The ??? ????? ??????90s Nickelodeon cult classic Are You Afraid of the Darkdidn't just scar an entire generation of youths with terrifying images we'll never forget. What made it stand out from contemporaries like Goosebumpswas the conceit of the Midnight Society itself, with kids presenting spooky tales they made up themselves each week around a campfire for the approval of their peers.

Unlike other kids' horror anthologies, Are You Afraid of the Dark empowered its young protagonists to be the tellers of their own scary stories rather than just the victims in them. And this fundamental difference is the reason why the show continues to have such a lasting impact on today's horror, inspiring the now grown-up storytellers of our time to get into the genre at an early age.

"A big chunk of the filmmakers I know in this industry watched Are You Afraid of the Dark. It functionally served as an introduction for a lot of us," says BenDavid Grabinski, the showrunner behind the new revival and an obsessive fan of the original.

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The three-part series reboot, which premieres on Oct. 11, leans even further into the concept of the Midnight Society as a group of kids expressing their creativity through the horror genre. Protagonist Rachel is an artist who doodles nightmares straight out of Lovecraft. Another member, Akiko, is an amateur horror filmmaker.

All of them find something empowering in facing their fears and anxieties through their imagination, and doing it together.

At the heart of this rebooted Midnight Society is the question of why we love scary stories at all, why telling them around a campfire is a tradition as old as time, and why it's an integral part of growing up.

"Storytelling isn't just a way to communicate, but also a way we deal with major life changes and trauma," says Grabinski.

Because of its young storytellers, Are You Afraid of the Dark was always deeply grounded in the metaphorical monsters of growing up.

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"As a kid, it's fun to watch people your age deal with these gigantic, seemingly insurmountable situations. There's something therapeutic about it, watching them ultimately succeed," says Grabinski. "There was definitely a level of audience participation to the show in that way."

A huge part of the first episode's plot revolves around Rachel working to come up with the best story possible. She ends up using a recurring nightmare that's terrorized her all her life, spinning it into a narrative she can control rather than a terror she has to keep running away from.

Later, a fellow member delivers a line that basically describes what made Are You Afraid of the Darkand its campfire storytelling premise such a powerful influence on us as kids.

SEE ALSO: Behind the scenes of the new ‘Are You Afraid of the Dark'

"That's the whole fun of the Midnight Society: We get scared, we get to let our imaginations run wild. But then we get to go home and sleep safe and sound in our beds, knowing that the real world is much simpler. And nothing is out there going bump in the night," he says.

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Aside from being inspirational to young storytellers, Are You Afraid of the Dark was also aspirational. At least that's what Rafael Casal, who stars as the reboot's villain, believes.

"When you're a kid, scary stories acknowledge that fear is real, that the world is scary."

"Everybody wanted to be in the Midnight Society, this group of friends who are all outcasts, doing something a little dangerous, telling each other scary stories to build up a tolerance for it," says Casal, who's also the actor-writer-director behind Blindspotting. "Because when you're a kid, scary stories acknowledge that fear is real, that the world isscary. And that camaraderie can help you face it."

As Casal points out, the Midnight Society really did serve as a training ground for amateur storytellers. They didn't just take anyone: It was competitive, and you got voted in based on the merits of your skill and spooky tales.

"That's what I love about the Midnight Society, it's this excuse to start, finish, and present something you've created from your imagination to other people," he says. "That's what it was for me, at least. It gave you this template for what you can do, this idea of kids coming together and sharing art."

This particular iteration of the series is about what happens when that sense of danger and imagination gets out of hand. Rachel's story about a carnival of horrors basically walks out of her imagination and into their town IRL.

This sort of blurring of reality and fiction — of your imagination spilling into the real world — wasn't just part of the original Are You Afraid of the Dark, either. Some trace the culture of internet creepypasta back to the Midnight Society. At the very least, it's easy to see why the millennial generation that aspired to be part of the Society would turn the internet into a haven for amateur horror storytellers all competing to tell the one that shakes the most people to their core.

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In fact, two young members of the cast pointed to creepypasta stories as their earliest introductions into horror that they'll never forget, which was exactly what Are You Afraid of the Dark did for the millennial generation.

"Jeff the Killer kept me up all night. I couldn't sleep for days," says Jeremy Ray Taylor, who stars as Graham in Are You Afraid of the Dark as well as the ITmovies."What's scary about creepypasta is how it takes an image of a normal, everyday thing, then totally twists it. It makes you think, well, what if that was happening right now?"

Looking back, that's also what the scariest, most scarring Are You Afraid of the Darkepisodes did too: a pinball machine corrupted by an evil wizard, or the pool in your backyard suddenly becoming infested with skeletons trying to kill you, or a comic book character giving your friends and family permanent grins.

All of it turned fun, innocent childhood play into a death trap. Which is also the whole M.O. of the king of creepypasta himself, Slender Man.

"I do see a correlation between the Midnight Society and creepypasta. It's just regular people making everyday life terrifying through stories. But now it's on the internet," says Taylor.

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Another cast member, Sam Ashe Arnold (who plays Rachel's love interest Gavin), also identifies with the focus on storytelling in the reboot. At sixteen years old, he's already started writing two novels. But the first stories he told were around a campfire when he was even younger, exactly like the Midnight Society.

"I think that kids have always been naturally creative. But nowadays, there's more outlets for them to get their work out there," Arnold says.

Now more than ever, there are Midnight Societies everywhere. We just call them by different names, like r/creepypasta. But they serve the same function, which is building a sense of community through stories that reveal the most vulnerable parts of ourselves.

"It's really a show about a girl who's never had any close friends and over the course of the episodes — spoiler alert — she gains really good friends. It's just about the importance of friendship," says Grabinski.

While it's not explicit in the show, Grabinski implies that this new Midnight Society also isn't necessarily a continuation of the original one. It's possible (if not likely) that there are Midnight Societies all over the world, passing the torch down to newer generations that come together through the same campfire storytelling.

"Everyone's got a different reason to love being scared, but I think it reminds us how human we are and what things really rock us to our core," says Casal. "You learn something about yourself."