Jeff Dixon wants to frighten your children.

Dixon, a father himself, has no desire to induce nightmares. But as an executive producer and creator of “Curses!,” a new television series from DreamWorks Animation, he would like to test the mettle of young viewers, just as his own was tested when he watched horror movies as a boy.

“Every single time, it actually built confidence in myself, as a kid, that I could actually tackle some real fears and obstacles in real life,” Dixon said in a group video interview that included Jim Cooper, the executive producer with whom he developed the series. “I know that may sound silly, to be like, ‘I want to scare kids,’ but I actually do.”

“Curses!,” whose entire 10-episode first season begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday, has another executive producer with expertise in frights: John Krasinski, who directed and was a writer of “A Quiet Place” and its sequel. But while that film franchise might really cause nightmares, “Curses!” offers humor and animation, which help smooth horror’s “sharper corners,” Dixon said. (Krasinski and the series’s voice cast declined to be interviewed for this article because of the continuing Screen Actors Guild strike.)

“Curses!,” however, does imitate “A Quiet Place” in its focus on a loving, imperiled family: Alex Vanderhouven, an archaeologist; Sky, a former art conservator; and their children, Pandora, an intrepid 12-year-old who thrives on skateboarding, video games and impulsive action; and Horus, nicknamed Russ, who is 15 and reflective, cautious and obsessed with puzzles.

Although their parents, who are voiced by Reid Scott and Lyric Lewis, are principled professionals, Alex’s great-great grandfather, the explorer Cornelius Vanderhouven, spent his career ruthlessly plundering artifacts, which now reside in a secret wing of the family’s spooky mansion.

Alex has long suspected that his ancestor’s looting brought about a family curse, a theory that is proved in the season premiere, when he suddenly turns to stone. That leaves Sky and the children, who are voiced by Gabrielle Nevaeh and Andre Robinson, to try to undo the sorcery while dealing with a related problem: the tendency of the house’s hidden relics to become living, breathing menaces. In early episodes, a snarling golden baboon head, robbed from Congo, unleashes a reign of terror.

The rampaging artifacts’ motivations, however, sometimes resemble E.T.’s. “It’s not that it’s bad,” Cooper says of the baboon head. “It’s just trying to go home.”

As showrunners, Dixon and Cooper refer to “Curses!” as “gateway horror,” but it is also gateway history. Each story line focuses on a looted treasure. Although the objects are never based on a real disputed antiquity — viewers won’t encounter anything like the Elgin Marbles — the relics were inspired by pieces that archaeologists might actually unearth, including Olmec statues and an Aztec necklace. And DreamWorks wanted authenticity.

The idea was “to have all of these key dramatic elements grounded in real cultural facts,” said Karen Bellinger, an anthropologist and archaeologist from Past Preservers, a consulting organization that advised the producers on the scripts and the fictional artifacts. When DreamWorks showed her a drawing of a Celtic cloak with ties, for instance, she told the designers that the closure was historically inaccurate, while approving the decorative detail. (The cloak appears in Episode 7.)

As the Vanderhouvens investigate how such objects relate to the curse, they also research the civilizations that created them. In addition to having overtones of a National Geographic special, “Curses!” explores topics unusual for children’s television: stolen cultural patrimony and its repatriation, which the show’s creators followed in the news almost daily.

“We would joke, a little bit early on, about how our show is Indiana Jones in reverse,” Dixon said. Whereas that swashbuckling archaeologist of the movies often sought to take antiquities, the Vanderhouvens are frequently trying to return them.

“Indiana Jones would say things like, ‘That belongs in a museum,’” Dixon said. “And that got us thinking about like, well, that sentence isn’t always necessarily true.” So, he added, “those complexities and thinking about them, and where things belong — our horror kind of is pulled out from that.”

The DNA of the series is also rooted in their own. Dixon and Cooper, who met while their children were attending the same Southern California elementary school, have filled the series with personal references.

“My family jokes that we have a curse, because all the men of my dad’s generation died before they were 50,” Cooper said. During the interview, he pulled out a photograph, circa 1909, that shows his grandfather as a child of about 4, cheerfully holding a human skull. (Its origins are unknown.)

When a relative discovered the image, Cooper said, “we were kind of, like, ‘Yup, I’m pretty sure that’s the source of the family curse.’” When he mentioned the find to Dixon, the series was born.

“Curses!” has a skull, too. Called Larry and wearing a pirate’s eye patch, it is one of two awakened artifacts in the Vanderhouven mansion that actually assist the family. The other, Stanley, is a wooden totem. Larry (Rhys Darby) and Stanley (James Marsters) provide comic banter and visual gags that may evoke memories of R2-D2 and C-3P0, the robot duo in “Star Wars.”

But while “Curses!” may also call to mind family movies like “Jumanji” and “Night at the Museum,” its creators say they drew primarily on 1950s EC Comics, like “Tales From the Crypt,” for the show’s look.

Children may not be familiar with that series, but it is “an immediate kind of horror anchor” for adults, said Leo Riley, the show’s supervising producer. He has also introduced visual references to films like “The Shining.” (Robert Englund, the star of the “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies, voices Cornelius in flashbacks.)

“Curses!” and “Fright Krewe,” another new horror series with adolescent characters, “are the first time we’ve gone into something this spooky and scary,” said Peter Gal, the chief creative officer for television at DreamWorks Animation. But, he added, young viewers respond to thrillers. Witness the new series adaptation of the “Goosebumps” novels and the success of “Stranger Things.”

“It’s amazing how many research sessions we’re in, where kids talk about ‘Stranger Things,’” Gal said. “So if they’re watching that, we don’t want them to watch our spooky, scary show and have it be ‘less than’ to them. Compared to everything else in the kids’ landscape, we really pushed on the tone.”

The intense suspense, he said, distinguishes “Curses!” from older, sillier animated mysteries. “It’s not ‘Scooby-Doo,’” he said, adding that in “Curses!,” “the stakes are huge. It’s the family’s survival.”

To draw diverse audiences into the Vanderhouvens’ plight, the showrunners said they created a family that would be relatable. Cornelius might have been a white colonialist, but the contemporary parents are an interracial couple, and the adventures involve global societies as the family tries to undo the curse.

“They’re always aware of the fact that, ‘Well, it’s come upon us because our family has created a crisis for all these other world cultures,’” said Bellinger, the adviser.

Dixon and Cooper hope the show will engage parents, as well as viewers from elementary through high school. Cooper recalled that some children’s TV bored him when his own triplets were growing up, but a more exciting series would lead to adult conversation. “You’d meet another parent,” he said, “and he’s like, ‘Did you see that episode?’”

“You know, we want to make that show,” Cooper said, “where every one of the family is excited that it’s on.”