Epic Win: Goosebumps
Submitted by A Barbian
R.L. Stine’s hyper-popular Goosebumps series got a lot of kids reading their first chapter books. There were 62 books published between ‘92 and ‘97, as well as a television show and video game. I remember being addicted to Goosebumps — my favorites being The Haunted Mask II and The Ghost Next Door. Wikipedia has a full list of the titles. Which was your favorite?
Update: Featured Comments
Jester sez:
WIN. SO MUCH WIN. I still -have- all of the books. I could not bring myself to get rid of them.
coyote is fuzzy yet again replied:
Never get rid of a good book.
Oh. My. God. YES. I think I read all the way up to #50. Those books, along with Animorphs really taught kids the art of reading. I keep getting reassured that kids hate reading these days because there are no modern day books like these nowadays. Hoping to dispel some of those thoughts I donated all of my Goosebumps and Animorphs books to my old elementary school.
P.S. My favorites were A Night in Terror Tower, The Barking Ghost, The Horror at Camp Jellyjam, and A Shocker on Shock Street. #1-Welcome to Dead House was really the only freakishly horrific one because that’s the only book where something non-evil actually died – a dog.
I just had to add a few more: The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, Ghost Beach, Let’s Get Invisible!, and One Day at Horrorland. I can’t believe I forgot to add The Werewolf of Fever Swamp. I think I read that book ten times.
A night in terror tower topped the list for me. I still have the movie in my basement but you know my dad the crazy mad scientist and his plant expiraments.
Mine was the one about the family trapped in the monster theme park.
My favorites of Goosebumps were definitely the Monster Blood books. 1 – 4, with the first and second ones being the best to me. They got me so drawn in, I just couldn’t wait for another to come out, but I really loved the first Goosebumps book I ever read, which was The Haunted Mask. Seriously, all the books from Goosebumps are just amazing.
Yes, Monster Blood!
One of the good things about Goosebumps was that, even though good won pretty much everytime, there’d be something at the end that let you know evil was still out there. (The dog at the end of Dead House, bad guy at the end of Terror Tower, Grady howling at the end of Fever Swamp, ect.)
I loved the night of the living dummy books, I even begged my parents to by me a slappy doll off ebay.
That one was the only one that scared me. And I don’t know why but something about it still creeps me out and now i’m grown. The show for it was so creepy for this one, way worse than the book
omg im at work and im totally freaking out i love those books!! i still have them all, and ill probably buy any of the missing ones to complete my collection.
i remember reading them in october and it always felt extra eerie to read them at that time than any other.
i think my faves are monster blood, stay out of the basement, welcome to horrorland, and say cheese and die. i used to get them at school and by the time i got home i had already read the whole thing. I was so into scary books my mom started buying me stephen king! i was in 3rd grade reading stephen king and dean koontz books.
i think ill go fish out welcome to dead house and read n reminisce when i get home…..
They’re re-releasing the Goosebumps books with new covers, too.
My first: The Horror At Camp Jellyjam
My favorite: Attack Of The Mutant
Yeah, but the new covers are horrible!
I agree, Attack Of The Mutant was my favorite too! But my first was How I Got My Shrunken Head.
I still love these! They are great. ….Maybe the library still has some or something.. >>
the original covers are better and classic
The Ghost Next Door!!!!! That freaked me out so bad….ooh and the Haunted Mask!…..those were the days. I can’t believe I didn’t keep any of them
I don’t remember the actual title of the book, but it was about these two kids who went to summer camp, but the kids at camp were all dead and trying to hijack the living kids’ bodies so they could get back in to the real world. And there was something about a clearing in the woods and a monster that would try to eat them. Idk. That’s the one I remember most.
i think it was called ghost camp
That one was a favorite too, it was called “Welcome to Camp Jellyjam”.
I really enjoyed the ones were you could choose which way you wanted to go, and in the end, choose your ending. I loved it!
i loved any of those books, i called them “choose your own adventure” books. heck, maybe thats what they were called!
They were Give Yourself Goosebumps!
The first one I ever read was #16, about the amusement park. So I always had a soft spot for that one. Welcome to Dead House was one of my favorites. I didn’t like it if it didn’t scare you, except for the one where the town’s kids were actually dogs turned human as part of some experiment. I wonder if mine are still in a box somewhere, I had them for ages…
My all time fave was The Headless Ghost. I read it 10 times. But when I saw the TV show episode, it was so disappointing. I really didn’t like the show. The books were waaaaaaaaay better.
I was actually more into the Fear Street books than Goosebumps. Of course back then I was more into the macabre, gory stuff than the plain old supernatural… Doesn’t really matter though, because anything by R.L. Stine kicks ass!!!
BTW, ‘The Stepsister’ was my fave FS book.
i have a couple of those one too. man i loved them all. i remember flipping through the scholastic (newspaper-like) magazine and if it had gore, blood bones or ghostly figure i checked that box. i would come home with 80 bucks worth of books i wanted to order. i think at the age i learned how to budget, aka not buy all the books at once but over a period time (aka every time mom got her paycheck lmao)
I love amusement parks so One Day at HorrorLand was my fave!
“The Werewolf of Fever Swamp” was my personal favorite. “Deep Trouble” and “Egg Monsters From Mars” were also good.
My favorites were The Haunted Mask I and II the one with the broken clock that makes time go backwards. I remember my first one was Why I’m Afraid of Bees!
I also liked R.L. Stine’s other series with the girl that was reincarnated into a car that would kill people… ahhh, those were some good books
I loved Goosebumps so much!! I read all of them! My favorite ones were Say Cheese and Die again! and One Day at HorrorLand-I would get so excited for when news ones came out! I still own a few…and I think I will go read a little bit : )
My favorite was “Welcome to Camp Nightmare.” I loved the twist ending.
I don’t remember the first one I read but the cover had a praying mantis on a street, but my favorite was the one with the mirror world.
Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes. Oh yes.
omg! yes… i loved these books. It Came From Beneath The Sink! and How To Kill A Monster were my fav. man… i wish i still had some of these books…
WIN. SO MUCH WIN. I still -have- all of the books. I could not bring myself to get rid of them.
Never get rid of a good book.
cheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese
Oh my god! Beast From the East was the scariest one. I remember starting to read that one before going to bed, and I couldn’t put it down because I was so terrified of going to sleep without finishing it. Like I would get sucked into the book somehow while dreaming. It was the only book that ever scared me, I mean really, truly scared me.
Ah, fondest memories here of me getting a new book, and trying to wait until nightfall, then reading it with some cheap book light when I was supposed to be asleep. I have every single one of them, until series 2000. Near the end, they started to kind of lose the scariness that the earlier books had, and started to be more silly than anything.
My favourites were Welcome to Dead House, and The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight. Those two and Say Cheese and Die were the only ones to really leave me scared. Welcome to Horrorland and Shocker on Shock Street were great, too.
They actually have Goosebumps comics, called Goosebumps Comix (very original). There are 3 issues, and each issue has three of the old stories all illustrated by different artists. Scarecrow and The Werewolf of Fever Swamp were gorgeous.
Horrible, horrible books. Kids are much better off reading some Tolkien or Asimov.
These books lead children to Tolkien.
they did for me…i had all the goosebumps then i read tolkien and the stephen king
Just everyone listing off the book titles are bringing back memories! I’ll have to go dig in the attic sometime soon for my old books….
Ah…… #50. Minions, rise……
I was all about “Th Barking Ghost,” i had basically all of the original ones, my mom got rid of them behind my back a few years ago…i’m still bitter about it
Now this is an EPIC Win. Goosebumps, and other child-targeted horror, did wonders to help me develop the delightfully warped imagination I enjoy to this day.
I loved Goosebumps. I was a weird little kid, and when I was younger, whenever we had to read, I’d either turn to Goosebumps or Harry Potter, and more often than not, I read Goosebumps. Those books freaked me out, especially the one where the kid thought her neighbor was a ghost but it turned out that she was dead. I feel bad for not remembering the titles, but those stories scared the living daylights out of me and have permanently taken up residence in my brain. Epic, epic win.
The Werewolf of Fever Swamp was my favorite!
yes! it was the epicness of epicness for my twisted little child mind as well! w00t for you.
Say cheese and Die; every book from that part of the series i loved. I also liked Welcome to Camp Nightmare
I loved the say cheese and Die ones, as well as all the camp ones, and the Ghost dog. I also really liked the choose your own adventure sort of ones. I always cheated though. XD That, Animorphs, and Baily School Kids basically made up my childhood.
We had these books in 4th grade.
REALLY these are full of awsomeness? I THINK NOT, they were re-hashes and re-writes of CLASSIC horror literature R.L. Stine(k) could never come up with a freaking origional idea on his own so he just re-wrote dracula, or frankenstien, or monster squad, or just about anything that HOLLYWOOD ALREADY DID (and already ruined enough). And the argument that “younger” children couldn’t read Mary Shelley or Bram Stoker, is a lame excuse, i was reading them and other classical and modern literature by the age of 8, i dunno maybe it’s because my parents didn’t babysit me with a television, or maybe i’m just overwhelmed at my favorite classics being demeaned and over simplified so that even a neanderthal can read it. r.l.stine just wanted your cash and you bought it with every cent of your being.
that rant was an attempt at a buzz kill. you suck!
Did anyone else read the books where you got to choose what happened? I remember being pissed if I died or something, and going back and following the other option lol
wasn’t a buzzkill it is simple truth it’s the biggest plageristic attempt that succeeded in the history of literature.
Just because a younger kid can do something doesn’t mean they want to, nor does the fact that they can read the classics mean that they’ll prefer them. I don’t like Frankenstein. Call me cretin, but I think it’s absolutely plodding. I don’t really like much classic Gothic or Romantic period books. They’re called “tastes”, and everyone has different. Just because an 11 year old like these books doesn’t mean they have bad taste or are sub-par intelligent. And not every child develops the same. Some may actually not be capable of reading the books you’ve cited.
Also, I’d say 99% of the classics are copied as well, from other stories, popular news articles, or even older legends. There is truly nothing new under the sun.
oh i fully understand that, myself i sat down with a dictionary many times just to know what a word meant, and yeah mary shelley is plodding, but whenever something is given to a child and told it’s “classic” they automatically assume boring, or want to watch the movie instead of read
shouldn’t parents encourage children to TRY constructive, benificial, activities? truthfully this comes down to the simple fact that RL basically somehow legally plagerized a ton of stories, since every single one written by RL is a copy or rewrite of somone else’s work. basically these books teach that it’s okay to rip someone off as long as you change the dates or just “enough” to “make it a differnt story” yet it remains the same story in it’s basic idea.
i mean should i write a story about a young wizard that lives under the stairs of his aunt’s house and just change the names and set it in modern newhampshire and get paid for basically re-writing harry potter?
no the poor taste is in the allowed plagerism that happened and as such though they were “good” (subjective) books for young readers, i don’t think plagerism should qualify for an “epic win”
Wow, for all the misspelled words in here…you´d think you were pretty uneducated
These were the only books my boyfriend claims to have ever read for enjoyment. The man is now 24, and insists that he never read anything but goosebumps as a child. I picked up a few in my time, but was never impressed. (I’m 21, and share a birthday with Alfred Hitchcock, so from a young age I have had a love of suspense, and spine-tingling reads) Forget Goosebumps, I’ll take Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, or Hitchcock’s short-story collections anyday.
i think i’ve read nearly all of these.. the scariest ones (for me anyway, when i was ten) were the haunted dummy ones. i think these books led to my very strong Stephen King obsession. they have pretty simiar styles, just targeted towards different age groups. also, i have to agree with Sticks, i always really oved the fact that Stine would hint that everything isn’t perfect at the end. ah, so much WIN….
the one with the Dummy = scariest ever
I loved these books. Istill have a bunch of them.
WIN this is sweet i have ilke 20 of these books!
Oh, my brother loved these and would always force me to read them before bed and I got soooooo scared! I was such a baby…
Dont forget the Goosebumps Pogs.
Since I’m a french canadian I’ve never heard about those books…
The first book I ever read was the Goosebumps book Deep Trouble. They were so awesome when I was little!
Ah! My two favorites were The Beast from the East — I loved how surreal everything was and the fact that it was such a whimsical and often arbitrary game that decided the kid’s fate. It made it all the more terrifying — and The Werewolf of Fever Swamp. I remember after reading it I had to write a short story for class and I used the premise of the book but changed the title to “The Werewolf of Nightmare Swamp”. My 2nd grade teacher didn’t notice and even gave me quite a good grade XD.
Sorry but I never really got into the Goosebumps. They jsut weren’t that scary or interesting to me. I like series where the next book picks up where the last one left off. Animorphs was better. Plus Animorphs had the little watermark on the bottom of the page that morphed as you flipped the pages. Even Hardy Boys was better than Goosebumps.
I have to say, I was more into his Fear Street books. If it weren’t for those, I may not be the bookworm I am today!
I loved these books. However, at one point one of our teachers refused to allow us to do book reports on them (because they had poor literary content?- not sure why).
Teachers hated R.L. Stine, the Babysitter’s Club, and Sweet Valley High.
I like to eat my work please you are welcome some potatoes!!!
do you want hit on my head?DRUMMER!!
I DON’T LIKE drink my brain and my blood
é legal muito legal bater na parede,por com licença,COLOQUE OS BRAÇOS EM CIMA da cara e saía correndo gritando até a sapataria mais proxima,ao chegar lá,peça um sanduíche de queijo
Cheese sandwich!!
Bones!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I liked the ones where you could choose how the story progressed. I always thought it was fun. ^__^
My old school didn’t allow Goosebumps. That school was so not an epic win! And that’s why I transferred.
My favorites were definitely A Night In Terror Tower and the Headless Ghost! These books were so fantastic; I really wish kids would get more into them these days instead of constantly being on XBox 360 or Wii. We had fun and scared the crap out of ourselves without needing any kind of computer or game system! (Although I do miss Sega…)
How to Kill a Monster was my favourite. I loved it so much when I was a kid I stapled some sheets of paper together and drew my own comic version of it where I was the main character instead of Gretchen.
The Goosebumps and Animorphs generation was huge here in Australia, I can’t imagine how big it must have been in the States
I like the snowman one, where the snowman was haunted, that kind of scared me.
Also How I Got My Shrunken Head. The ending was just plain freaky.
Ahh…I still remember the first Goosebumps book I read. I was in 4th Grade…and the book was the first Night of the Living Dummy. Gotta love Slappy!
Night of the Living Dummy II was my favorite book. I rediscovered these recently (and all the additional series following the original series…), and now Slappy’s Nightmare in the Goosebumps 2000 series is my favorite (the fact that the tables get turned on him makes it epic freaking win).
I am even more excited about the HorrorLand reboot.
No thank you. However, I remember every kid in the first grade checking out those books. In class, when it was reading time, you’d see 23 Goosebumps and 1 Junie B. Jones. (Guess who was the Junie B?)
loved the books never put em down
I JUST LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!… GOOSEBUMS!=]…
BEST MOVIES EVER!!!! BUT ONLY IF IT STILL COMES ON T.V LIKE THE OLD DAYS!