Only a hand full of people know about “Candie Street”. It was a show back in the early days of my childhood. Not many kids saw it for it was pretty hidden. You see, growing up we didn’t have good cable or cable at all. We had to use an antenna for anything we wanted to watch. I remember I just finished watching Zaboomafoo, or whatever that monkeys name was, and I wanted something else. I did a while of turning the nob on the TV until I ended it in those channels no one really watched.
I came across a channel I never saw before; playroom7. To my surprise, it was a children’s channel. It was playing some knock off of Sesame Street that I have never seen before. It was called Candie Street. There was a little girl puppet named “Hidey”, a beaver puppet named “Cracker Jack” and a rabbit named “Hoppy”. I watched quite a bit of the show, about three episodes to be exact, then I got up to ask my mom to get me some milk. Once I returned, I was shocked when I saw Hidey had fallen from a window. She was screaming and crying. I felt sick looking at her leg busted with bone sticking out. I yelled but by time my mom got in the room, it had cut to some song about planets.
I am 23 years old now. I got my own place, a car, and a job. I was doing some shopping at my local flea markets and resale shops just to kill some time. I dug though boxes of books and VHS tapes. I picked up a white case for a tape with no cover. I opened it and instantly shivered at the title on the label … Candie Street. I didn’t remember much about what I saw as a kid. In that moment though, I was about to see a lot worse.
I walked up to the old lady sitting at the check out table and laid my stuff down. She began to bag it for me. The lady picked up the tape and looked at it for a bit. She began to look almost afraid of it.
“You…” she said without finishing, “do you really want to try and watch this?”
“Uh, yes please,” I replied then asked what my total was.
When I got home, I placed the bag on my coffee table and went into the kitchen to make some lunch. When I had finished eating, I remembered I had bought a few movies. I put in the Candie Street tape hoping to be reminded of my childhood. It started with a sunny jingle bright colors and smiling puppets of children. It then showed the title of the episode; “You Broke It”.
The episode started with Hidey sitting at a table playing with a little bear toy. Another little girl came into the room. I hadn’t seen her before, but I have to say she was pretty damn creepy. She had black hair with pigtail and she had a white mask over her face, black holes where her eyes should have been. Hidey then tore the head off the bear. She got an upset look on her face. She then turned to the girl with the mask.
“I’m so sorry I broke your bear. Can you forgive me?” Hidey asked.
The girl shook her head no and said, “I’m going to kill you.” She then pulled out a little hand gun and proceeded to shoot Hidey in the chest. She fell down and started flapping around on the floor. I nearly throw up at this point. When she was on the floor flapping, it didn’t look like a puppet, it looked like a real person would if they where shot. Hidey coughed out blood and died while the girl in the mask was laughing at her. She turned to face the screen;
“She’ll be back kids, always come back when they die,” she said in a cheerful voice. I was so sick after seeing this. I leaped over then eject the tape but the button wasn’t working. So I just unplugged the player and went outside to try and wrap my head around it. Why the hell was that on a children TV channel? Who could possibly be proud of making that s**t?
I opened my door, planning to get a drink of water and I jumped back. The VCR was plugged back in. I could hear the voices and music but it was too distorted to see. It started to get more and more clear. I could make out Cracker Jack standing in front of a building. He had a chef hat on. He shouted,
“Welcome to my restaurant.”
Kids gathered around but they weren’t going into the building. They were going to Cracker Jack. One kid pulled out a kitchen knife and shubbed it into his stomach. Real looking blood poured down. I saw the girl with the white mask in the window of the building. I couldn’t get the VCR to even stop the tape. I looked up and saw the screen was black.
“Is it over?” I thought to myself. The TV then let out a scream so loud my ears rang. It then cut to Hidey again, but she was in a corner crying. She walked up to a stove with a pot on it. She looked in and I showed a boys head boiling. I spit up my lunch right there. It definitely wasn’t a puppet, it was either a well made prop… or real. The tape shot out from the VCR.
I sat down and tried to think of what I could do. The police couldn’t help so I called a buddy of mine whose name I won’t post for privacy. He came to look at it but I asked him to take it home if he wanted to see the show because I really didn’t want to see that s**t again. He took the tape and left. Later on when I was sitting in bed reading a book, my phone rang. I answered. It was my friend.
“Hey, I put that tape in and it was just a kid’s song about planets.”
