Fear (American TV series)

Rules

The game begins with blindfolded contestants being led by guides to a reportedly haunted site. After a set time, they remove their blindfolds, and the guides have already slipped away. The group’s base is a 'safe house'—a large, lit room in a part of the location with no reported hauntings. Each player randomly picks a color from a list.

During the day, they rest and eat because all dares happen at night. When night falls, a computer terminal selects one or two colors and assigns a dare, also supplying historical background. A player not on the current dare relays instructions from the computer via two-way radios. Any contestant can quit a dare at any moment, but doing so means losing their share of the prize money and leaving the group; the computer then picks someone else to finish the dare.

After two nights, everyone still in the game is led to their cash prize: $5,000 each (the pilot gave $3,000). The dares start simple and near the safe house, then grow harder and farther away. Some tasks involve simple observation, like maintaining radio silence or using an EMF detector. Others require re-enacting specific haunting events, and a few venture into occult practices such as séances, automatic drawing, or spirit channeling.

Locations

The show usually changed location names to protect them from vandals and fanatics, though some places allowed their real names to be used. Fans used the Internet to piece together potential matches. Season 1 episodes included West Virginia Penitentiary, St. Agnes Hospital for the Chronically Ill (real location: Fairfield State Hospital, Connecticut), Duggan Brothers Cement Factory (real: Ideal Cement Company, Castle Hayne, North Carolina), Hopkins Military Academy (real: Augusta Military Academy, Virginia), Camp Spirit Lake (real: Camp NoBeBoSco, Hardwick Township, New Jersey; this episode contains a fictionalized account of the Princess Doe murder), Buck Hill Inn, Eastern State Penitentiary, USS Hornet CV-12, Fort Gaines, and La Guerre Plantation (real: Desert Plantation, Louisiana).

Season 2 episodes included Mina Dos Estrellas (parts 1 and 2; the only location where all original contestants quit, leading to a second group finishing the challenge), Hacienda Tabi, Ki Sugar Mill (real: Haʻikū Sugar Mill, Maui, Hawaii), Serenity Lake Sanitorium (real: King Edward VII Sanatorium, Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada), and Boettger Brewery (real: Lemp Brewery, St. Louis, Missouri).