Before ‘Goosebumps,’ and ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark?’ There Was ‘Eerie, Indiana’

When I was a kid, television was like the Wild West. SO much was on, and a lot of it was built toward grabbing the attention of children (I see this now as an adult). Back them, the stranger, and more odd the programming, the more popular it seemed to be, which might explain why my generation is so... different.

But there was one show I SWORE was a depiction of a real town in Indiana, and until recently, didn't know this town doesn't actually exist. But... it at least made Indiana seem kind of entertaining.

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Eerie, Indiana went on the air in 1991 on NBC, and for a Great Plains and Southern kid like myself, I just thought this was what the Midwest looked like, AND what it felt like. All the ghost stories and movies I'd see up to that age were all based in the Midwest, or New England, so at the time, yeah, my perception was that most of this part of the country was haunted... still is to an extent.

But before I got into Goosebumps, and even Are you Afraid of the Dark on Nickelodeon, I remember this show, called Eerie, Indiana.

It was about a kid who moved to the Midwest, and realizes it's the central hub of all things cryptic, chaotic, and haunted. I mean, Bigfoot was the trashman if I remember correctly, and there was an episode where the two main characters learned to understand Dogs through telepathy... only to find out they were planning on killing everyone in town, and taking over.

As an adult, I look back on it, and realize how corny, and cheesy it was. It was created by the same guys who worked on Gremlins in the 80s, and hid little tropes and clues about classic Hollywood Horror films all over the place. It was also a platform for a lot of actors earliest roles - Omri Katz ("Hocus Pocus"), Tobey McGuire ("Spider-Man") - and hosted a TON of one-episode cameos from the likes of Henry Gibson (Nashville), Vincent Schiavelli (Fast Times at Ridgemont High), Stephen Root (NewsRadio), and Renee Auberjonois (Star Trek: DS9).

As interesting as all that is, though, when I was a kid, I didn't care that "Odo" from Star Trek was on the show, I was enamored with how this town in Indiana was so crazy.

Sadly, Eerie, Indiana isn't a REAL place (I should have known, since the only Great Lake it touches is Michigan... also, Erie isn't spelled like the Lake), but it did make the state seem a little more interesting to me as a kid.

So while Eerie might not be real, at least there IS a town called "Christmas."