Yes YES!! You need to play the long game (this might be agood example of the thin line between love and hate...)
Or a cartoon. With the Scooby Doo one, have you noticed that every single monster is a fake not an actual monster? So they are scared of fakes rather than actual monsters because they've never actually met an actual monster... Just sayin'.
... They encounter some real monsters eventually ... But the series was getting a bit weird at that point. (I think this was after they introduced Scrappy Doo)