FEAR
How MTV’s Short-Lived Paranormal Series Left A Lasting Impression
This week I wanted to talk about fear and its benefits. But ya know what? The internet is full of those kind of articles and as I sit to write this post, I’m just not feeling it anymore. Don’t worry though, I’m still about to go off about fear….MTV’s FEAR that is.
If you’re unfamiliar, MTV’s FEAR is, if you ask me, a pioneer of paranormal and ghost hunting television. Premiering in September 2000, each episode of FEAR took place over two nights in an allegedly haunted location where a group of five or six participants would be dropped off, totally alone (no camera crew, no production, nobody,) and left to investigate.
The participants stay in a “safe house” or a well lit room with no reported hauntings where they each choose a color at random and start up the computer (remember this is 2000 so it’s a thicc boi!) where a program will give them info about their location and randomly assign dares to members of the group. Usually, one or two people gear up with a body camera, flashlight, and headset to head out into the dark to perform their tasks while a member still in the safe house will be assigned the duty of navigating for the task-doers and letting them know what they’ll need to perform. Tasks range from simply hanging out quietly in a place said to have a lot of paranormal activity to re-enacting supposed deaths or holding a seance. Participants are allowed to quit at anytime but if they do, they lose their chance at $5,000, which is awarded at the end of the second night’s investigation to all remaining players.
I was 11 years old when FEAR premiered and I remember watching that first episode with my mom. It was set in the West Virginia Penitentiary located in Moundsville, WV (only a 90 minute ride from my house.) The relative proximity to me made it that much scarier, it almost felt like this potentially haunted prison was in my own backyard. It didn’t take long to get hooked. The stories of inmate riots and murders within the walls of the prison had my pre-teen blood pressure on the rise, so when the participants started getting their dares to go off into several places throughout the prison known for allegedly high haunted activity, I was primed for ultimate frights.
That first episode had everything you need to to make the perfect paranormal reality pilot, we got a man who 100% punked out and cheated his first dare (but couldn’t get called out on it due to the lack of on scene production,) one of the funniest moments in the show’s history when my dude Ryan lost.his.mind when he had to pull a sheet off of an electric chair, and two participants quit outright in the middle of their dares cause they were too scared to finish. It was awesome!
After that original episode aired, I couldn’t wait until the next and, luckily, MTV delivered 15 more before ultimately cancelling FEAR not due to a lack of interest, it was actually MTV’s second highest rated show at the time according to Wikipedia, but because it cost too much to produce each episode. The cancellation was a devastating loss for spooky television and creepy kids everywhere.
Though it was short-lived, 20 years later and I’m still talking about FEAR. But, why? Maybe because it was a show like nothing I had ever seen before when it first premiered. This was a show that put regular people into “haunted” locations and just let things happen. The freak outs didn’t feel forced or faked, these college kids seemed genuinely fearful. Paranormal investigation shows of today can’t really say the same.
Maybe because it was something my mom and I bonded over watching and eventually it was the reason she and I took a random trip down to Moundsville, several years after watching the pilot episode, to do a day tour of the West Virginia Penitentiary (it was still pretty unsettling even in the daylight.)
Maybe because when Jonathan and I first started dating, I brought it up at one point and we spent a weekend binging all of the episodes because Youtube is a magical place. We even played an instrumental version of the theme song, Godsmack’s “Voodoo,” at our wedding because we thought it was funny and FEAR was something we both loved.
MTV’s FEAR cemented itself into my being in a way few shows have and I don’t think I’m alone. Matt Barone and Julia Pimentel included it in their 2018 article for Complex documenting the scariest shows of all time citing similar reasons for its status as a genuine fright fest. It quickly arrived and departed in my life at a pivotal time of my growing up and left a lasting impression. We wouldn’t have shows like Ghost Adventures or Ghost Hunters had FEAR never existed. If MTV ever wanted to bring FEAR back, I would still be glued to my couch for every episode, though I doubt it would capture that same magic as those original seasons did. MTV is too much about the drama and pretty people now and don’t often let things get a little gritty in the same way they once did.
If you’re interested in reading more about FEAR, check out Jake Rossen’s 2018 Mental Floss article, “Alone in the Dark: An Oral History of MTV’s FEAR,” an in-depth discussion of the show with former cast and crew. It’s long but it’s a great read that goes into the details of how the show came to be.
You can also watch a playlist of all 16 episodes of FEAR on Youtube….not a bad plan for the weekend before Halloween!
What are your memories of MTV’s FEAR? Did this show leave a lasting impression on you the way it did me? Tell me all about that and your favorite episodes in the comments below!