History Series / TheHauntingHour

* DraggedOffToHell: The fate of [[spoiler: Jake Skinner in ''The Dead Bodies''. But the end of the episode imply's he broke out.]]

* GroundhogDayLoop: The cursed forest creates this in "Lovecraft Woods".

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: From the NightmareFuel page alone, it's safe to say that this show has earned its TV-PG rating.
** From "Alien Candy":
-->'''Bully''': ''Looks like somebody grew a pair."
** Kell's nickname in "Game Over" is "Kell-Raiser," which is three letters off from a mild swear ("hell")
*** The word "hell-raiser" was actually said on "The Return of Lilly D" by the crazy old woman who was forced to make dolls by the Really You company. She described Lilly D as a "hell-raiser," then [[ThinkOfTheCensors says, "Pardon my French."]]
** In "The Walls," Jeffery's dad tells Jeffery that the Klemit (a sugar-addicted demon that lives in his bedroom wall) didn't kill the old man who lived in their house; it was the fact that the old man was 114 and had a 29-year-old girlfriend.
** ''Creature Feature'' gives us this gem right after John, who was turned into a tick creature, was on the receiving end of a GroinAttack. The actual impact occurs off-screen, but the dialog makes it obvious what happened:
-->'''Nathan''': Ooh! Right in the...
-->'''Lisa''': In the what? Does he even still have any?
-->(John doubles over in pain)
-->'''Nathan''': I'll take that as a yes.
** If there was a radar on this show when it started, then apparently it crapped out permanently when ''Terrible Love'' aired. There's no way kids these days would get the reference to ''Film/FatalAttraction'' (Brendan's love-crazed breakdown and his yelling, "I will not be ignored!"). The whole episode is only scary if you've ever experienced MadLove ("mad" as in "insane," not "angry"), and no one under 10 would understand unless their lives are extremely dysfunctional.
** Two references to alcohol: "Seance" mentions that the ghost they summoned is of a man named Cyrus Clayton who was fired for drinking on the job, and "Coat Rack Cowboy" showed "Mad Dog" McCoy in a bar, drinking from a near-empty bottle of whiskey.

* KarmicTwistEnding: In ''Wrong Number'' ([[spoiler:in which a mean girl gets trapped in her cell phone, sent as a video message to the Goth girl whom she bullied, and ends up getting deleted]]). Unlike the Cruel Twist Endings listed above, the main character of this episode '''[[BreakTheHaughty deserved]] what happened to her'''. What makes it even more satisfying [[spoiler: The whole thing was a team effort as the goth girl turns out to be the grand-daughter of the old neighbor whom Steffani mercilessly mocked ''even after she died''. And even then the ghost of the woman was actually ''trying'' to give her a chance. She let's Steffani's friend, Taylor, go as she knows she's not truly mean (heck Steffani bosses her around more then anything. Also helped Taylor silently apologized to the goth girl after Steffani knocked her down), but when she allows Steffani to just leave and walk away, [[TooDumbToLive Steffani just ''has'' to get one last insult in]], which led to Steffani's fate as a deleted cell phone video]].

* WouldHarmAChild: Many of the villains, especially those from ''Really You'' (Lilly D), ''The Dead Body'' ([[spoiler:Jake Skinner]]), ''Pumpkinhead'' ([[spoiler: Farmer Palmer]]), ''The Girl in the Painting'' ([[spoiler:The mother of the titular girl who is fine with feeding whoever loves their painting enough to go inside their world to a dragon/dinosaur outside their window, as well as the monster itself]]), ''Grampires'' ([[spoiler:the elderly vampires, except for Grampa Montgomery]]), and ''Checking Out'' ([[spoiler:the cult of [[ChildHater child-hating adults]] who live in the hotel]]).

** "Long Love Rock and Roll" also has this, only instead of looks, a boy sells his soul for musical talent. Whether or not this is a commentary on how the music industry works in the real world is up for debate.

** "Spaceman": In the original version, [[spoiler:Aaron volunteers to play Spaceman with Ms. Hollinger's dead son as he felt sorry for her loss and Aaron finally had a friend who liked space travel]]. In the director's cut, [[spoiler:the spirit of Ms. Hollinger's son forces his mother to make Aaron his new friend. Aaron tries to escape, but ends up locked in his room. Ms. Hollinger's line, "I'll leave you two spacemen alone" goes from being sweet and part of the game to being bitter and spiteful]].

* ArcVillain: Lilly D, who so far is the only reacurring villain on this show, though [[spoiler:in 2013, there will be an episode continuing where "The Dead Body" left off, where Will tries to stop Jake Skinner from taking over his life]]

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: "Best Friends Forever," "A Creature Was Stirring" (probably the only episode with this trope that [[{{Reconstruction}} has a more-or-less happy ending]] as [[spoiler:Timmy's parents decide not to divorce after losing their house to the Krampus as the children need love and support from both parents while they try to find a new place to live]]), "Headshot," "The Red Dress," "The Girl in the Painting," "Terrible Love," and "Worry Dolls."

* ColdOpen: The season three episodes have short scenes before the opening credits.

* DarkerAndEdgier: It's darker than Stine's earlier works ''{{Goosebumps}}'' and the short-lived series ''The Nightmare Room'' (though had ''The Nightmare Room'' stayed on for more than a season, it would have probably given ''The Haunting Hour'' a run for its money in terms of being dark and edgy).

* AndIMustScream: The fates of the protagonists in ''Pumpkinhead'', ''The Dead Body'', ''Mascot'', and the alternate ending to ''Scarecrow'' ([[spoiler:the one where Bobby is turned into a scarecrow and made to watch the world end with the creepy salesman]]).

* DirectorsCut: Two episodes so far have reran with alternate endings:

* TheDollEpisode: "Really You," "The Return of Lilly D.," and the future episode, "Worry Dolls."
* EarnYourHappyEnding: If an episode has a happy ending, chances are the main characters are going to have to go through hell to get it (cf. "Really You," "Game Over"[[note]]in that Kell-Raiser learns that his friends are worth more than being the best at a video game. Sadly, he doesn't return to the real world with them, as he won the video game and is forced to be the new game master until another player defeats him, which could take forever, depending on how good the next player is[[/note]] "Bad Feng Shui," "Flight," the original cut of "Spaceman," "Creature Feature," "The Golem," "Grampires," "The Weeping Woman," "Checking Out," "Detention," and "Funhouse")

* EldritchAbomination: The alien-monster creature from "Sick," though it's hard to tell since he's rarely shown (all we see of him are tentacles, and it's implied that he's not of this Earth).

* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: Many of the stories' antagonists (and protagonists, in the cases of "Headshot" and "Funhouse") are really messed-up people.

* LivingToy: ''Really You'', ''The Return of Lilly D,'' ''Toy Train Story'', and ''Worry Dolls''. Maybe ''My Robot'' if you want to stretch the definition of "toy" to include electronics.

* NothingIsScarier: The alien in the episode ''Sick'' is hardly seen in-view, which makes it scarier.

* {{Satan}}: Cassandra is heavily implied to be him in the form of a woman.

*** "Funhouse" is similar to "Headshot," as the traveling carnie isn't the evil one; he merely encourages Chad to vent his anger over his family. Chad's anger and frustration over his father never being around (and his mother not doing anything about it) turns Chad into a monster. Unlike "Headshot," Chad breaks the spell his anger has over him by smashing the mirror that reads, "In Order to Get Out, You Must Face Yourself" and distorted his face.

** Audrey, Kate, and Halftime in "Detention" -- until Audrey's apology to Kate reversed the events and made it so that way the parade accident that killed all three of them never happened.

* BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor: "Best Friends Forever," "A Creature Was Stirring" (probably the only episode with this trope that [[{{Reconstruction}} has a more-or-less happy ending]] as [[spoiler:Timmy's parents decide not to divorce after losing their house to the Krampus as the children need love and support from both parents while they try to find a new place to live]]), "Headshot," "The Red Dress," "The Girl in the Painting," and "Terrible Love."

* SinisterSurveillance: In "Really You", the older brother and his friend ''think'' this is what's happening when they try to rationalize the doll coming to life.

* InNameOnly: This series has no connection whatsoever with the movie ''The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It.'' Instead, it's based on ''The Nightmare Hour'' and ''The Haunting Hour'' anthology books written by R.L. Stine.

* TheLittleShopThatWasntThereYesterday: Inverted. The titular funhouse in ''Funhouse'' is shown arriving to town in the ColdOpen but [[spoiler: vanishes, owner and all, without a trace once Chad destroys his pent-up anger. Presumably it arrives to those who are in desperate need of its power.]]
* LivingToy: ''Really You'', ''The Return of Lilly D,'' ''Toy Train Story'', and ''Worry Dolls''.

** "Scarecrow": In the original version, [[spoiler:the scarecrow is burned at his stake and Bobby walks away into a now-desolate world where he's the only human alive, as everyone else has mysteriously disappeared]]. In the director's cut version, [[spoiler:Bobby has now turned into a scarecrow after the salesman reverts to his original form]].

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haunting_5106.png]]''R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: The Series'' is a new series airing on ''The Hub''. Like the TV adaptation of ''{{Goosebumps}}'' and the short-lived series, ''Literature/TheNightmareRoom'', it is a horror GenreAnthology series featuring a different story every week filled with kids facing off against ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural beings. Unlike ''Goosebumps'' and ''The Nightmare Room'', the stories are darker, not all of them have happy endings, and not all of them are adapted from R.L. Stine's works.

A sneak preview of this show aired on Halloween, but the series didn't premiere until Christmas. Season two began on October 1, 2011. Shortly after its conclusion, Stine announced a third season had been ordered, but was cut short in America (ending on the ValentinesDayEpisode, "Terrible Love"). On October 12, 2013, a fourth season aired, comprised of the season three episodes that didn't air in America (one of which is the highly-anticipated SequelEpisode to season one's "The Dead Body"). The latest episodes can be view on the show [[http://www.hubworld.com/rl-stine/shows/the-haunting-hour website.]]

A sneak preview of this show aired on Halloween, but the series didn't premiere until Christmas. Season two began on October 1, 2011. Shortly after its conclusion, Stine announced a third season had been ordered, but was cut short in America (ending on the ValentinesDayEpisode, "Terrible Love"). On October 12, 2013, a fourth season aired, comprised of the season three episodes that didn't air in America (one of which is the SequelEpisode to season one's "The Dead Body"). The latest episodes can be view on the show [[http://www.hubworld.com/rl-stine/shows/the-haunting-hour website.]]

A sneak preview of this show aired on Halloween, but the series didn't premiere until Christmas. Season 2 began on October 1, 2011. Shortly after its conclusion, Stine announced a third season had been ordered. The latest episodes can be view on the show [[http://www.hubworld.com/rl-stine/shows/the-haunting-hour website.]]

** "Mascot" has [[spoiler: Willie and the kid in the wolf costume be eaten by Big Yellow, who turns out to be an actual monster that just ''looks'' like a costume, Drake later finds out that Willie was eaten by Big Yellow during the next game, via calling him on his cell phone, where we find out [[AndIMustScream Willie is still alive inside Big Yellow]], presumably to be digested soon.]]

* DealWithTheDevil: Heavily implied in the episode "Headshot" ([[spoiler: with Cassandra the photographer implied to be The Devil]]). Justified, as the episode is based on ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', which followed a similar story.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: If an episode has a happy ending, chances are the main characters are going to have to go through hell to get it (cf. "Really You," "Game Over"[[note]]in that Kell-Raiser learns that his friends are worth more than being the best at a video game. Sadly, he doesn't return to the real world with them, as he won the video game and is forced to be the new game master until another player defeats him, which could take forever[[/note]] "Bad Feng Shui," "Flight," the original cut of "Spaceman," "Creature Feature," "The Golem," "Grampires," "The Weeping Woman," "Checking Out," and "Funhouse")
* [[spoiler:EatenAlive: The fate of the main characters in "Mascot" and "The Girl in the Painting".]]

** ''Detention'' is ''The Breakfast Club'' meets ''The Cube'' and a less gory version of ''Saw''.

** ''Scarecrow'' is ''The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight'' (number #20 of the original ''{{Goosebumps}}'' book series), only scarier (scarecrows being brought to life by black magic from some dopey farmhand have '''''NOTHING''''' on scarecrows causing TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt by making everything and everyone in the world disappear) and with a DownerEnding (both the original one where Bobby burns the scarecrow salesman [who turned back into his true form after everyone else vanished] and the alternate ending where Bobby is turned into a scarecrow too and made to watch the world end with the salesman).

** In "Headshot," Cassandra tells Lexi that "Gracie has become what she's always been," meaning that, while Cassandra is the Devil (posing as a teen magazine modeling scout) who steals the souls of girls who want to be known for their beauty, she didn't drive Gracie to being evil, just encouraged her to follow her shallow dreams. After all, it was Gracie who set up Dylan to get suspended for cheating on a math test, spiked Flynn's milkshake with Red Dye #3 (which makes Flynn break out in hives), and alienated Lexi (her true friend and the one who knew that Cassandra was evil and using Gracie for her own gain) by calling her a "butterface" and telling her that (paraphrased): "When good things happen, your friends are the first ones to bail."

** "Afraid of Clowns" ends with [[spoiler: the main character being told by his parents that he's a were-clown and the circus was his rite of passage in growing up.]]

** "Headshot" combines this with DownerEnding: [[spoiler: Gracie's friend, Lexi, learns that Cassandra is the Devil and that Gracie inadvertently sold her soul to her to make her wish of being the prettiest girl in the world come true, so Lexi decides to reverse the spell by deleting Gracie's headshot from her cell phone -- which grows uglier as the real Gracie gets prettier. Sadly, Lexi didn't know that Gracie and only Gracie had the power to erase her own headshot and not go through with her DealWithTheDevil. On top of that, she had already won Teen-Teen's "Most Beautiful Face" contest, so there would have been no way to reverse it. Because of this, Gracie's human face is on Cassandra's wall of other girls who soul their souls and their looks to her and now wanders the Earth, her pretty face replaced by the hideous headshot from her picture]]

** "Terrible Love"'s ending is kind of a gray area. If you believe Maggie is an AssholeVictim because her insecurity drove her to force Cupid to give Brendon another hit of the love arrow (never mind that another hit causes very {{Yandere}}-like behavior) then the ending [[spoiler:in which Stuart summoned Cupid too and made a deal with him to hit Maggie with one of his love arrows]] doesn't count as a cruel twist, as she's getting what she deserved. However, if you think Maggie learned her lesson on love not being love unless it's reciprocated after [[spoiler:wishing the love-crazed Brendon would leave her alone and seeing him fall down the stairs and be sent to the hospital]], then it is cruel, as she's forced to love Stuart forever (it's heavily implied that, because Cupid's love arrows contain the human hormones of sertonin, dopamine, and adrenaline ''and'' because it was a direct hit with the proper balance of hormones, the feelings of love you have for whoever you see when you wake up are permanent).

** "Intruders" also counts, as it doesn't depict fairies (or, as they're called, The Fae) as being kind-hearted and cheerful.

* DeadAllAlong: [[spoiler: Seth and Phoebe]] in "Night of the Mummy."
* DealWithTheDevil: Heavily implied in the episode "Headshot" ([[spoiler: with Cassandra the photographer implied to be The Devil]]). Justified, as the episode is based on ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'', so, of course, it's going to allude to it.

* EarnYourHappyEnding: If an episode has a happy ending, chances are the main characters are going to have to go through hell to get it (cf. "Really You," "Game Over"[[note]]in that Kell-Raiser actually learns that his friends are worth more than being the best at a video game. Sadly, he doesn't return to the real world with them[[/note]] "Bad Feng Shui," "Flight," the original cut of "Spaceman," "Creature Feature," "The Golem," "Grampires," "The Weeping Woman," and "Checking Out")

* FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire: Grandpa Walt Montgomery in ''Grampires'', who refuses to feed off people and instead eats rats.

** In "The Walls," Jeffery's dad tells Jeffery that the Klemit (a sugar-addicted demon that lives in his bedroom wall) didn't kill the old man who lived in their house; it was the fact that the old man was 114 and had a 29-year-old girlfriend. Very rarely do [[MayDecemberRomance May-December romances]] get referenced on children's shows these days (of course, with the line, "You do the math," it's probably implied that the old man died while having sex with his 29-year-old girlfriend or that the girlfriend murdered the old man for money).

* HumanoidAbomination: The scarecrow salesman definitely looked human [[spoiler: when he is not in his scarecrow form.]]

* InNameOnly: This series has no connection whatsoever with the movie ''The Haunting Hour: Don't Think About It.''

* LivingToy: ''Really You'' and ''The Return of Lilly D.''

* MonsterClown: A whole group of them in ''Afraid of Clowns'', [[spoiler: including [[TomatoInTheMirror the main character and his family.]]]] Arguably subverted as [[spoiler: while some of them are definitely creepy, they're never shown actually doing anything bad, though the main character is cuolrophobic and thinks all clowns are scary.]]
* MultipleEndings: "Scarecrow," which had two premiere dates for them. Despite the second airing [[NeverTrustATrailer being advertised as a]] DirectorsCut, both airings are the same up until the very end. The first ended with [[spoiler:Bobby setting fire to the creepy salesman after he turned into a scarecrow and walking away into an empty, lifeless world]], while the second ended with [[spoiler:Bobby being turned into a scarecrow along with the salesman and left to see the world end.]]
** Same deal with "Spaceman," only the main difference is the circumstances behind Aaron becoming friends with the dead boy who had the other space helmet. [[spoiler: In the original version, Aaron felt sorry for Ms. Hollinger (the dead boy's mother who kept her son's corpse in the attic because she didn't want to accept the fact that he died too soon) and became friends with the woman's dead son. In the director's cut version, the dead boy forces his mom to make Aaron his friend and Aaron is stuck playing "Spaceman" with Ms. Hollinger's son forever.]]

** And some of which are based on actual monsters from different world mythologies, such as the Alp (from German folklore), the Krampus (from Bavarian German, Austrian, and Eastern European culture), the Nanaue (from Hawaiian and Polynesian folklore), La Llorona (from Hispanic culture, particularly Mexican), and the Golem (from Jewish folklore).

* PlayingWithSyringes: Dr. Sturgess in ''Light's Out'' was fond of this back when the asylum was open and he was alive. [[spoiler: Death has not changed this.]]

* SequelEpisode: "Return of Lily D" is a sequel to "Really You."

** "Le Poof de Fromage," "Best Friends Forever," and "Terrible Love" are more comedy-horror than straight horror, with "Terrible Love" playing out more like a supernatural, [[RomanticComedy romantic]] BlackComedy (if such a genre exists beyond that example), "Best Friends Forever" parodying the sitcom story of "Kid keeps a pet in the house under wraps from his parents, who just forbid him to bring in a pet," and "Le Poof de Fromage" being so ridiculous in his premise that it's just best to see it as a parody on all of R.L. Stine's alien horror stories because it just doesn't work as straight horror.
** "Headshot": It's ''Literature/ThePictureOfDorianGray'' set in the world of teen modeling. Much like "Terrible Love," the fears are more based in reality (in "Headshot"'s case, it's the promises of fame and glamor bringing out a person's worst qualities, how the famous often have to sacrifice what really matters to them in order to succeed only to lose everything when their star fades, and how evil lives in all mankind and only comes out if a person chooses to surround themselves with evil influences).

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/haunting_5106.png]]''R. L. Stine's The Haunting Hour: The Series'' is a new series airing on ''The Hub''. Like the TV adaptation of ''{{Goosebumps}}'' and the short-lived series, ''TheNightmareRoom'', it is a horror GenreAnthology series featuring a different story every week filled with kids facing off against ghosts, monsters, and other supernatural beings. Unlike ''Goosebumps'' and ''The Nightmare Room'', the stories are darker, not all of them have happy endings, and not all of them are adapted from R.L. Stine's works.

* VegetarianVampire: Grandpa Walt Montgomery in ''Grampires'' only preys on rats. Justified in that he's a grandfather first and a vampire second, so, despite being a bloodsucker, he's very protective of his grandkids.

* EsotericHappyEnding: ''A Creature Was Stirring'' wants us to believe that the family is happy at last: the parents are no longer going to divorce and they all "have each other", as they put it. Then you realize that they literally lost everything they had, except for the clothes they are wearing, they are homeless and they have nothing to eat. There's just no way that they'll survive the winter.

Has a [[Recap/TheHauntingHourTheSeries Recap page]]. It also has a [[http://rlstinesthehauntinghour.wikia.com/wiki/ wiki]].