Summer Reading - Goosebumps

The rising temperatures and siren songs of ice cream truck patrols are signs that summer is here once again, and for me that means memories largely of reading books inside, ironically. Every summer, my parents had me join the library's reading program, which set goals for summer reading that I could keep track of with a card that was stamped whenever I completed a book. Prizes could be won - probably things like Yikes! pencils and bookmarks, because I don't remember them very well. But I do remember where the bulk of my reading came from during the summer - Goosebumps. 

"Why do we keep feeding them Monster Blood?"

Goosebumps was a kids horror series written by Ohio native R.L. Stine. This guy was a machine - there were 64 books in the original series alone. Goosebumps may have played a large role in my enjoyment of horror, because I read and re-read these books until the covers were cracked and frayed.

As far as horror went, Goosebumps was actually the least scary of the horror franchises read. It was written for children, but the books still contained events such as human sacrifice, cannibalism, alternate realities, and possessed dummies. Ghosts of Fear Street was a series R.L. Stine wrote for slightly older children, and Fear Street was written for teenagers. But what gave me nightmares was the Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark series - not for the stories, which were rather silly, but for the horrifying ink drawings by Stephen Gammell. But that's a subject for another post.

This was probably the scariest book.

What brings back the nostalgia for Goosebumps more than anything is the artwork on the covers. I sold my collection in a garage sale long ago and can't remember the stories very well, but the front covers are instantly familiar.

Looking over the plot summaries on Wikipedia, though, some of them seem quite interesting. There's an evil house that is turning the town into the undead, a camera that predicts the death of whoever it photographs, a mirror that leads to a parallel universe, and an insane piano teacher who wants to cut off his student's hands.

In addition to the three series Goosebumps, Fear Street, and Ghosts of Fear Street, R.L. Stine also wrote the "Give Yourself Goosebumps" series. These were choose-your-own-adventure books, in which you flipped to different versions of the story depending on what choices you make. These were a lot of fun to read, and finding the ending where the characters make it out alive was pretty tricky.

I could spend all day with one of these books.

There was also a Goosebumps TV show that ran during the late '90s, which I also enjoyed. But one of the coolest things R.L. Stine did was to write a horror story about The Beast roller coaster at King's Island being haunted. I read this book right around the time I first rode The Beast, and when it became my favorite roller coaster ever. It still is.

Apparently it's haunted by...um, Poseidon?

I can remember the first time I rode The Beast, at night, just before the park closed. The Beast has a long track that goes deep into the woods, and that's part of the thrill of it - there are branches all around you as you whip along the track at 60 miles per hour. These branches, the low tunnel coming off the first hill, and chaotically-placed wooden beams in the "spiral of doom" at the end of the ride, all give the illusion that the ride could decapitate you. The ride is genuinely frightening. And whether finding it on roller coasters or in R.L. Stine's books, I was always looking for a good scare.