Scare Dare

"You're not afraid, are you?"

A childhood dare where a group of children explores a location after dark. It will typically involve entering an abandoned house, supposedly haunted, staying in the school for the night, exploring the surroundings of a camp after nightfall, or similar.

Of course, there will always be something else there, too. It might be their friends trying to make the test more exciting, or a harmless resident with the Face of a Thug, but it is also a great opportunity to have fun with Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane. If this happens in a horror setting, you're probably better off staying home. It may also prove to be the Call Reception Area or the Forbidden Zone.

See also Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb, where the characters tend to be slightly older and the danger is considerably more.

Compare Kimodameshi, a similar Japanese tradition.

Anime and Manga

 * 20th Century Boys: school after dark.
 * Ouran High School Host Club: school after dark. -
 * Flunk Punk Rumble: school during the holidays.
 * The manga Kimi ni Todoke: a walk after darkness on a school trip. The main character, nicknamed "Sadako" because of her resemblance to the ghost girl from The Ring movies, is asked to take part (as part of the "test") and is accepted by her classmates as a result.
 * Actually, this incident was a Kimodameshi,and she only got the respect of Chizu and Yano
 * Hell Teacher Nube is rife with this. School after dark, haunted house, derelict playground, ancient graveyard, you name it. The scary urban "legend" always turns out to be true, if not worse than the legend. Dammit, Miki!
 * Higanbana no Saku Yoru ni: Old School building, women's toilet.

Film

 * Big Fish used an abandoned house.
 * In The Village, the test is to stand with your back to the haunted woods; first one to give up loses.

Tabletop Games

 * A Dark Champions scenario published by Gold Rush Games started off with a Scare Dare—a young boy is missing after having been dared to walk up to the abandoned Radley Manor after dark and place his hand on the wall. (The coal chute broke under his weight. The kids who dared him believe that the ghost of Radley Manor "got" the boy, and are too afraid of being blamed to tell anyone what happened. )

Western Animation

 * The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy uses the abandoned house.
 * A Halloween Episode of Disneys Recess has this as a segment of the episode. Vince is dared to spend the night in a hole dug by the diggers that they had been seen running screaming out of. The rest of the gang shows up during the night and
 * Happens in one of the Halloween episodes of Kick Buttowski when Kendall dares Kick and Gunther to trick or treat the Van der Death mansion up on the hill (with convenient lightning) because Kick thinks her Halloween "party" is lame (justified in that all it was, was Kendall reading a report: "The Origins of Halloween. A Report by Kendall Perkins"). Turns out.