WanderFan2000

The Heebie Jeebies is officially 10 years old. To celebrate, I decided to tell my origin story of how I got into this heartwarming, but terrifying episode.  June 6th, 2016.  I was in my sophomore in high school, still a massive fan of Wander Over Yonder and I was looking at CodytheMaverick’s blog to see what kind of new Wander posts I could find. I remembered reading Craig’s post about the new episodes premiering The Search for Captain Tim and The Heebie Jeebies. I got excited, all of the Wander episodes we’ve gotten during that year were one amazing episode after another, I couldn’t wait to see what these two episodes had in store. 

The Search for Captain Tim was an adorable episode about Hater teaming up with the alien spider hunter, Ripov, trying to reunite with his beloved Captain Tim. The Wander crew definitely knew how to pay homage to the Aliens films, just like they did with The Pet in Season 1. I thought this episode was awesome and heartwarming, I couldn’t wait to see what The Heebie Jeebies would bring.

And boy, was I in for a ride…

I still remember watching this episode in my parent’s bedroom and loving it from beginning to end. Granted I read on a post saying this episode in particular contained a jumpscare that could scare you, I didn’t notice it on my first viewing. However, I turned my head to the tv, catching a glimpse of the Phantomime’s eye and smile, it didn’t scare me. During that night when me and my mom watched it together, everything was going great, when the jumpscare appeared, I screamed, literally. 

After the episodes were over, I became obsessed with The Heebie Jeebies, I watched tons of videos during the summer, drew various pictures of scenes from the episode, recited it every chance I got. I haven’t felt this obsessed with a WOY episode since The Lonely Planet. I couldn’t get enough of The Heebie Jeebies and I definitely couldn’t stop thinking about it until one day, that’s when everything changed… 

I was finishing my favorite activity, spinning around in my desk chair while combining Mind Heist Evolution with The True Terror Beggings. After I was done, I ate dinner, span around for a few more minutes, then went to bed, ready for tomorrow.  I woke up early the next morning to get some iPad time before I had to go to work with my dad. I listened to MHE as pure usual and True Terror Beggings too. One thing I remember doing was making Wander repeating the word “Springs” over and over again, I don’t know why I did this, I just thought it was fun. What I didn’t know is that this lyric would not only start to follow me…

But also, haunt me. 

I don’t how it happen, but I could hear the lyric in my head every day, during my final years of high school, I could hear it everywhere. Nobody else could hear it but me. I remember making these odd, grunting noises whenever I herd it play in my mind. During every Friday, I did my combination of MHE and TTB’s, whenever I herd that lyric, I made that same grunting sound again while imagining running away from the Phantomimes. I have no idea why this lyric was haunting me, but pretty soon, I got my answer. 

In October 2016, I wrote a fanfic called “It Always Sticks With You.”, which told the fan story about me becoming haunted by the “dancing ghost mimes” lyric from the true terror begging’s and how I was going to be haunted by it all the time, hence the title. Sure, it wasn’t really that groundbreaking, but for my 16 year old self, it was a perfect story. But aside from becoming haunted by a lyric from a song and getting scared of an 11-minute episode, let me tell you about my encounters with these two WOY music videos and the song, Carousel.

When The Heebie Jeebies first came out, I remember seeing these MV based on the episode, one had the song, Carousel while the second was a mashup with The True Terror Begging’s. I love these videos and I still watch them because they bring me so much nostalgia. The first MV in particular, I will never forget listening to this on repeat. I loved imagining myself traveling through a dark forest seeing carousels everywhere. (Yeah, they made me think of dark scenes). Another thing I did was going on google, looking up pictures of abandoned carousels. I dunno why I did this too, but I was a weird sophomore back in these days.  The second video, which I love calling “The True Terror Carousel” was another MV that I adored. Obviously, it was the heebie jeebies, my favorite episode ever, not only that, but this MV would be one that I will remember getting chills whenever I herd the opening accordion. Basically, the reason why people choose this song for these MVs was because the accordion sounded nearly identical to The Phantomime’s accordion. It was a match made in heaven.

Whenever I listen to this mashup, I always pictured myself in a room filled with carousels as they quietly begin to turn slowly, after I notice them, I mutter to myself in a panic voice, “No, no, it can’t be!” before running off until seeing them everywhere and running away in grave terror. Don’t get me wrong, I do like carousels, but abandoned carousels are a whole different story. 

There’s so many things I love about The Heebie Jeebies, it’s a great episode, it has a bunch of hilarious moments, Wander’s crazy, scared expressions storyboarded by Mark Ackland, naming one of the expressions, “Scared McBrayer.”, the True Terror Begging’s, the Phantomimes, Wander and Sylvia facing their fears, the jumpscare at the ending that still gets me EVERY TIME as well as “Dancing ghost mimes that bounce just like springs!” But other than my favorite things I love about it, I love this episode and I am so proud to celebrate its 10th year anniversary.