Amidst the scary-movie hype surrounding the month of October, I thought a throwback to the late 90’s was in order for a look at a less obvious genre of horrifying media: cartoons. Namely, “Courage the Cowardly Dog”.

Most of us remember being about 12 and scared out of our pants when that sweet blond girl, who was playing her violin, turned around suddenly bugged-eyed toward the audience, displaying a fleshless face and a grotesque set of mismatched teeth; the stuff of thoroughly creepy nightmares.

While Cartoon Network aired the popular television show for about 4 years, they eventually cut it due to the strange nature of the often borderline-obscene imagery that was apparent in every episode. Although the animation is artistic and at times ethereal, combining both realistic and cartoon-like elements, it is also eerily haunting, leaving young audiences mesmerized and also slightly terrified.

Even in retrospect, at an older age and from the comfort of a cozy dorm hall insulated by pillows and countless other young adults, Courage still has the power to haunt and horrify. Re-watching the series made me shudder and cover my mouth in surprise and at times, disgust: “Did I actually watch this as a child?” How the majority of my generation managed to make it to age 18 without psychotherapy still puzzles me, as many of my friends and acquaintances cite the show as a significantly strange or scarring aspect of their childhood.

“At times, it got away from being a ‘kid’s show,’” said freshman Dylan Ramos, “Looking back on it, it was kind of weird.”

If Courage the Cowardly Dog was only “kind of weird,” then I have yet to be exposed to the banal and bizarre in life, and I’m scared to venture past the level of weird that the show actually possesses.

If anything, Courage the Cowardly Dog is inappropriate for children under the age of 13, and even some adults who find floating heads or two-headed, aged spinsters slightly unsettling. Perhaps it is the combination of dark color schemes, sketchy characters and intense facial and bodily morphing that many of the antagonists undergo (sometimes, characters turn inside out–an uncomfortable process, as one might imagine). Or perhaps it is the fact that Courage lives in “the middle of nowhere” (literally, as pointed out in the opening sequence of the show) and yet always seems to encounter the strangest of personas, animals, and otherwise inanimate talking objects.

Of all the uncanny cartoons I’ve seen (Ren & Stimpy is one of the first to come to mind) Courage certainly takes first prize for most peculiar. This Halloween I suggest skipping the gory, overdone films involving chainsaws and hockey masks and instead turning up the volume on the long, squirmy bouts of silence and drawn out drawls that could only belong to the shadiest and most ominous of villains in counterculture’s favorite childhood cartoon. Happy viewing.

Follow Victoria on Twitter @viacavazos