Goosebumps Review

 

This is a review primarily focused on the original 62-book series of Goosebumps. One of the most notable things about Goosebumps outside of it being such an insanely successful book series for children is the insane production rate. 62 Books were published in the 5-year span between 1992 and 1997. This is a rate of over 1 book published a month, which is an absurd rate to publish books, even shorter children's novels like Goosebumps. If Stine's account that he only had freelancer writers help with outlining each book and that he came up with each book's concept and created the manuscript for each one itself then regardless of almost anything else about the series, Goosebumps would still be rather impressively technically just for the sheer volume of content produced, however, this would also go on to inform the series' worst tendencies.

It's a bit difficult for me to talk about Goosebumps, as many of its basic tendencies and premises go against my preferences. It's an episodic horror series for children and a tendency for quirkiness and irreverence. I am a grown woman who prefers serialized storytelling and gravitas and doesn't have a particular preference for horror media. As it stands I respect Goosebumps for its achievements; converting a generation of children into avid readers and creating of a distinctive brand identity despite its disconnected nature, more than I actually enjoyed it. That's not to say that I never enjoyed it, merely that the majority of the time I was reading it, I was keenly aware that I was not the target audience. 

What I find most interesting abstractly about Goosebumps is that despite the very disconnected nature of the books in the series, at least when it comes to the original series, there is still a very clear and recognizable feel and identity to Goosebumps despite the almost universal lack of recurring characters or plot points, that you can very easily tell when a book "feels" like Goosebumps via the presence of certain tropes and even more ephemerally a certain atmosphere and aesthetic type. Goosebumps books are horror but they tend towards a particular kind of horror, if only because of the necessity to make the horror for children widely approachable. 

It's similar, I would say, to the way that other Horror series can be episodic anthologies without much connection yet can feel tonally similar due to a tonal cohesion between them. The closest comparison I can think of would be The Twilight Zone, another example of episodic horror stories that lack cohesion in terms of characters or plot points, and with subtle changes in atmosphere over time, yet still tonally feel like they belong in the same universe. If Goosebumps can be compared to anything else, it would be in my estimation a mixture of the Twilight Zone and the pulpy horror magazine stories, with the rest of the differences being explained mostly due to the oddity of Goosebump's production as horror-comedy literature written at breakneck rate for children in the 1990s.

High Points of the Series:

1: When I think of the best Goosebumps books, most of them have one thing in common which is a sense of atmosphere. Many of them do a good job of evoking a sense of time and place, and creating a pulp-y creepy amusement park ride but no less real examples of a genre, such as the superhero genre (Attack of the Mutant), Egyptian archelogy adventure stories (The Mummy Duology) or classical Americana (Night of the Living Scarecrows.) While the concepts of the stories are often not particularly intimidating for an adult audience, the part that translates best are the portions of the book that are moer atmospherically ominous such as the midpoint of The Curse of Camp Cold Lake.

2: For most of its run Goosebumps is a horror-comedy, which is a hard balance to do, particularly for children and I think it does a really good job balancing the two. In particular, it's not so much that each book balances it in the middle but despite the similar feel of each book, there is a distinct difference in tone. Given the writer's desire to write many more outlandish concepts, it's was good to allow for a range of possible tones so that he could write a book a girl that drowned in a cold lake right after a book about a blob that eats people. 

3: RL Stine is very good at coming up with concepts and premises. While some of the books do rely on their premises, many of them do have very interesting concepts and ideas. The series is famous for its usage of twist endings but even outside them, many times concepts that could have been just simple have extra complications to make them more interesting. It's a series I would say that is very good at being creative, despite the extreme at which they were produced. 

Low Points of the Series:

1: The biggest problem with Goosebumps to me by far is exactly what you would expect given the extremely fast production rate. A lot of the books have very same-y characters and plots. The protagonist tends to be some combination of the following types: The Coward, The Loser, or the Prankster. The Plots tend to be "kid(s) get lost and run into scary things in sequence" or "kid(s) see scary things happen in sequence but are not believed and they or someone close to them is blamed for it." Many of the books especially as the series progressed tended to have far-out premises and then relied entirely on their premise without particularly interesting characterization or plotting

2: Though I was unable to find this quote precisely, I have heard it being stated that Stine deliberately avoided the serious complexities and grounded horrors of real life to keep the focus on being fun. I can't 100% confirm that this is the case but if it's true, it would not surprise me as much of Goosebumps avoids any particularly real or serious concerns in favor of shlock-y monsters of the book affairs. If this is his writing philosophy however, I must respectfully disagree. While it's true that strictly as a child I didn't really understand any kind of deeper themes, the series that had them were usually the series that stuck with me as I grew up because of my ability to grow in appreciation of the series with my own maturation. I would have liked if the series had a little more faith in its readers.

3: Many books in this series have a problem with a lack of build-up to things, again probably a result of a lack of planning due to the extreme pace with which they were made. Sometimes things would just happen inexplicably even as time was spent making every chapter end with a "scare" regardless of how much or little sense it makes. I can understand the desire to be quick-paced but to do so you need a lot of plot to go through at that pace and Goosebumps books don't tend to have that much plot per book. Once again I would have liked if the series could have more faith in the attention span of its readers not to leave if something dramatic doesn't happen every chapter, particularly if the thing that happens turns out to be nothing. 

Favorite Character:

Carly Beth: Carly Beth is both the most relatable and the most quintessential Goosebumps protagonist. She falls under the "Coward" type of protag mentioned above as her story is her struggling with her scaredy-cat reputation. Unlike other protagonists of this nature, what she has in the story is agency. Most Goosebumps protagonists either don't have agency and are basically forced into doing what they have to in order to survive, or they have a limited agency at the start and end of the story, once when they get involved with the scary phenomena in the book, and once at the end of the story when they must overcome their own flaws. Carly Beth doesn't have full agency across the entire story as the Mask takes more and more control over her, however, her diminishing agency and the restoration of it is the central characterization of the Haunted Mask and represents the extension of her original decision. The Haunted Mask is a character story more than anything, and what's smart about it is that as opposed to having a carnival monster as an antagonist and a stock protagonist, the Haunted Mask fuses them together as the latter becomes possessed by and struggles internally with the former, making the most dynamic character in the series. Beyond that, Carly is a fairly relatable protagonist, and her helping Steve in Haunted Mask II was a really cool plot point. 

Least Favorite Character:

Todd Barstow: Todd is the protagonist of Go Eat Worms! and is by far the worst protagonist in Goosebumps. There are a couple other characters that evoked as much disdain from me as this kid, including Tara the Terrible from The Cuckoo Clock of Doom and Kermit Majors from Monster Blood III and IV. But while these characters were legitimately awful, they were not the protagonist and the reader was expected to hate them, a design decision I hate personally, but does at least somewhat explain them. Todd on the other hand is the protagonist and he's creepy, gross, and shows early signs of child sociopathy. Todd regularly dissects living worms and even after the book's events, simply moves on to dissecting butterflies while still alive. He shows no empathy for others and regularly tries to "prank" his sister and her friend by putting worms on them, a disgusting "prank."

 

The following lists only include the original series of 62 books.

Bottom 10 Books:

10: #34, Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes:

I mentioned that a number of Goosebumps books picked a premise and relied strictly on that and this book is sort of the icon of that problem to me. This is a book with a really hard-to-sell premise which is very goofy and not really very interesting. And while Stine's writing isn't worse than normal here, it's also not better than normal here, meaning that in comparison to other Goosebumps books the only thing you can judge it on is its premise which does this book no favors. This book is both very predictable and, not coincidentally, very dull. Every plot point is incredibly predictable, following the Goosebumps script beat by beat. The book I'd contrast this with is #51, Beware the Snowman, which also has a rather goofy premise, but treats it with genuine gravitas, has good atmosphere writing, and a relatively distinct plot.

9: #31, Night of the Living Dummy II:

I wasn't particularly fond of the original Night of the Living Dummy. It's a lot of young girl getting blamed on bad things someone else is doing, which I genuinely can't understand how someone could find enjoyable. It's not the worst thing I've ever read but it has no appeal whatsoever. Beyond that it tends gross-out which I can't stand. At least the original had the interesting twin rivalry aspect and Mr. Wood is a bit more intimidating than Slappy for being much more violent and sociopathic. This book is simply the worst aspects of the original Night of the Living Dummy repeated. It's Slappy doing bad things and Amy getting framed, even when Sara knew that Amy didn't do it and everything Slappy does you know ahead of time because it pays special attention to it. In some ways I feel like this book should be both higher and lower because it's focused and has a clear identity, it's just that I dislike that identity. The books below are mostly books of random nonsense for most of a children's book. This book is kind of worse then them because while it built up to things, almost everything it built up to was negative. On the other hand if you compare it to the likes of Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes, it has far more of its own identity of the books above and at least has a somewhat satisfying ending. This is roughly the average position for it.

8: #44, Say Cheese and Die - Again!

The evil Cursed Camera, one that kills people, horrifically injures people, and makes them disappear from existence, takes a picture of Greg and Shari, which makes them... get really fat and really thin respectively. Oh the horror. A large amount of this book is the two changing weights, and people mocking Greg. Even the teacher comments on it. Needless to say, not a good gimmick to center a book around. Greg also apparently learned nothing from the last book as not only does he give a report on the Cursed Camera for school, apparently just expecting people to believe him, but he then digs up the camera to try and prove its existence despite it killing people. And the climax.... Spoilers I suppose if you care for this book in particular, but the climax is they print up a negative of the pictures which reverses the effects which is not a very satisfying climax. Combined with some added gross in elements, as well as the characters being made absolute idiot so they can't learn anything from the last book (last book showed that if you tore up the picture, the effects ended which is what brought Shari from being erased, but this time they don't wanna do it in case it...for some reason....rips them to pieces), and you've got a pretty bad book.

7: #55, The Blob That Ate Everyone:

There are some Goosebumps books particularly later on that can be accurately described as semi-arbitrary events happening one after the other. I'm not particularly fond of these, as they feel random and frustrating as the events have no logical throughline. But while Shocker on Shock Street redeemed itself somewhat with imo one of the best endings in the series and Beast from the East was at least creative and had an alright ending, the Blob that Ate Everyone really lacks in redeeming factors. The ending is unexpected but similarly random and makes the entire book to that point feel particularly pointless. The central plot is about a kid getting a typewriter he thinks causes things to happen. No one is forcing him to use it, nor is anyone forcing him to write particularly bad things on it, nor is the typewriter twisting his words to the worst interpretation. It truly lacks in any particular conflict. 

6: #48, Attack of the Jack-O'-Lanterns:

The biggest problem I have with this book is the sheer lack of it. This book is not a particularly short Goosebumps book but it lacks a lot of plot. You might wonder how that's possible. A good-sized section of this book is several flashbacks explaining how we came to this point. This is the first eight chapters which is a solid quarter and some change to explain what most books in the series would in a few pages. This is then followed by a daydream sequence, meaning that the plot only really begins moving after the first third of the entire book is completed. Maybe this won't bother some as much as me, but for someone who really values efficient writing, this was really annoying. And the plot is still sparse from there. The entire set-up is that Drew and his friends want to get revenge on two other pranking kids Lee and Tabby but then the entire group gets taken along by two pumpkin-headed characters they assumed were initially their friends to go trick or treating forever. It feels kinda played out given how simple the premise is and how much of the book it takes up with extended scenes of the Jack-O'-Lanterns forcing the kids to eat candy so they have more room in their bags for trick or treating. Also Lee is possibly an African-American stereotype. I am not an African-American so I don't wanna comment on the matter, I just wanted to mention it's something that made me mildly uncomfortable when it came up. I've looked up other peoples' thoughts on this and this seems to be a really divisive one with people who absolutely love it and people who absolutely hate it. I don't like when people assume to know why I like what I like if I don't tell them, particularly if they don't like that thing so I'm not going to presume to know why people like this one. If I had to guess and based on what they say it's the sheer Halloween spirit of the entire thing. That said I just found it very drawn out.

5: #58, Deep Trouble II:

Truth be told, there's a pretty big gap between the bottom five and the five above. While there were ten books I considered maybe candidates for positions 6-10, the bottom five I knew right away, and each one is substantially worse than the one last one. I am surprised people like this one as much as they do, I was struggling to get through parts. It's another one of the Goosebumps books where a procession of semi-arbitrary events happen over and over. While there's something more of a coherent theme in that its sea creatures grown massive, the books feels aimless, with a long detour to an abandoned island where they do abandoned island tropes. I enjoyed the first one, the plight of the mermaid and Billy's concern for it was a good plot. But this lacks any central narrative to it. The Villain, Dr. Ritter, is also one of the blandest in the series history. I read why people like this one and it was because it was an action-y adventure story. That's not a super big appeal to me personally and it's not something I think RL Stine does particularly well.

4: #47, Legend of the Lost Legend: 

One of the two infamous books of the series, Legend of the Lost Legend is the epitome of one of the two big plotline errors in Goosebumps, the less common latter one of "random things happen one after another." This is the book where there is truly the least throughline of any of the books. It is an immense challenge for anyone to actually follow what is happening in this book. And unlike the other books in that line of story save parts of Deep Trouble II, this one is also rather boring. It's that combination of nonsensical and boring that really kills this one. I genuinely don't know how to start describing this book as nothing congeals and most of it I forgot soon after reading. The book starts with a story in a story, and then the rest of the book is two kids lost in the woods encountering bizarre things. It's easier to mention what I did like about it. I think the start and end of this book are alright and I like Justin and Marissa's father. However, the vast midsection of this book will do random things like have the kids be attacked by mice, only for them to turn out to be robots that they switch off or the kids getting swallowed by a giant cat only to be spat out for apparently no reason. There's only maybe one book more infamous than it...

3: #62, Monster Blood IV:

Possibly the single most infamous book in the entire series, with its only real competition being Legend of the Lost Legend. I like looking up what other people thought of things I experienced and I have found no one defending Monster Blood IV. And people defended Legend of the Lost Legend. This book was really hard to get through the vast majority. This book is the epitome of the other bad plotline problem Goosebumps book had, the older one which is "a book about repetitive reputational damage." It's almost ironic that this is the last book in the series as though the series had started to circle on itself. Monster Blood IV is a cartoon caricature of Goosebumps and the recurring faults with the series. In Monster Blood II Evan turned giant and saved his class from giant Cuddles the Hamster. In Monster Blood III he turned into a skyscraper-sized giant and was chased by the military. Both of these events happened in broad daylight, yet here everyone doesn't believe and acts like he's an irresponsible kid. Kermit keeps blaming Evan for the horrible things that happen because of Kermit, and his mom keeps believing him despite there being no reason for any of that. Most of these books are spent corralling these blue faux monster blood-multiplying creatures, things that are so unintimidating and lacking in substance they read like a parody of the series' threats to this point. And the last few chapters are as abrupt and out of nowhere as a moment from Legend of the Lost Book.  It's the most universally disliked book in the series. However what's weird is, there are two Goosebumps books I dislike more. And one of them isn't even a commonly disliked book in the series. But this book had a few moments that I didn't actively dislike. There's a part where Kermit apologizes to Evan and realizes he's been in the wrong. That was alright. The threat of a multiplying monster is at least a new one to the series. This book was frustrating most of the time, but the second worst book in the series to me is a book a lot of people seem to actually like but I genuinely didn't enjoy a single part reading.

2: #40, Night of the Living Dummy III:

I knew even as I was reading it I would have a hard time explaining why this book was frustrating me as much as it was. Most books, most pieces of media in general I have a fairly neutral reaction to, but this one evoked a real genuine negative emotion from me. If I had to explain why, allow me to use an analogy. Imagine if someone told you a joke that was not funny and also mildly insulting. Then, when you didn't laugh, they said it louder. And then when you didn't laugh again, they said it even louder and they just kept doing it. Night of the Living Dummy is in all the ways that matter, the same story as the second Night of the Living Dummy that came out not that long before this one, which in all the ways that mattered was the same story as the first one which was already one I didn't like to the point I considered it for the bottom ten. Every single thing that happened in this book I knew what was going to happen. Not only because it was the only logical thing to happen, but because I had already read it in the same series in a book of the same name. Items are established as valuable to people get mysterious vandalized in the night. Heroine punished and blamed for it. She continues to insist it's the dummy, even though she should realize why nobody is believing her. The midpoint "twist" that it was really the one family member who was psychologically abusing them by making them think it was the dummy and getting them blamed for everything. I didn't like any of these elements in the first two and the third just does it again. What made it so painful was because I had read all this before I knew it was coming. Cousin Zane who they promised to not scare has a valuable camera that means a lot to him. I wonder what Slappy is gonna do. The worst part of this book was how immediately and totally Trina and Dan's father assumed the worst of them. There was not a single moment I didn't want this book to be over. However the final book was a book I genuinely considered giving its own tier.

1: #21, Go Eat Worms!

I'll admit, I didn't exactly have high hopes for a book with this title. But it was worse than I feared. RL Stine has stated that there were three books he was disappointed in. One was The Barking Ghost which I was pretty "eh" on but didn't think it was that book. One was Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes which... understandable. And the other was this. Night of the Living Dummy III frustrated me. Frustration is a negative emotion, but the negative emotion I hate the most is disgust and this book is nothing but gross-out. The entire thing is about Todd, a worm-obsessed kid and the worst protagonist in the entire series history. He shows a complete lack of empathy towards others, has a desire to dissect worms (and latter butterflies) while they're still alive, and pranks people by putting worms on them like a creep. And the other characters also bad. This books pull the same insane plot twist as the Night of the Living Dummy books, having the midtwist be that his sister was doing the seemingly supernatural events earlier as revenge, even though this retroactively makes her seem deranged. None of the characters are remotely likeable and the plot is no better. Every single event in this book is worms in an unusual place designed to evoke disgust. I am very disgust sensitive and this was just awful to read. Even without the disgust factor though, in fact especially if you don't get disgusted easily, this book is just boring. It's the same thing everytime, worms in a place where there are not usually worms. It's not scary, it's just gross. The "climactic" fight with the big worm is introduced and solved almost instantly and the twist ending is just...so dumb. I would rather read every other book in the bottom ten than reread this. 

Top 10 Books:

10: #59, The Haunted School: 

It seems to be a pretty common belief that Goosebumps lost its steam as it went on, but it didn't have any sharp decline point and everyone who's read the series seem to support at least of the last stretch of books being up there, usually either Werewolf Skin or the Haunted School. For me it's the Haunted School. The Haunted School is one of the most creative books in the series, having the protagonist being sucked into a colorless world and slowly being drained of color. The black and white children that went insane are some of the most chilling villains in the series and the scene of their festival of the black liquid is one of the most legitimately scary things in the entire series. It's evocative and intense in a way that so much of the series shies away from, and the revelation and fate of Thalia are surprising and engaging. 

9: #2, Stay Out of the Basement:

If the Haunted School is the most scary the series ever gets, Stay out of the Basement near the other end of the series is at least one of the most creepy times the series gets. Goosebumps had to thread a fine needle of pulp and camp with gruesome and macabre with most books airing on the former side. This book threads that needle beautifully, having a menacing atmosphere and a plot that creeps forward at a good pace yet still remaining pulp-y enough an adventure to have that Goosebumps flavor. While the plot is as unrealistic as most in the series, the presentation in the first two books has a grounded believable air to it that makes the threat feel far more menaced. The mystery of Dr. Brewer isn't really any more scientifically believable than the one in, say, My Hairiest Adventure, but while the former presents it subject matter with more nuanced diverse forms of build-up, showing the plantlike transformations of Dr. Brewer in myriad ways that become more and more overt and with the reveal being far more conceptually terrifying. 

8: #16, One Day At Horrorland:

Outside maybe the first book in the series, One Day At Horrorland is without a doubt the most important book in the entire series. It is the transition point of the series. The first fifteen books, especially the first two, were relatively grounded horror for children and after this point, the series becomes campy horror-comedy. The transition wasn't day and night but this is a very clear point of transition regardless. The premise is Lizzie's family going to a horror-themed amusement park called Horrorland. Horrorland is immediatly different in presentation. The scary things are no longer so obscure and hidden and specific; a magic mirror, hidden closed off rooms of masks, scarcely appearing mud monsters, a single cursed camera. Now instead, there's an entire amusement park of different scares and rides. What's great about this book conceptually is that is what Goosebumps is. It's a collection of horror-themed amusement park rides for children in book form. When Goosebumps came back, it came back under the Horrorland brand with Horrors as the mascot because Horrorland is Goosebumps. This book might not quite be the example of Goosebumps at its best, but this is Goosebumps at its most pure form.  I was reading this book and there was a point where Lizzie remembered a weird sign saying "please don't pinch the horrors." She then pinches a horror and it deflates followed by her saying "Well, I guess always come through in a pinch." I usually wait to finish before I put each book in a tier but I read that and I put this book straight into A Tier. It's dumb and bizarre and weird.  It's a foreshadowing of a bizarrely comedic anticlimax that deflates all the tension out of the air like a horror deflating like a balloon or like a ride coming to a sudden stop and that's what makes it Goosebumps. That was the moment I knew Goosebumps was born. And the ending when the Horror offers them tickets again. I can't read that in any other way but the author saying "thank you for riding the ride, come again." This book is maybe placed too high but it's so perfectly an expression of the series' values and identity I had to put it somewhere in the top ten.

7: #5, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb:

A much-underappreciated book, The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb is very similar in my mind to Stay out of the Basement as a well-balanced book between pulpy adventures, this time in the vein of classic archeology mummy stories, and relatively grounded horror for children. There are two complaints I generally see about this book, both of which I kind of see, but neither I agree with. The first of the two is that Gabe is a "whiny" protagonist. While Gabe is perhaps not the bravest or most competent protagonist in Goosebumps history, his anxieties feel far more grounded in this book than they do most, as he spends the entire book in a foreign land where he is separated from his parents, with a people he can not communicate with, either in an unexplored pyramid which is a legitimately unsafe location or avoiding capture from a strange and intimidating man following him through the Egyptian streets, a much more believable and grounded fear. Gabe and Sari's dynamic struck me as more real than most of their ilk in the series if only because while Sari is braver and more experienced than her cousin, it's not entirely one-sided. It's been shown in experiments that if a larger rat dominates a younger rat every time they play, they won't want to play anymore, and that if a larger rat lets the younger rat win sometimes, the younger rat will want to play again. This to me is the difference between Gabe and Sari's dynamic and many similar ones in the series, I see why Gabe tries and his weaknesses aren't so exaggerated. I also like Uncle Ben as a responsible adult figure who isn't oblivious to the threats and I enjoyed the villains. Ahmed is one of the few Goosebumps villains that has canonically killed people before and has a generally unusually menacing air. The other complaint is that it's a very slow-paced book. I can sort of see that complaint, but while the book progresses slowly, much like a metaphorical mummy, it does always move. Unlike the norm where the same sort of event, usually the protagonist sees something something spooky and is disbelieved/blamed for it, is repeated several times, this book rarely repeats events, it just moves towards the ending. As such I don't really mind the slow burn because it feels like it's constantly moving. Also that's kind of standard for mummy stories for better or worse. I also enjoyed the ambiance and atmosphere of this book. Mythological Fantasy is one of my favorite genres, and the weight of the long history of ancient Egypt and the strangeness of their world gives even works aimed at children a sense of deeper meaning. As an aside, it was fairly forward thinking of RL Stine to have the Egyptian book have protagonists who are of Egyptian descent. 

6: #45, Ghost Camp: 

Ghost Camp is one of the most well-vaunted books in the series and I'm afraid I can't say much about it that hasn't been said. The premise sounds as bog standard for a Goosebumps book as could be, Harry and Alex go to Camp Spirit Moon only to find out that it's a camp populated with spirits. But while many books in the series could be argued to be relying solely on their premise over any substance, Ghost Camp is the inverse, an unassuming premise hiding some of the best writing in the series. If I had to explain what makes it so good, Goosebumps since Horrorland are horror-comedies. But they're horror comedies most of the time strictly aimed at children, with campy horror and childish comedy. Ghost Camp excels in both regards however, with legitimately dark scary atmosphere and imagery such as children impaling their feet on poles or sticking utensils in their necks or the ghosts converging on the brothers' position near the end of the book or turning to mist if they try to leave. On the other hand, the comedy is tied into the tone of the book such as the spirits fighting over Harry and Alex's bodies, and the jokes spaced out appropriately. The result is a book that reads to all audiences as compelling as the series in general does to its target audience, a book exceeding in universality and timelessness. There are also genuinely emotional moments such as Lucy's lament about the fate of she and the other ghost campers and exceeds in the atmosphere along with the best books in the series.

5: #1, Welcome to Dead House

The first book of the series, Welcome to Dead House was clearly written before the tone, genre, or target audience was exactly nailed down giving it a pretty cool novelty factor compared to the majority of the series. This book is far gorier and bleaker in tone than the rest of the series. It features a family moving into the town of Dark Falls only to slowly discover that a chemical accident left the town inhabited by the living dead who require the blood of the living in sacrifice to persist. Far more adult in tone than later entries, even more than Stay out of the Basement and especially the first Monster Blood, the dark falls denizens are some of the most disturbing monsters in the series and the attempt to escape them is one of the most engaging stories. This story is as darkly intense as Ghost Camp but while Ghost Camp's darkness was more ethereal and atmospheric, bound up in dark comedy, Welcome to Dead House's is oppressively grounded in viscera like skin falling off and the harsh tone of being surrounded in a town of the living dead. The ending is also one of the darkest in the series where the family finally escapes and sees another family headed to Dark Falls with the denizens apparently risen again.. and just lets them go, so willing to be free of the dark that they consign others to it. That said for all the ways it doesn't feel like Goosebumps proper, it does have one line in particular that does, a line that evokes Goosebumps so strongly that it feels like a precursor to Horrorland's line of "always come through in a pinch." Before the truth is revealed, several people who were sacrificed in the Dead House, now living dead, comment to the children protagonists that they lived in that house before them. After the truth is revealed and they take their true form before them they say in a cruel delight that "We once lived in your house. Now we're DEAD in your house!" A truly delicious line that evokes the Goosebumps spirit.

4: #27, A Night in Terror Tower:

It's possibly because I was listening to bardcore while reading this but the atmosphere of this one felt absolutely top notch, perhaps the best in the entire series. This book really has so many good things going for it. Like The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb, it has a plot that is always progressing since the start of the book with no needless repetition or needless scenes of people disbelieving the protagonists. However while that book was a bit lumbering like a mummy, this book is a fast chase sequence the whole time. The villain, the Lord High Executioner is possibly the most underrated Goosebumps villain. He's menacing and competent the entire time and yet still provides a certain entertainment factor. He's not exactly compelling but that's extraordinarily rare for this series regardless. The buildup to the twist is good and this book has just the right amount of plot to fill its page comfortably. Much of the scares of this come from things that happened in real history, the execution of young nobles and the horrific torture devices that were actually used in the middle ages, making the fear feel much more grounded with the only real supernatural element being the magical time travel needed to make the plot work, and even that is incorporated into the plot fairly well. Morgred the wizard is an interesting and more complex than normal adult figure who wishes to protect the children ultimately but also is more interested in saving himself if need be, and the children are while not the strongest personalities in the series, also less antagonistic to each other than normal and the twist about them feels fitting given their personality types. This book is just a really solid good book all-around for me, no less grounded and mature feeling than Welcome to the Dead House, but with a happier tone ultimately, and with a fun historical setting and genre. 

3: #23, Return of the Mummy:

Return of the Mummy is a sequel to The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb and is basically just improving on all the elements that people most disliked of the first. Gabe and Sari have both undergone character development with Gabe being more competent and braver, able to verbally contend with Sari better, and Sari becoming less aggressive, partially due to her concern for her father. The pace is far faster than the first, yet remains just as focused and linear a plot as the original. And while I liked Ahmed, Princess Nila is even superior, mixing elements of threatening, entertaining, and compelling better than any other villain in the series. Everything I said about the Egyptian atmosphere for the original applies to the sequel yet the relationships between Gabe, Sari, and Uncle Ben are all improved, the plot feels more personal given Uncle Ben' and Nila's relationship, there are more twists in the plot as opposed to Ahmed being obviously evil from the start in the original, etc. My only real critique is some continuity flubs with the original.

However just as the worst two books were in their own tier of bad to me, thoroughly unpleasant from start to finish, these are also two books in the series that are in their own tier at the top for me, books I would recommend even if you're not reading the series, books that are good enough to stand alone apart from all context of being part of this 90s horror-comedy series for children. 

2: #10, The Ghost Next Door:

The Ghost Next Door has without a doubt the best pathos and one of the best plots in the entire series. This is one of the most strange books in the series and it's not because it's arguably a different genre like How I Learned to Fly or a mindscrew like I Live in Your Basement, it's because it's a relatively somber book focused on gravitas. The book stars Hannah Fairchild who is concerned that the boy living next to her, Danny, is actually a ghost and gets strange scary visions. It is eventually revealed, however, Spoilers, that Hannah herself is the ghost. That her visions are of when she accidentally burned her house down and her entire family perished. Her realization of this and her subsequent guilt and sadness at being along is perhaps the definitive heart-wrenching scene in the entire series. The ending of this book is also possibly the best in the entire series when she realizes the reason she lingered on the mortal plane is to save Danny from dying in a house fire himself. After saving him and redeeming herself, she goes to be with her family in the afterlife in a downright lovely ending. This book is emotionally evocative more than any other in the series and dignified. I found it funny that in the Goosebumps film, Hannah is depicted as Stine's daughter and the sole good monster, almost as if to comment on how strange this book is compared to the others. The one weakness of the book is what everyone says, that the Shadow Danny subplot feels a bit tacked on to make this book "scary." This book could very well be the best book in the series and to be honest I consider it an equally good book to the first place, but in the end I gave the first place position to...

1: #11, The Haunted Mask:

If The Ghost Next Door has the best pathos in the series without question, the Haunted Mask has the best characterization without question. The book features scaredy cat protagonist Carly Beth bullied relentlessly by her peers for her timid nature. For Halloween, she insists on the scariest mask, one that was considered off-limits and is actually magic. She wants to not be scared anymore, to be the one who scares. But due to the Mask's nature, she can't take it off and slowly loses herself to the monstrous personality of the Mask. There's an immediate character complexity and psychological realism here that dwarfs any other depiction in the series. Despite being closer to the Goosebumps norm tonally than most here, it is in its own strange way the most mature and wise of the series. It is an immature perspective that separates the world into victims and victimizers, monsters and heroes, all conflicts strictly external battles of internal wills. In reality, external battles are reflections of the internal battles within the soul. By glue-ing together the protagonist, the cowardly victim, and the monstrous beast the series makes internal the conflict in most of the series, the need to face the scary things of the world turned towards the scariest thing in the world, the monster inside oneself. Carly's hatred yet admiration for the things that scare her, her desire to be that and thus to avoid be herself is a complex yet immediately understandable drive and though she can't love herself it is telling that it is a symbol of love for her that eventually defeats the monster she's become. Even outside all that this book is top tier. The plot moves at a steady pace and has no redundant scenes. The atmosphere is perfect and ties in with the themes exactly, focused around Halloween when children symbolically take new faces, new identities to learn to contend with the monster within them. The only weakness of the book for me is the bullying of Carly Beth, vicious and gross and as an unfortunate product of the 90s is depicted as normal bullying between children.

Picking between this book and The Ghost Next Door was an interesting debate. Their strengths lie in different areas. The Ghost Next Door in both its strengths and weaknesses were less personal to me, evoking a general pathos and having a slight arbitrary addition. The Haunted Mask in contrast has a more specifically interesting characterization but also scenes I found genuinely uncomfortable for the wrong reasons. I consider them equal as books in general. The difference was made when I asked which was the better Goosebumps book specifically. While Goosebumps are episodic and don't generally tie into each other literally, they do tie together in tone and atmosphere and genre. And when I asked which fit better, it was The Haunted Mask clearly. The Ghost Next Door feels an aberration in Goosebumps, with its worst quality being trying to fit it into the series tonally. It's a series that was considered deserving of special separation in the movie. In contrast, the Haunted Mask feels like Goosebumps at its best, feels like the perfected form of the Goosebumps formula, fitting into the series far more gracefully. One Day at Horrorland may be Goosebumps at its most iconic, most Goosebumps-iest, but The Haunted Mask is Goosebumps at its best. As an aside, Stine has also been asked his favorite Goosebumps, and he picked The Haunted Mask. I would agree.

Happy Halloween!