History Recap / AreYouAfraidOfTheDarkSeason3TheTaleOfWatchersWoods

By the fire, Betty Anne and Sam, whose head is hidden by a hessian sack, await the others. As they arrive, thunder rumbles. Before a storm erupts, Betty Anne helps up Sam, and removes the bag. Sam shakes free her hair, and smiles hello. An enamoured Frank impudently submits his appreciation, and is cautioned against over-familiarity. A similarly entranced Gary quickly restrains his amorousness. As Betty Anne readies the Midnight Dust, Sam introduces her story: a tale befitting the setting, it recalls traditional legend of inhabitation by forests of otherworldly beings. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls it “The Tale of Watcher’s Woods.”

At Camp Grindlestone arrives newcomer and camp veteran Sarah. Kelly, who would rather be at home with friends, lugs a heavy trunk across the forest floor, when Sarah accidentally backs into her. Kelly warns Sarah off her stuff.

That evening, Kelly, to a small audience, mocks Sarah’s badge-adorned trailmaker vest, which Sarah arrives in search of. A squeak from the ceiling prompts Kelly to chide piano-practising Sylvie for disturbing the bats.

Sarah examines a wall-mounted case, in which three whistles, and sepia photographs of three young girls, are captioned by the legend “Never enter Watcher’s Woods, ever.” At her inquisitive mention of the place, Sylvie abruptly hits a wrong key. In Watcher’s Woods, explains Kelly, people get lost without trace. The legend, she says, entails the unexplained disappearance, over many centuries, of various inhabitants of the region. Where is this place? No one knows. It’s said to move, in search of prey. The crazed few who escaped babbled something about “the Watcher,” a demon said to guard the woods.

Tomorrow, says Kelly, will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the disappearance of the girls in the photographs. All that was found of them were their whistles, now displayed with the photos. A sudden squeak from the floor by her feet rouses a yelp of horror from Kelly, who hates rats. Flustered, she storms off.

Next day, pairs of two are directed on a search of the woods for specimens. Kelly, none-too-pleased to be paired with enthusiastic Sarah, warns her to keep out of her face.

On the trail, Kelly wearily entreats a sneaky return to camp. Sarah, here for the full experience, wants to do it right. Kelly, forcibly sent here by her parents, is less enthusiastic. In exchange for permission to go swimming, she offers to show Sarah a pheasant’s nest, directs her through a thicket, and sneaks off.

Some time later, Sarah emerges from the thicket, to realise she’s been had. Meanwhile, Kelly continues to wanders through unfamiliar trees, and realises herself to be lost. She takes out a compass, whose needle spins constantly. Unseen, the bags placed by her feet fade into thin air. Bemused, she wanders into a clearing, turns back, and finds her path blocked by unfamiliar pine trees.

Hours later, the sun having set, Kelly and Sarah continue to make their aimless ways through the trees. Sarah calls for Sarah. A low, thunderously deep voice suddenly calls her name. She follows the sound to a broad tree, on which she lays a hand. Across its bark, their materialises, wreathed in roots, the ashen face of a man, who welcomes her to his woods. She cries out in fright, and hurries off.

In a distant clearing, Kelly sees a deep green glow. Relieved, she hurries into it, and finds herself face to face with what appears to be, mounted on a pike, the skinned head of a moose. Across the clearing, set with a table, and flaming lanterns hung from trees, is a tall, loose, grey tent. As Kelly approaches, the skinned moose head turns to watch. Kelly peaks inside the tent, is swiftly repelled by the smell, and backs nervously away.

Beneath her feet, a net jerks upward, ensnaring her in mid-air. Three haggard, rag-clad women approach. The central one welcomes her to Watcher’s Woods.

Inspired, Kelly offers to retrieve their whistles. The trailmakers convene. With a gesture from one, Kelly’s bonds vanish in a flash of light. As she prepares to walk free, the lead trail maker calls her back: turns out they don’t believe her. A wooden cage falls, trapping her. The lead trail maker ponders what might most scare their prisoner. On sudden inspiration, she retrieves a bucket, and lowers it into the cage. It’s teeming with rats. Kelly screams.

As she despairs on the caged forest floor, Sarah sneaks up behind her, and attempts to open the cage. Too late: the trail makers have noticed. They accept Sarah’s offer to get the whistles, but by sunup, lest Kelly be rodent food.

As Sarah hurries back to camp, the voice of the Watcher calls once more. In a puddle appears the ashen face. Further on, from the forest floor, pops what appears to be a human skull, set with living eyeballs. Lifted by a rising mound of earth, which morphs into an earthen smock, the skull quickly grows flesh to form the branch-wreathed face of the watcher. Eager for such a soul as Sarah’s, he urges her to join him. Sarah flicks on a lighter, and threatens to torch the woods. The apparition retreats into the earth.

Impatient, the trail makers begin to sharpen a knife. Just in time, Sarah hurries back with the whistles. Not realising to have dropped one in the bucket of rats, she throws two to the lead trailmaker. Displeased to have been tricked, the trail makers magically teleport and bind Sarah to a homemade guillotine. They ignore Kelly’s location of the third whistle, and prepare to lower the blade.

In the light of a recently risen sun, they stumble out of the woods and onto the camp driveway. Behind them, an old-fashioned car pulls up. Its dark-clad chauffeur smiles and salutes. On the roofless backseat, three girls, as seen in the 1919 photographs, merrily salute and wave. As it drives off, Sarah and Kelly are mobbed by their relieved fellow campers.

As Sam closes her story, Gary beckons the others into a huddle. He then hesitantly approaches Sam with some difficult news. She quickly thanks them for the shot, but Gary continues: Sam may be a hard name to pin to one such as her. They happily welcome her to the Midnight Society.

* CameBackWrong: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. After [[spoiler: release from their suspension in the woods,]] the crazed, isolation-hardened trail makers [[spoiler: revert to their carefree, childhood selves]].

* GeniusLoci: A region of the local forest, Watcher’s Woods, is said to move in search of prey. It does indeed seem to have some teleportation ability.
* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Trapped for seventy-five years in Watcher’s Woods, the trail makers seem [[ConditionedToAcceptHorror desensitized]] to murder.

* FireForgedFriends: While they initially don’t get on, Sarah and Kelly, [[spoiler: on saving each other’s lives,]] hug with relief.

* NatureSpirit: The spectral Watcher, whose face is wreathed in branches, seems to share bodily affinity with his woods.
* [[OffWithHisHead Off with Her Head!]]: The trail makers [[spoiler: threaten to guillotine Sarah]].

* ChekovsGun: Kelly's cigarette lighter is later used by Sarah to threaten the Watcher that if he doesn't let her go, she will set his precious forest on fire.

* OffWithHerHead: The trail makers [[spoiler: threaten to guillotine Sarah]].

* LaserGuidedKarma: [[DisproportionateRetribution Sort of]]. Kelly stole Sarah's whistle in order to spite her for being a perfectionist. But later, she's mistaken by the missing trail makers as one of the girls who stole their whistles all those years ago.

* AgeWithoutYouth: In 1919, three young girls got lost in Watcher’s Woods. Seventy-five years later, they remain, [[OurGhostsAreDifferent implicitly in some kind of spectral suspension]], but have aged to adulthood.

* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Trapped for seventy-five years in Watcher’s Woods, the trail makers seem desensitised to murder.

* GeniusLocci: A region of the local forest, Watcher’s Woods, is said to move in search of prey. It does indeed seem to have some teleportation ability.

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2020_05_30_at_011425.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"You mess with the phone, you mess with the Phone Police."]]
Up tonight is Tucker - who seems not to have arrived yet. With Gary’s enigmatic confirmation of his brother to be on time, a telephone suddenly rings. Gary answers the portable phone, greets the voice of Tucker, and places the receiver, along with a speaker, on the stone chair. Tucker, through the speaker, argues a telephone to be the scariest thing to be found in the home: with a dialed number, anyone can access your house. Even if only through sound, the device can make a connection to anywhere...Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, he calls this story “The Tale of the Phone Police.”

One evening, Jake O’Brien schools friend Chris in the art of prank phone calls. Older sister Annie, in charge while their parents are away, replaces the receiver, and warns Jake of the Phone Police, whom she claims to have intercepted local prank caller Billy Baxter. Chris, disenchanted with the sport, heads home.

In the empty hallway, Jake steals away the phone book to his bedroom, and, incredulously, finds the name Billy Baxter. He dials the six digit number, and hears a man’s muffled voice plead for help. Unnerved, he hangs up.

Late that night, the phone by his bed rings. The muffled voice repeats its plea for help. Jake hangs up. Even when unplugged, the phone keeps ringing...

Next day, Chris supposes the voice to have been Annie. As they pass a phonebox, its phone rings. Sure enough, the muffled voice of Billy Baxter repeats its cry for help.

In search of answers, they take the six digit number to the office of the phone company. The receptionist reports the number to be old and discontinued. Jake explains to have successfully dialed it. With a meaningful smile, the receptionist directs them to the records department.

In a gloomy hallway, they ring the bell of another desk, and a suited, grey-haired man solemnly inspects the number. With a knowing smile, he beckons Jake beyond the desk. While Chris fumbles with his bag, the Phone Clerk apprehends Jake’s use of the phone for merriment. Two black-uniformed, peaked cap guards approach, one of whom announces them as the Phone Police, and roughly drags Jake off.

While Chris flees, Jake is dragged into a dingy cell. He cries for help, and from beneath the bed, a phone rings. The voice of Billy Baxter tells him not to bother shouting.

Chris runs to Jake’s house, and rings the bell. When Annie answers, he hurries inside, and blurts a report of Jake’s incarceration. Annie frowns incredulously, and wonders how this strange kid knows her name. With no knowledge of anyone called Jake, she orders him out.

He rushes past her to Jake’s room, hoping to prove his story: but finds the room furnished entirely differently, as if Jake never lived here. He appeals to Annie’s recount of Billy Baxter and the Phone Police. She knows the story, only instead of Billy, she heard of their capture of one Jake O’Brien.

From his cell, Jake watches another desperately protesting young boy dragged off to a cell.

At the phone box, Chris consults the phone book, and finds, next to a six digit number, the name Jake O’Brien.

In his cell, Jake receives a call from Chris, who has a plan.

Back at the phone company office, Chris sneakily uses one of the pay phones, to whose hook he fixes an elastic band.

In the record department, the Clerk gruffly calls for Jake to answer the constantly ringing phone. With no answer, he enters the cells. Chris quietly follows him.

The Clerk approaches Jake’s cell, opens the door - and is pushed from behind by Chris, and trips over the kneeling Jake into the cell. The boys close the door behind him, and run.

As Phone Police troop into the cells, the boys take cover, and flee through a side door into a porch, where another door leads to a long corridor - the end of which is enclosed by bars.

The Clerk leads the Phone Police after the boys - to find the hallway empty.

From a manhole cover emerge Jake and Chris. As a flashing black car sirens into view, they hide in a doorway, and run.

On the way to Jake’s house, the black car sirens into view behind them. They flee into the house. Chris hastily explains to Annie the identity of her brother Chris, whose existence she now remembers.

They urge her not to answer the ringing doorbell. She lets in a pizza delivery man, who has the wrong house.

As the relieved boys relax in Jake’s room, the pizza delivery man returns to his car, and pulls off the pizza logo, revealing the symbol of a green telephone…

Jake and Chris, says Tucker, never made another prank call - because they could never be sure whether the Phone Police were real. Still speaking into the phone, he sneaks up behind Frank, and loudly closes the story. As Frank leaps up in startlement, the others laugh. As Gary closes the meeting, the phone rings…

* DisproportionateRetribution: While prank calls, the policy of erasing such perpetrators from earthly existence is decidedly vindictive.
* RoaringRampageOfRescue: Chris audaciously tricks the Phone Clerk with a distracting phone call, and sneaks into the cells, whereupon he and Jake trap the guard in Chris’s place.
* EvilPhone: Once Jake dials the number of Billy Baxter, his bedroom phone, even when disconnected, continues to ring.
* PhoneBooth: Jake and Chris use one.
* PrankCall: Jake is keen on them; Chris isn’t so keen.
* RealityWarping: Incarceration in a cell of the telephone company office seems to erase all traces of Jake’s presence from the face of the earth. Luckily, Chris remembers him, [[spoiler: and escape restores his existence]].

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2020_05_29_at_225320.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:"Welcome to my woods."]]

By the fire, Betty Anne and Sam, whose head is hidden by a hessian sack, await the others. As they arrive, thunder rumbles. Before a storm erupts, Betty Anne helps up Sam, and removes the bag. Sam shakes free her hair, and smiles hello. An enamoured Frank impudently submits his appreciation, and is cautioned against over-familiarity. A similarly entranced Gary quickly restrains his amorousness. As Betty Anne readies the Midnight Dust, Sam introduces her story: a tale befitting the setting, it recalls traditional legend of inhabitation by forests of otherworldly beings. Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, she calls it “The Tale of Watcher’s Woods.”

At Camp Grindlestone arrives newcomer and camp veteran Sarah. Kelly, who would rather be at home with friends, lugs a heavy trunk across the forest floor, when Sarah accidentally backs into her. Kelly warns Sarah off her stuff.

That evening, Kelly, to a small audience, mocks Sarah’s badge-adorned trailmaker vest, which Sarah arrives in search of. A squeak from the ceiling prompts Kelly to chide piano-practising Sylvie for disturbing the bats.

Sarah examines a wall-mounted case, in which three whistles, and sepia photographs of three young girls, are captioned by the legend “Never enter Watcher’s Woods, ever.” At her inquisitive mention of the place, Sylvie abruptly hits a wrong key. In Watcher’s Woods, explains Kelly, people get lost without trace. The legend, she says, entails the unexplained disappearance, over many centuries, of various inhabitants of the region. Where is this place? No one knows. It’s said to move, in search of prey. The crazed few who escaped babbled something about “the Watcher,” a demon said to guard the woods.

Tomorrow, says Kelly, will be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the disappearance of the girls in the photographs. All that was found of them were their whistles, now displayed with the photos. A sudden squeak from the floor by her feet rouses a yelp of horror from Kelly, who hates rats. Flustered, she storms off.

Next day, pairs of two are directed on a search of the woods for specimens. Kelly, none-too-pleased to be paired with enthusiastic Sarah, warns her to keep out of her face.

On the trail, Kelly wearily entreats a sneaky return to camp. Sarah, here for the full experience, wants to do it right. Kelly, forcibly sent here by her parents, is less enthusiastic. In exchange for permission to go swimming, she offers to show Sarah a pheasant’s nest, directs her through a thicket, and sneaks off.

Some time later, Sarah emerges from the thicket, to realise she’s been had. Meanwhile, Kelly continues to wanders through unfamiliar trees, and realises herself to be lost. She takes out a compass, whose needle spins constantly. Unseen, the bags placed by her feet fade into thin air. Bemused, she wanders into a clearing, turns back, and finds her path blocked by unfamiliar pine trees.

Hours later, the sun having set, Kelly and Sarah continue to make their aimless ways through the trees. Sarah calls for Sarah. A low, thunderously deep voice suddenly calls her name. She follows the sound to a broad tree, on which she lays a hand. Across its bark, their materialises, wreathed in roots, the ashen face of a man, who welcomes her to his woods. She cries out in fright, and hurries off.

In a distant clearing, Kelly sees a deep green glow. Relieved, she hurries into it, and finds herself face to face with what appears to be, mounted on a pike, the skinned head of a moose. Across the clearing, set with a table, and flaming lanterns hung from trees, is a tall, loose, grey tent. As Kelly approaches, the skinned moose head turns to watch. Kelly peaks inside the tent, is swiftly repelled by the smell, and backs nervously away.

Beneath her feet, a net jerks upward, ensnaring her in mid-air. Three haggard, rag-clad women approach. The central one welcomes her to Watcher’s Woods.

With Kelly’s wrists bound respectively to two closely spaced trees, a yellow target cross is painted across her torso. The trail makers, held here since 1919, demand to know the location of their whistles. With Kelly unable to tell them, they decide to practise their archery. A flaming arrow passes seamlessly through Kelly’s middle, and lands embedded in a target beyond.

The trail makers believe her to have tricked them into the path of the Watcher, who decided to hold them here until they found their whistles.

Sarah, drawn to the green glow of the clearing, cautiously approaches.

Inspired, Kelly offers to retrieve their whistles. The trailmakers convene. With a gesture from one, Kelly’s bonds vanish in a flash of light. As she prepares to walk free, the lead trail maker calls her back: turns out they don’t believe her. A wooden cage falls, trapping her. The lead trail maker ponders what might most scare their prisoner. On sudden inspiration, she retrieves a bucket, and lowers it into the cage. It’s teeming with rats. Kelly screams.

As she despairs on the caged forest floor, Sarah sneaks up behind her, and attempts to open the cage. Too late: the trail makers have noticed. They accept Sarah’s offer to get the whistles, but by sunup, lest Kelly be rodent food.

As Sarah hurries back to camp, the voice of the Watcher calls once more. In a puddle appears the ashen face. Further on, from the forest floor, pops what appears to be a human skull, set with living eyeballs. Lifted by a rising mound of earth, which morphs into an earthen smock, the skull quickly grows flesh to form the branch-wreathed face of the watcher. Eager for such a soul as Sarah’s, he urges her to join him. Sarah flicks on a lighter, and threatens to torch the woods. The apparition retreats into the earth.

Back at camp, Sarah smashes the glass case, and gets the whistles.

Impatient, the trail makers begin to sharpen a knife. Just in time, Sarah hurries back with the whistles. Not realising to have dropped one in the bucket of rats, she throws two to the lead trailmaker. Displeased to have been tricked, the trail makers magically teleport and bind Sarah to a homemade guillotine. They ignore Kelly’s location of the third whistle, and prepare to lower the blade.

Kelly, out of sheer desperation, forces her hand among the teeming rats. Just as the blade falls, she blows the whistle. The guillotine dematerialises, and Sarah falls to the forest floor.

Overawed, the trail makers blow their whistles, and fade into thin air, along with the rest of their camp. On the ground, a small circle of stones, a trail sign, signifies their return home. In mutual relief and gratitude, Sarah and Kelly hug.

In the light of a recently risen sun, they stumble out of the woods and onto the camp driveway. Behind them, an old-fashioned car pulls up. Its dark-clad chauffeur smiles and salutes. On the roofless backseat, three girls, as seen in the 1919 photographs, merrily salute and wave. As it drives off, Sarah and Kelly are mobbed by their relieved fellow campers.

As Sam closes her story, Gary beckons the others into a huddle. He then hesitantly approaches Sam with some difficult news. She quickly thanks them for the shot, but Gary continues: Sam may be a hard name to pin to one such as her. They happily welcome her to the Midnight Society.

* TheAce: Sarah, with her impressive list of camping awards.
* AgeWithoutYouth: In 1919, three young girls got lost in Watcher’s Woods. Seventy-five years later, they remain, [[OurGhostsAreDifferent implicitly in some kind of spectral suspension]], but have aged to adulthood.
* CameBackWrong: [[InvertedTrope Inverted]]. After [[spoiler: release from their suspension in the woods,]] the crazed, isolation-hardened trail makers [[spoiler: revert to their carefree, childhood selves]].
* GeniusLoci: A region of the local forest, Watcher’s Woods, is said to move in search of prey. It does indeed seem to have some teleportation ability.
* GoMadFromTheIsolation: Trapped for seventy-five years in Watcher’s Woods, the trail makers seem desensitised to murder.
* FireForgedFriends: While they initially don’t get on, Sarah and Kelly, [[spoiler: on saving each other’s lives,]] hug with relief.
* ImAHumanitarian: The trail makers hint such preference.
* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: While Kelly is initially snide to Sarah, this wanes on their enforced cooperation, and they later become friends.
* OffWithHerHead: The trail makers [[spoiler: threaten to guillotine Sarah]].
* NatureSpirit: The spectral Watcher, whose face is wreathed in branches, seems to share bodily affinity with his woods.
* SceneryPorn: Some lovely shots of the woods.
* YourSoulIsMine: The Watcher ensnared the souls of three lost campers, and expresses a wish to acquire Sarah’s, seemingly out of intrigue.

* GeniusLocci: A region of the local forest, Watcher’s Woods, is said to move in search of prey. It does indeed seem to have some teleportation ability.