Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Are You Afraid of the Dark? is a television show that revolves around a group of teenagers who referred to themselves as "The Midnight Society". Every week, at a secret location in the woods, one member would tell a scary story to the group. The actual story, rather than the telling, was displayed to the television viewer. The story was shown between the group's arrival at the site and their departure. Each storyteller would begin their story by saying "Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this story..." at which point they would toss out a handful of regular sugar[1](which the characters referred to as "midnight dust") from a leather pouch into a campfire to heighten the flames and produce an eerie white smoke. The storyteller would continue by announcing its title (The Tale of...).

The themes of the stories usually revolves around a variety of paranormal phenomena, such as ghosts, goblins, magic, Dragons, haunted houses, magical curses, aliens, witches and the like coming into contact with normal teenagers. Usually, the episodes were either filmed in the woods, in abandoned houses, or in public places like schools or libraries.