You're not mounting the CD and back then the videos most certainly played from the CD...

well ok I tried mounting the cdrom and nothing changed so I uninstalled the game and tried another method - mounting an iso of the game:

IMGMOUNT E C:\dosbox\afraid\Afraid.iso -t iso
mount c c:\dosbox\afraid
e:
UNIVBE
cd drivers
sbopl2
sbvol
sbwave
c:
cd vnm\afraid

but I still have the same problem sound and gameplay but no videos...
I'm obviously missing some important step but I have no idea what it is

try mounting the cd as D

Besides doing what Leileilol said, the game expects the exact same mountings while installing and while playing...for example if you mount dosbox as c: when installing...if you mount c as dosbox/afraid instead of just dosbox...there's another potential problem. Also, the game probably created a batch file for you for loading (if they're indeed needed) all those drivers you call by hand, so you're probably better off calling them with that batch file instead of executing them yourself since that batch file might also be calling something you don't and add parameters you're obviously not adding.

thanks guys I finally got it working. so I stop manually loading the drivers except "univbe" but with the cdrom I kept getting an error asking for the drivers, however with the iso mounted it worked - videos hooray !! 😁
thanks again guys you've saved the Halloween special for my Youtube Channel
it's probably better this way anyway so I don't have to have a disc in the drive while I'm recording.