10 Surprising Twist Endings (In TV Shows You Wouldn’t Expect)
8. Are You Afraid Of The Dark? - He Was Dead All Along
In the 1990s, if young people needed a good scare, the place to go was Are You Afraid Of the Dark? (Kids who need a scare nowadays need only look at the reality that surrounds them).
Are You Afraid Of the Dark? revolved around "The Midnight Society", a group of teenagers who would meet around the campfire each week to tell scary stories. One such episode was The Tale of the Dream Girl which told the story of brother and sister, Johnny and Erica.
They're normal kids who go to school and work a bowling alley but things get weird when he starts seeing the ghost of a girl. Johnny later finds out that he is a ghost too. He died in the same accident as the ghost girl, his sister just chose to let him believe that he's still alive.
Why it's surprising: This was a show that delivered monsters and cheesy horror stories - not clever twists! It was also a show for children, a genre which one doesn't normally associate with unpredictable storytelling.
Furthermore, this episode came five years before The Sixth Sense. 1990s kids hadn't yet been exposed to the "they were dead the whole time" trope. The then-innovative concept would've blown their developing minds.