Not me! I swear! (And you can’t see whether or not I have my fingers crossed.)

If you’ve been here for a while, you know that I love a good ghost story. But I confess, I do feel a little disconcerted in the dark. I can’t sleep in a totally dark room. I don’t like walking alone at night, despite living in a very safe (and thankfully, relatively well-lit) village. I love night time, when everything’s quiet and it feels like you’ve got the world to yourself. But I’m just not a big fan of the dark.

Unless we’re talking 90s TV.

90s kids – know where I’m going?

One of my favorite shows growing up was called Are You Afraid of the Dark? It featured a cast of kids who came together around a campfire every week to tell spooky stories. And guys, some of the episodes were genuinely, and still are surprisingly, scary. I loved it. And I’ve been revisiting it lately in my downtime. I still love it, and despite the obvious 90s fashions (bright colors! plaid! baggy jeans!), it actually holds up pretty well! (If you want to check it out, it’s streaming on Paramount+.)

On top of that, watching some of the episodes today, I feel like it explains a lot about the adult I’ve become. I love old houses. I love antiques. I love creepy stories. I love telling them around the fire in my back garden.

I can’t walk into a magic shop – or really any curiosity shop – without hearing (in my head) “That’s Sard-O! No mister. Accent on the DO.” Isn’t that funny? These things we love when we’re children, they never really leave us. And to tell you the truth, I don’t think I’ve ever really, completely grown up.

I still love cartoons and kids’ books. I absolutely will look for fairies in the meadow on a foggy morning. I even laugh at fart jokes. (Not always. They have to be good fart jokes, if such a thing exists.) And yes, despite knowing that there’s nothing there that isn’t there in the light, I am still afraid of the dark. It’s okay. Everyone’s afraid of something.

And frankly, I hope I never lose my sense of silliness. I hope I always get a little shiver thinking about what might be lurking behind me in a dark hallway. I hope I continue, all my life, to seek out magic.

So, yeah, I’ve put it out there now: Who’s afraid of the dark? Me. It’s me. Hi. What about you?