The Tale of the Lonely Ghost

Opening Credits: Creepy door with some clouds and smoke. I'm guessing we don't get to the other ones til later on in the seasons.

The Foreplay: Someone's got a crush on Kristen. Who could it be? David, of course! David sneaks up on Kristen who seems to have trouble finding the secret writer's group and sufficiently scares the crap out of her. Why did he scare the shit out of her? Oh because he wanted to give her a birthday present, how thoughtful!

"How did you know it was my birthday next week?" she asks. Because before the invention of Facebook, if you didn't know someone very well, chances were you had no idea what their birthday was. So, how did you know, David? Creeping through her diary? Sniffing her underwear and checking out her calendar? Not surprised. But no time to figure out how our stalker really found out her birthday, it's time for David to tell us his story.

The Story (According to Wikipedia): Laura Bertram (from Ready or Not and Andromeda) plays a girl that is tricked into visiting a house haunted by a lonely, mute girl in search of her mother.

The Story (According to Someone Who Doesn't Want to Fix Up Their Resume): Our story starts off with a very bad pair of pants. Amanda, our Hero, is forced to go spend the summer with her UGHcousin, Beth, who is your run-of-the-mill redheaded bitch.

I don't get the hate towards redheads, by the way. I quite like redheads. They make me smile in times of sorrow and if they happen to live at The Burrow then they're welcome to visit my life whenever.

Right, enough about HPiddy for now, it's time for some AYAOTD commentary.

The chatty aunt who is a real estate agent, because what woman in the 80's/90's isn't, informs us that the house next door is for sale but no one wants to buy it. I think I smell a plot device. Oh, no. It's just the mold forming on Beth's crazy large stuffed animal collection. No, I'm not exactly sure how old these girls are supposed to be, but Beth looks like she is much too old to have so many plushies in her room. I mean, fair enough, I have my fair share and I am nearly twenty years old. But these things are taking over her room. I have a couple on my bed (used mostly as extra padding under my pillows), two in the closet and some random tiny ones on display (I think one of them was a gift anyway). So, I mean, there's a few and then there's too fucking many. And Beth, yours are too fucking many.

Okay, so Beth is a bitch. And why is she a bitch? No idea. Rude to her cousin (which isn't nice, even if she dresses horribly), rude to her mother and rude to her nanny. Who apparently has some sort of disease because Beth informs Amanda that if she is to touch "Nanny" (because she doesn't have a name), she will never touch her stuff again. Poor Nanny. She's just sad and really, working for someone like Beth must be difficult but really, lady. This girl is practically an adult, she doesn't really need a nanny. Which is Beth's entire argument for hating on her. Even the mother hates on Nanny a bit. Saying that she would fire her but she has no where else to go. Good for you, Beth's Mom. That's the way to sainthood.

Alright, so Beth informs Amanda in a bitchy rage that she is not allowed to hang out with her friends unless she (dum dum dummmm) goes into the ~haunted house~ next door. And why is this house haunted? I will break it down for you.

- Family of three
- War time
- Dad gets sick
- Mum goes to heal him
- Child is supposed to go to grandma's
- Random children bully child back into her home
- Random children lock girl in her room
- Mother comes back weeks later to find child dead
- No word on the father or the bullying children

Beth now makes Amanda go inside the house with a flashlight and dares her to go into the little girl's room, claiming the rest of her friends also had to do this. Which, of course, is your standard 1990's lie.

RULE #2 OF THE 1990'S: NO ONE HAS EVER GONE INTO A HAUNTED HOUSE FOR A DARE - IF THEY SAY THEY DID, THEY'RE LYING

Now, Amanda is walking through the dark house and somehow manages to easily find this room. She scares herself silly at her own reflection, probably because she saw how hideous her pants were.

That's the other thing. Most of the girls in this episode looked like they were being dressed by Howard Wolowitz from The Big Bang Theory. And I know this is common 80's/90's fashion, but really kids. Simon Helberg can pull it off. And unless you're Simon Helberg, I suggest you find something less... Howard to wear.

Anyway, she looks at the wall and in backwards handwriting it says "HELP ME". Funny, backwards writing? It couldn't possibly be a reflection, could it? Oh. Oh yes it is, because when she looks back, a creepy ass girl is staring her down as she yells to the Heavens, hoping someone will save her (they don't).

Even the MS is scared for her. Gary, however, calms them down and allows David to finish his story. It seems as though Gary has a sense of calm about him, being the alpha male in the pack of poorly dressed misfits. Perhaps this is why The Weather Network hired him to tell us about partly cloudy Tuesdays in June.

The next morning, it seems as though Amanda has snitched on Beth and now Beth's mom is pissed. "WHY DID YOU WRITE ALL OVER THE WALLS? BLAH BLAH BLAH". Typical mom shit. So, buckets of soap and sponges in hand, Beth and Amanda go to clean up the walls, which are now covered in "HELP ME"s. Really, if Amanda had stopped screaming and just listened to this little girl, maybe the girl wouldn't've gone ape shit and fucked up the walls. Just a thought.

Anyway, so I guess Beth is a bitch again and the little girl doesn't like that, so the mirror in which she lives turns into a reflection of the little girl's room which has more stuffed animals in it than Beth's. Being a greedy whore, Beth falls through the mirror, smitten with the idea of taking a dead girl's toys. And in return, who is Amanda left with? Oh! The dead girl! And she's got something.

Well, while Amanda is huddled against the door in the fetal position, the little girl calmly walks over and gives her a locket. And you know, up until this point, I didn't have much of a complaint in the story's structure. I mean, sure it's cheesy and whatever, but it's been a pretty solid story. Until this part which kinda tweaked me the wrong way. Upon one look, Amanda realizes (still in terror) that the woman in the locket is, in fact, Nanny. And with little time to reason (even for someone who isn't being confronted by a ghost), she automatically deduces that Nanny must have been her mother. Now, I mean, it could be a lot worse, structure-wise. And I understand that the timeslot wouldn't've allowed a logical train of thought, but I don't know. It irked me.

Amanda books it back to her house to find Nanny, who is conveniently moving away that day. Which I also didn't really like but whatever. She tells Nanny that she has to go with her to the old house, Nanny flips out and then Amanda shows her the locket. The locket just happens to be matching the other half of the locket with the little girl's photo in it, which is sort of touching. So, after a lot of pulling on Amanda's part, she gets Nanny inside the little girl's room and the little girl goes and hugs Nanny and takes her by the hand and leads her through the mirror. When the camera pans to the mirror, we see Nanny (in 1940's clothing) playing with the little girl and they both look extremely happy. So cute.

But lol wait, Beth is still stuck in the mirror. After some smoke, somehow Beth's posse of bitches rolls up beside Amanda and they force Beth into promising that she'll be nice. Turns out that Beth was just stuck in the closet after the smoke effect. Which would explain her rather butch, violent behaviour. But that's for another blog.

After the story is done, David reminds Kristen that she has to open his gift. She opens it and it's a locket, exactly like the one in the story David told. Now, I mean, I am all for cuteness in the MS, but I don't think it's particularly cute to give someone a locket after a ghostie in your story was playing around with one? I don't know, it would've creeped me out. "Oh, wow. A locket. Like the one. In your really creepy story. Gee, wow. I guess I'll be a bad parent and make sure my daughter gets locked in her room while I'm gone for weeks. Thanks!"

1990's: Where Art Thou? Favourite 80's/90's staples of the episode.
- Jean vests
- Overall shorts
- Shorts+socks+sneakers
- Haunted houses
- Lockets
- Tapered pants
- Scrunchies
- Beanie Babies

Then and Now: What sucks about this concept is that now, if this were to be on television, there would be this overdramatic moment between the mother and the daughter and it would never be included in a 'scary story'. It would be at the end of some season finale and it would be more of a cop out than anything.

Rating: To be honest, I really liked this story. It's one of the ones that I remembered vividly from when I was a kid. When I was younger, it scared the shit out of me and even now, the little ghost girl didn't sit right with me. Sort of like a demonic Mowgli from The Jungle Book. Maybe it's just little kids in horror settings that creep me out. I've never been a fan. Hmm. Oh well.

For actually being kind of creepy and including the terror that is children in horror features? 4.5/5