1990s kids anthology shows Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? always get compared, but which did its job of scaring the audience better? Despite most horror films being rated R, and most horror TV shows being aimed at adults, that doesn't mean horror fans can't develop their taste for the macabre at a young age. In fact, a taste for terror often starts to appear when a budding horror fan is still in the single digits.
Thankfully, there exists a subset of horror designed for kids, which features monsters, scares, and creepy happenings without all the gore and nudity that parents probably won't be inclined to let them see. For those growing up in the 1990s, two shows stood at the top of the pack when it came to televised frights: Nickelodeon's Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which premiered in 1992, and FOX's Goosebumps, which premiered in 1995, and was based on the best-selling book series by author R.L. Stine.
The question of which series is better between Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Goosebumps has raged for decades, even as newer generations of fans discover both shows. However, while "better" can sometimes be hard to determine, perhaps the more specific question to answer is which show was (and is) scarier?
If this were a competition between the Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark? for title of scariest kids horror, it would probably be a closer match. However, one side effect of being on FOX and part of the FOX Kids line-up - which sought a slightly younger target audience than the Saturday night SNICK block that Are You Afraid of the Dark? aired during - was tighter reigns on content. While the Goosebumps TV series certainly had some cool monsters and worthwhile scares, it often wasn't allowed to go quite as dark as Stine's books sometimes got, especially with the twist endings. Several book conclusions were changed to be less bleak when adapted for TV.
Are You Afraid of the Dark?, meanwhile, got away with some villains and imagery that was downright upsetting, at least to a child audience. In a few select instances, the show's creations can even manage to creep out adult fans watching out of nostalgia, such as with the above pictured Ghastly Grinner, the ancient vampire in "The Tale of the Night Shift," and the giant off-putting doll that appears in "The Tale of the Dark Music". Realistically, neither one of these shows should be where an adult goes for frights, but the fact that Are You Afraid of the Dark? could possibly at least unsettle an adult scores it bonus points.
Circling back around to the subject of twist endings, both Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? employ them in about every episode, and many are unhappy. Overall though, Are You Afraid of the Dark's twists tend to be meaner, and carry a bit more edge. Being shows designed for kids, either series can largely be seen as silly in hindsight, but Are You Afraid of the Dark? tended to feature a lot more death (albeit sometimes undoing them later), and overall darker subject matter. With that said, Are You Afraid of the Dark? is definitely the scarier show, for both kids and adults, but Goosebumps remains lots of fun.
