Freaky Stories (found Canadian animated/live-action horror TV series; 1997-2000)

The show's title card.

Status: Found

Date found: 04 Jul 2020

Found by: TVShoaz

Freaky Stories is a Canadian animated/live-action horror TV series for kids, produced by Decode Entertainment (now known as DHX Media) and developed by creator Steve Schnier and executive producer John A. Delmage, that ran from 1997 to 2000, with its pilot episode premiering on YTV's 1995 "Dark Night 3" Halloween block.

The show's 35 episodes each consist of 4 animated shorts (of varying artistic styles), based on various urban legends, with each short running roughly 5 minutes and opening with the show's trademark phrase, "This is a true story, it happened to a friend of a friend of mine." The shorts are interspersed with live-action segments hosted by two animatronic puppets, Larry de Bug and Maurice the maggot, although, notably when aired in some countries, said segments were withheld from the broadcast.

Schnier first pitched the idea of an urban legend-based kids show to YTV in 1991; in 1994, he teamed up with Delmage and produced the aforementioned 1995 pilot, resulting in the full series being put into production 2 years later.

Prior to its complete resurfacing in 2020, roughly 50 of the show's 140 segments have surfaced online (along with a handful of the aforementioned live-action segues), with the majority remaining unaccounted for. Both English and French dubs of the show are known to exist (the latter which went under the alternate title Frissons - the word 'frisson' being the French equivalent of 'shiver') as well as a Spanish dub; the bulk of the found episodes have been sourced from the English dubbed version.

On September 12th, 2015, LMW creator Dycaite released eight episodes he found on a VHS entitled Freaky Stories: Pickled Brains for Found Media Week.

In early 2017, further episodes of Freaky Stories were uploaded to YouTube, though the videos may have been deleted now.

Starting from April 4th, 2020 and ending on July 4th of the same year, a YouTube user by the name of "TVShoaz" would upload the entire series, marking it found.

See Also

• Anthony Ant (partially lost HBO/YTV animated series based on books; 1999)
• Big BBQ Blowout (partially found interstitials of YTV event; 2006)
• Borderline High (lost Canadian afterschool special; 1992)
• Caitlin's Way (partially found Nickelodeon/YTV teen drama series, promos, and dubs; 2000-2002)
• D'Myna Leagues (partially found second season of Canadian animated series; 2002)
• Fries With That? (found YTV sitcom; 2004)
• Mischief City (partially found Canadian animated children's TV series; 2005)
• Monster Buster Club "The New Recruits" (found episode of children's TV series; 2008)
• Monster By Mistake! (found CGI animated series; 1996-2003)
• Prank Patrol (partially lost Canadian children's series; 2005-2010)
• The Real Captain Flamingo Show (partially found special episodes of "Captain Flamingo" Canadian-Filipino children's animated series; 2007)
• Stickin' Around (partially found pre-series shorts of Nelvana animated series; 1994)
• The Sticklers (lost pitch pilot of 'Stickin' Around' Nelvana animated series; early 1990s)
• Treasure (partially found BBC animated series; 2001-2002)
• The Twins (partially found animated series; 2000)
• Weird Years (partially lost animated comedy series; 2006)
• Weird-Oh's (partially lost American/Canadian CGI animated TV series; 1999)
• YTV.com (partially found online games; 1998-2006)

External Links

• Wikipedia article on Freaky Stories.
• Big Cartoon DataBase page on Freaky Stories, with episode guide.
• MEGA link containing eight episodes of Freaky Stories.