Are You Afraid Of The Dark? Is Now A Spooky Podcast For Kids

Growing up in the ‘90s was a magical time, and there was little we looked forward to more than Nickelodeon’s Saturday Night lineup, aka SNICK. Ren & Stimpy! Clarissa Explains It All! All That! But our favorite show was the tween-friendly horror series Are You Afraid of the Dark? And now, a whole new generation can get in on the scary fun. Submitted for the appproval of the Midnight Society, I call this story: The Tale of Are You Afraid of The Dark? The Official Podcast.

Presented by Audible and Nickelodeon, the new Audible Original is inspired by the beloved anthology series and will release on Thursday, Sept. 28 — just in time for Halloween season — exclusively on Audible. The series will follow a new generation of Midnight Society members, who have picked up the torch (or the match, if you will) from the original cast. But while we may not be regaled by the likes of Gary, Kiki, Tucker, and Betty Ann, the new podcast will offer up all the tales of haunted houses, graveyards, monsters, and science experiments gone awry you’d expect from Are You Afraid of the Dark.

The limited series will offer six episodes of spine-tingling tales of terror: The Tale of the Last Hide and Seek; The Tale of the Haunted Holiday; The Tale of the Too Cool Curse (a two-parter!); The Tale of the Doomed Toyheads; and The Tale of the Ghastly Gourmet.

The original television series aired on Nickelodeon from 1992 to 1996 and was followed by two revivals, one from 1999 to 2000 and a second from 2019 to 2022. It was a perfect introduction to horror for young viewers —the stories were scary without being too scary and mostly had happy endings. (Also Ryan Gosling and Gilbert Gottfried were in that one episode as a teasing older brother and supernatural bureaucrat respectively, which is something everyone can enjoy.) For Millennial parents who grew up getting chills from the original series, we can’t wait to share it with our kids and set in motion the next generation of spooky thrill-seekers.

You can start listening to The Tale of Are You Afraid of The Dark? The Official Podcast on Audible starting on Sept. 28.