Social media users have uploaded an episode of Sesame Street, which was reportedly so scary it was removed from syndication.
The episode has been shared on Youtube and Reddit by users and features Margaret Hamilton as the Wicked Witch of the West from The Wizard of Oz.
Hamilton lands in Sesame Street in search of her “stolen broomstick,” which has been picked up by David, played by Northern Calloway.
Throughout the episode, Hamilton repeatedly frightens David in hopes of getting her broom back.
She eventually succeeds by pretending to be an old woman and flies off. “This is glorious!” she shouts before taking her hands off the broom and yelling: “Look! No hands!”
The episode, which came out on February 10, 1976, intended to teach kids “the value of planning by creating and implementing methods of retrieving the broom,” as per Muppet Wiki.
However, it didn’t go down too well with parents, who wrote to complain about the episode. The Sesame workshop allegedly received “an unusually large amount of mail responses from parents, almost entirely negative, within a short time frame,” Muppet Wiki added.
The “lost” video was uploaded to YouTube on Saturday, and the poster, Mike Minnick, wrote in the caption: “Only aired once in the mid-70s, it was deemed too scary for children and shelved. A small clip was released in 2019 at a Jim Henson exhibit, but the full footage has finally been found.”
Other users were quick to comment on the episode, with one writing: “People forget the type of exposure kids had to ‘scary things’ then compared to today. She was a real-life villain, and one of the only kid-friendly movies kids could watch. I agree that this was just such a great loss to be gone for so long, especially for Margaret Hamilton. Such a legend.”
Another user, that remembered the episode from all those years ago, commented: “This episode scared me beyond belief when I was 5. I would anxiously watch the start of each episode after seeing this one, to make sure it wasn’t the ‘witch one’ again. Of course, I never saw it again, and at some point convinced myself it was a nightmare.
“After doing an internet search for it a few years ago, I saw the articles about it and felt vindicated that I wasn’t crazy. Thanks for uploading this! I hope it is allowed to stay!”
You can watch the episode here.
What do you think?