buy (an RV) us haunted by the ghost of a family who took an RV trip and never came back alive.
8. "Lotsa Luck": With the help of his Irish mother's family spell book, an unlucky kid named Greg traps a leprechaun named Seamus (who has been after his mother's side of the family ever since her grandfather made a deal with him years ago) and shakes him down for good luck, but learns too late that all that good luck comes at a price — mainly, his life.
9. "Spores": While hiking through the woods of a national park (thanks to his overly-competitive father who wants to beat his office rival's record of hiking), Melvin's family gets picked off one by one by a strange cloud of spores that turns its victims into mindless, fungal mutants.
10. "Goodwill Toward Men": In this, the second Christmas Episode (and the Series Finale), Missy is a rich girl who, despite her parents' and older brother's selfish, elitist view of the world, actually cares about those who are less fortunate than herself (especially their gardener and his son, who were recently fired) — and it gets put to the test when a Christmas tree angel figurine they receive as a present curses Missy and her family to a life where they're the poor and downtrodden while the gardener and his family are wealthy.