The Tale of the Quiet Librarian

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Air Date: Saturday, November 5, 1994
Storyteller: Kiki (Jodie Resther)

Frame: The episode opens with Frank (Jason Alisharan) walking into the clearing with Tucker (Daniel DeSanto) in a headlock, with Tucker complaining. Kiki then tells everyone to be quiet and listen for the absolute silence of the night. Gary (Ross Hull) claims it to be impossible (apparently unaware of soundproof rooms), as where there's life, there's sound. However, Kiki says that, to put it another way, if you take away sound, you take away life, and that's followed immediately by a very melodramatic musical tone as Kiki begins her story. 

Story: A focused, hard-working student named Laurie (Shannon Duff) gets paired up with a somewhat careless jock named Jace (Aaron McConnaughey) for a history assignment. The pair doesn't get along so well. After doing some work at the library, Laurie later realizes that she had left her notebook. If she doesn't get it, the assignment is screwed. Later that night, they broke into the library after hours to retrieve said notebook. While searching, they find a door labeled "Quiet Room" that wasn't there before, and soon find themselves dealing with a librarian ghost who can silence anything or anyone with a mysterious box.

Review: Maybe it's just me, but conceptually, I don't find silence scary, although one may argue the loss of voice can be. The frightening part of this episode lies in the idea that this librarian has been holding noisy kids hostage in the mysterious "quiet room," although we never really see what goes on inside, aside from the kids sitting at an old, dusty table, somewhat zombified. For that, I can give the episode its creepy factor. Still, the title character is far from a favorite, and neither of the lead kids is particularly likable with their back-and-forth bickering. It's not the worst episode, but it doesn't do much for me.

Final Rating: Nervous

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