Recalling dreams has always come easily to me. There are dreams of mine that feel like true memories, where only years later did it dawn on me that the time I was a toddler trapped in a cardboard box and unable to scream for help from the shadowy figure wasn’t real. There was the dream where the floor was covered in orange, living globs, or the dreams where I wake up with an orgasm, or the time I gave birth to a bouncing baby eggplant. But to this day the one that stays with me the most is my first nightmare.
It happened because of the show Ghostwriter.
If you’re unfamiliar, Ghostwriter was a TV show that ran on PBS from 1992-1995. It was a children’s show, in which a group of friends in Fort Greene, Brooklyn solve neighborhood mysteries with the help of the Ghostwriter, a spirit that can communicate by rearranging text found in books or on computers. Fun fact: the ghost was supposed to be a ghost of a runaway slave, whose soul was trapped in a book after he was killed. Or maybe that’s not so fun. It was never addressed on the show.
The episode that scared the living shit out of me was “Attack of the Slime Monster.” It’s a scary story told within the episode by Casey, who wants to submit it to an essay contest. In the story, Casey receives a toy called Gooey Gus as a gift from her cousin Jamal. It’s a purple monster that spits slime into your mouth which, if you chew it, turns to grape bubblegum. The mechanics of this immediately confused me, as the slime appeared to be too liquidy to solidify into gum, but the show was supposed to teach kids reading, not chemistry.
I recently discovered this was the last episode of the series, which makes a lot of sense given how strange it is. In Casey’s story, Gooey Gus comes to life after getting wet, and begins capturing members of the Ghostwriting squad, and wrapping them in gum cocoons. He had a deep, ugly laugh and looked like Alvin the chipmunk had a whole face of just the bad side of Two-Face. At one point, he steals some young girl and marches down the street with her in a red radio flyer. He needed heat and water to survive, and the gang dangerously tracked him across the city, finding clues at steaming sewers and puddles. The last scene I remember is Gus somehow rowing a boat while his captor tried to chew herself free.
The night I saw that episode I couldn’t close my eyes without imagining Gooey Gus behind me. If it was 1995 I must have been 9, probably too old to want my parents in bed with me, yet I remember making my mom lay down next to me until I fell asleep. It worked for a time, but I kept waking up. I heard the screams of the kidnapped girl, and felt Gooey Gus behind me, sliming onto my neck. For years, I could not sleep unless my back was against a wall. I was wary of friends who chewed grape gum.
I’m not alone in being irreversibly traumatized by Gooey Gus. On one Reddit thread about a completely different aspect of Ghostwriter, someone brings up the “little wrinkly purple villain” and everyone flips their shit. Commenters saying things like “This explains some of the nightmares I had as a kid,” “I got latent terror sweat just from reading the title,” and many cite him as the stuff of their first nightmares. A few even said they associated him with the entire show and remain freaked out by the mere concept of Ghostwriter. It feels good knowing I am just part of an entire terrified generation of PBS viewers.
By most scales from the benign to the horrible, my nightmares are a lot worse now. I dream my husband has died or has left me, that my city has blown up, that those I love have been lying to me, that I have accepted some great unhappiness in my life and decided it’s just not worth it to fight. I wake up crying with clawed hands grabbing at the reality around me, unable to believe that this is real and that was fake. I bring up dreams days later to the people who were in them, making them assure me they didn’t mean what they said in my brain.
According to some study my mom keeps telling me about, we’re born with only two fears: loud noises, and precipices. Everything else is learned. Just because they’re learned doesn’t mean they’re not valid, but it’s also easy to convince yourself learned fears are foolish, no matter how based they are in reality. And from there it’s easy to tell yourself you’re wrong, all your fears, all your feelings. It was just a dream. It was just a thought. It’s just your brain lying to you, don’t listen.
I know I shouldn’t be afraid of the dark, so I feel ashamed when I flick off the lights and run back to my bed. I know Gooey Gus isn’t real, so I shouldn’t have spent so many years closing my eyes and seeing a wrinkly, purple face. I fight against being told I’m irrational. Logic can be weaponized against those we don’t think should trust their own feelings. But then again, not every feeling should be indulged. Who am I to judge between my brain and my gut?
This is all to say I’m still afraid of Gooey Gus. I watched the episode, which is on YouTube now. It’s terrible. Not a single child is a convincing actor, and Gus just looks like he’s drooling purple cum. There is no reason to be afraid of him as he is there, but in my mind he’s something completely different, and sometimes he’s still there, eclipsing the thing that inspired him. I remain afraid of reasonable things and ridiculous things, and sometimes I can’t fall asleep unless I know someone is there to protect me from my invented fears. But I still don’t trust grape gum.
Haven’t read yet but yes, I was SO TERRIFIED OF GOOEY GUS.
YES SO FRIGHTENING.
100% here for all Ghostwriter discussions. I was obsessed with this show. “He’s a ghost… and he writes to us.”
I am forever looking for/buying “ghostwriter pens” at stationary stores. Felt tips are so cool.
I wanted one of those black & white composition notebooks for YEARS because of this show. And felt tips are the best pens!
My friend and I did a Ghostwriter rewatch (or at least started to) last year – most of it is on YouTube.
Leni’s outfits, man. They are something else.
The first season is on DVD! http://www.amazon.com/Ghostwriter-Season-1-David-…
Lenni forever. My husband says I look like her and that is the highest of compliments IMHO.
Oh fuck me, I had completely blocked Gooey Gus from my memory due to terrified hatred (combined with having blocked the latter episodes of Ghostwriter, sorry Casey and Hector but you just didn’t cut the mustard.)
Anything that wraps you in a cocoon was awful to me. I also used to have nightmares about those cotton candy cocoons from Killer Clowns from Outer Space, a film which as an adult isn’t even remotely scary.
THANK YOU for finally letting me know this show was not a figment of my imagination! I have been telling friends for years “That kids show with the floating light who spells things! He was a ghost! It was really popular!” They had no idea what I was talking about and in my mind the title was “Ghostbuster” which even I knew was not right. Phewwwww.
However, I don’t think I managed to see this episode, and I am very very grateful
YUP. I’d managed to forget about/repress that storyline until I saw the picture here, so thanks, I guess?
(Also, obligatory “Samuel L. Jackson played Jamal’s dad in the first episode!” post)
I never saw this episode, I think I only watched the first season of this amazing show and thus have no idea who Casey is. But! In my thirties and still a Tina/Alex shipper. I think Alex would probs want to get married but I imagine Tina being pretty committed to her unfettered jet-setting documentary-filming lifestyle.
oh boy yup this is basically burned onto my brain
With respect to your mom, the pediatrician I just talked to said that babies have no fear of precipices at all, and will roll right off the edge of anything if you don’t watch them.
So. Obviously that’s what my nightmares have been about for the last month.
Either I or one of my siblings (we are triplets and my mum *claims* she can’t remember which of us it was, although I doubt this) apparently once rolled off the edge of a changing table and landed on one of the other two. But we’re all fine! (I hope you will see this as comforting and not horrifying.)
thank you for trying but in my dreams he rolls of the edge of a cliff and into the ocean and when I try to leap after him I get stuck in a briar bush at the edge of the cliff, so.
it’s very vivid
That sounds horrifying, and I hope it vanishes from your subconscious.
(Does it make me a terrible person if I say that hearing parents talk about the terror of parenthood makes me blissfully happy about the fact I do not have children? Probably.)
Those dreams are the worst. We don’t co-sleep and we aren’t set up to do it safely. I have a waking nightmare in which I become convinced that the baby isn’t in her crib, and I can’t find her. Then I realize the baby is buried under the blankets, that I set her down after a feeding and fell asleep and now she is buried under the covers and suffocated. And then I go and try to pick her up, and it turns out it’s our very confused dog and then I really freak out because where the hell is the baby? What did I do with her? And then I find her where she is supposed to be, in her crib.
I have that nearly exact same dream
I did not realize babies had any fears at all, really. They definitely do not have any sense of self preservation. My 4 month old continually presses her face into anything likely to suffocate her and seems to be actively trying to roll off of anything and everything. She also likes to do this move when you are holding her where she throws herself straight back with all of her limbs extended and stiff just to make it really hard to keep her from falling on her head. I realize that last thing makes it sound like she has some kind of condition, but she is totally normal and healthy. She just isn’t scared of anything.
I solved the rolling problem by basically just keeping her on the floor all of the time.
Yep, that sounds like totally normal Baby Flail.
They also seem to enjoy head-butting people in the face.
I feel like I need a mouth guard. I’m going to lose a tooth any day now.
She also wants to poke her fingers into all of the openings everywhere. My mouth, my nose, the electrical socket, my eyeball, your mouth, her mouth, the dog’s mouth, that mystery hole in the wall. Wherever.
THANK YOU why does my 5 month old keep headbutting me in the face? Does it not hurt him to jab my teeth into his forehead?
Can confirm that he has no fear of precipices or loud noises though.
Apparently, one time when I was an infant my dad was getting changed and put me down on the middle of my parents’ bed. He heard a thunk, and realized I had rolled off the bed, and was completely guilt-ridden.
He proceeded to nervously tell my mom, thinking she would freak out, and she replied “Oh, don’t worry, that happens to me all the time.”
Occasionally I wonder how many brain cells that cost me…
I was also terrified of Gooey Gus as a kid! (and as a Ghostwriter fan I would sometimes deliberately write slowly on a notebook in the hopes a ghost would come rearrange the letters). This also reminds me of the scary episode (or maybe two-part episode) of Punky Brewster where they go in a cave and there’s a…spider? Some kind of monster? That Punky destroys…through love? Does anyone else remember this?
This one? http://www.chillertv.com/news/2014-04-03-the-unex…
Oh my goodness, yes! Thank you!
I never watched that show and I’m scared now!
In all seriousness, the true nightmare I remember from childhood was about Angel of Death from Exodus, except she had fingers that turned into knives and dressed kind of like Mary Tudor. (I had a picture book about Queen Elizabeth and my mom had Peggy Nesbit dolls, so that was my reference there. So the lesson for parents, I guess, is don’t assume PBS/Sunday School won’t be full of Nightmare Fuel.
Oh MAN, the Gooey Gus episode was my favorite one, and it’s definitely the one I remember most, though I was less terrified of Gooey Gus himself than of being a purple gum cocoon–my claustrophobia must have ramped up something fierce after seeing this episode. I did learn how to ice gum to get it out of hair, though. So there’s that! Also I distinctly remember wanting Alex to save me, were I to become a purple gum cocoon. So dreamy.
Weirdly, grape is my favorite bubblegum flavor.
I keep hearing the article title as the song from “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf”.
You know what? “I am George. I am.”
Also: way to make me nostalgic for the days when my worst fears were corporal beings who could actually kill me…Didn’t ever think that was something I’d miss.
Though I still have the dream where I try and fail to scream for help from the shadowy figure
GOOEY GUS IS NO JOKE
(i realize that this article is v serious and i commiserate)
this fucker haunted my nightmares back then and even looking at him now makes me shiver. who thought this creeper was appropriate for a children’s show??
I don’t remember Gooey Gus at all, but this is really similar to my reactions to an accidental sighting of the Cryptkeeper on Tales from the Crypt and a viewing of a preview for Child’s Play. The Child’s Play one was especially bad – since I never saw the movie I invented a story for it that resulted in my sleeping with 30 stuffed animals and dolls a night after making sure they were all comfortable and received like 3 kisses a piece, so they wouldn’t hate me and try to kill me in my sleep.
Murder cases on Unsolved Mysteries are what scared me at that age.
I had a friend who was terrified of Unsolved Mysteries and could not stop watching it. Then, anytime we went anywhere she was absolutely convinced she saw one of the suspects. Also, if her parents were gone at night for any reason she became convinced the Unsolved Mysteries suspects were trying to break into her house.
OMG.
For me it was house fires, because of Rescue 911. WHY did my mother let me watch that show?!
I am not alone in the source of my childhood nightmares! I loved Ghostwriter but that creepy Gooey Gus was the weird boogeyman at the back of my brain for years!! That damned developmental psychology.
oh dear sweet jesus
I thought this was a safe place
Oh my god, someone else has dreamed of giving birth to a vegetable. Thank you for yet another lovely “I’m not alone!” moment on The Toast.
AUGH GOOEY GUS
I think one of the things that terrified me about him the most, as with all murderous toys/Weeping Angels is the fact that limited animatronics budgets mean that the toys stand still until you look away, then when you look back they’re still standing still, but closer. If something’s going to stalk me, I want to be able to see how it’s doing it.
Also his face was melted. Melty faces are Not Okay.
I’m burning mad! I’m steaming mad!
NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
You could totally make a fluid-> gum transition.
Rheopectic fluids! or their bargain basement cousin Dilatants (ooblec)
I was not allowed to watch Ghostwriter reruns on PBS anymore after my little brother saw this episode and had nightmares, which I was very angry about because I loved the show!
“The last scene I remember is Gus somehow rowing a boat while his captor tried to chew herself free.”
None of this sounds remotely plausible. A PBS series about the ghost of an escaped slave, helping kids to solve mysteries? A weird purple blob-man that spits into your mouth? This cannot possibly be a thing that happened in the era of Barney and Wishbone. It all reads like an elaborate creepypasta, right down to the bizarre image up top, which looks like it might have been taken from some obscure indie animated short financed by the Canadian Film Board.
I don’t the ghost being an escaped slave was ever actually mentioned on air. But yeah, this episode was pretty fucked up.
Oh my god.
I have zero memories of watching this show, or of it ever existing. However, I do have an image fragment of a person getting encased in purple goo. It periodically rises to the forefront of my mind. I’d always assumed it was from some Nickelodeon show.
Thank you, Jaya, for solving that mystery.
Oh my god.
I have zero memories of watching this show, or of it ever existing. However, I do have an image fragment of a person getting encased in purple goo. It periodically rises to the forefront of my mind. I'd always assumed it was from some Nickelodeon show.
Thank you, Jaya, for solving that mystery.
Okay but we’re all agreed Lenni’s rap video was awesome, right?
https://youtu.be/wODIc8ohbg4
I changed my favorite color from purple to pink and refused to eat grape-flavored treats, such was the trauma wrought by Gooey Gus.
YES!!! I was absolutely terrified of him but I forgot his name and just called him the Slime Monster. I was scared of all plumping after this for quite a while. Who could truly tell if he was lurking inside?
My favorite episode of Ghostwriter was the one where Ghostwriter travels back in time?? Or something? Like, he is communicating with the kids in the present and a couple kids in, like, 1910 or something at the same time. And the two groups of kids need to cooperate across time to solve a mystery. I think. I remember thinking it was super cool.
I just found this via a search for “ghostwriter gooey gus,” in an attempt to show my girlfriend the thing that haunted my nightmares for years. I don’t know how I managed to miss this article the first time around, but it was extremely validating to learn just now that I was not alone, and The Toast had my back.
OMG yes! He was like, “I’m BURNING MAD! I’M STEEEEAMING MAD!” Creepy!