Freaky Stories (Partially Found 1997-2000 Animated/Live-Action Series)

Freaky Stories is a Canadian animated/live-action horror TV series for kids, produced by Decode Entertainment (now known as DHX Media) and developed by creator Steve Schnier and executive producer John A. Delmage, that ran from 1997 to 2000, with its pilot episode premiering on YTV's 1995 "Dark Night 3" Halloween block.

The show's 35 episodes each consist of 4 animated shorts (of varying artistic styles), based around various urban legends, with each short running roughly 5 minutes and opening with the show's trademark phrase, "This is a true story, it happened to a friend of a friend of mine." The shorts are interspersed with live-action segments hosted by two animatronic puppets, Larry de Bug and Maurice the maggot, although, notably, when aired in some countries, said segments were withheld from broadcast.

Schnier first pitched the idea of an urban legends based kids show to YTV in 1991; in 1994, he teamed up with Delmage and produced the aforementioned 1995 pilot, resulting in the full series being put into production 2 years later.

Of the show's 140 shorts, roughly 50 of them have surfaced online (along with a handful of the aforementioned live-action segues), with the majority remaining unaccounted for. As of this writing, the show is seldom aired any more. Both English and French dubs of the show are known to exist (the latter which went under the alternate title Frissons - the word 'frisson' being the French equivalent of 'shiver') as well as a Spanish dub; the bulk of the found episodes have been sourced from the English dubbed version, with one or two only being currently available in other languages.

On September 12, 2015, lostmediawiki.com creator/admin Dycaite released eight episodes he found on a VHS entitled Freaky Stories: Pickled Brains for Found Media Week. They can be downloaded here.