Reader beware, you’re in for a scare. What a great line to reel in young readers, especially those who love horror.
The Goosebumps middle grade horror series is famous for its colorful covers with its bumpy title stretched across the top of its paperbacks, its cliffhanger chapters that keep you reading on, and its twist endings that leave you unsettled, even if it does keep the gore and murder to a minimum. You have to applaud R.L. Stine for making reading cool, if only for a short time in elementary school. And some of the moments in this series really stuck with me as truly scary.
Below are 10 of the scariest moments in the Goosebumps series. Beware, there are spoilers in this post.
The Haunted Mask II
The Haunted Mask II is a story about a powerless girl looking for power and immediately finding herself overwhelmed by it. Carly Beth is a scaredy cat who is the perfect target for the boys in her class to frighten, especially around Halloween.
In her desperation to not only get over her fear but to get back at her bullies, Carly Beth swipes a grotesque mask from an eerie shop run by an even eerier shop owner to wear as her Halloween costume. At first, it’s a thrill for her to be the scarer and not the victim. But this is not your ordinary mask, and it begins to take over the person who wears it.
This book is essentially a possession story for kids. Carly Beth messes with the wrong mask, and it messes back. Her personality begins to change. She becomes cruel and maniacal, and she takes things too far. When she finally begins to realize this, she finds that she can’t get the mask off. It has fused to her skin, and she becomes embroiled in a battle for her own soul.
The moments when the mask is stuck to Carly Beth creates both a claustrophobic and panicked feeling in the reader. Is she going to turn into a real monster or be forever stuck with a monster mask on her face? Neither option sounds good.
It’s especially scary for timid girl readers who can relate to Carly Beth. If she can’t become powerful without losing herself in the process, what hope is there for any of us? Luckily, it works out for her, but it’s still an unsettling lesson in how far you’re willing to go to get back at your bullies.
The Ghost Next Door
The Ghost Next Door is probably my favorite book in the series. It follows Hannah, a young suburban girl who is struggling to keep herself entertained while her friends are away for the summer. Then, a strange boy moves into the house next door, and she begins to suspect that he’s a ghost.
The book opens with Hannah waking up to find that her bedroom is on fire. Soon after, it’s revealed that it was all a dream, or was it?
House fires have been a lifelong fear of mine. So, from the beginning chapter, I’m already unsettled.
From there, I’m so invested in Hannah’s story about the boy next door that I’m ignoring all of the signs that the ghost next door is actually her. Not only that, but the fire in the beginning of the story is real.
The fire, caused by a smoldering campfire the family had in their backyard the night before, kills the entire household, but only Hannah’s spirit is left behind. And it’s not until Danny helps her to see that she’s dead that she’s able to rejoin her family in the afterlife. It’s a heavy premise, even for children’s horror, but that’s what makes it so great.
Say Cheese and Die
Greg finds an old camera, but when the photos he takes develop differently from the images that he thought he captured, he finds that this camera warns about terrible future events, or maybe it’s the cause of them. The misfortunes are small at first but then get more serious as the photos develop.
This story raises questions about how much we really want to know about the future. Do we only want to know the good things that will happen? Or do we want to know about the bad so that we can try to stop it? But dwelling on it can only make you crazy.
In this case, the camera seems to be messing with Greg and his family’s fate. So, he has to get creative with a solution to stopping the predictions before they come to light. And those crucial moments before he finds that solution are extremely nail biting.
The Beast from the East
Ginger and her twin brothers, Nat and Pat, get lost while camping with their family. In the woods, they end up embroiled in a cat and mouse game with a group of monsters who challenge them to a game of tag. If they lose, they are eaten.
Like most people, I don’t like to be chased. Not only am I usually the slowest of the group, but having to fight off my attacker if caught sounds like even worse odds, no matter how determined I am.
I’m also not an animal person. So, coming up against a new type of beast that I’ve never even seen at a zoo or in photos or videos sounds like an added threat.
What’s worse is that when Ginger and her brothers finally escape the beasts, they encounter another, and the game begins all over again. Knowing that the story isn’t over for them and that you’re leaving them behind without knowing if they make it through a second game creates a sense of guilt and worry for these heroes who you’ve spent over 100 pages following along with.
A Night in Terror Tower
Siblings Sue and Eddie tour Terror Tower in London while their parents are at a business conference. There, they are chased throughout the tower by an executioner. Eventually, they learn that they are a prince and princess from the 15th century who were transported to the future by a sorcerer to hide them out from their murderous uncle, but once they learn their true identities, they find themselves back in the middle ages about to face execution.
In this novel, Stine doesn’t sugarcoat the dark history of England’s royals. The stakes are high for Sue and Eddie, both in the past and future. What hope is there of escaping Terror Tower if even time travel can’t save you? The idea of kids being beheaded is also a lot for a young reader to process, but luckily, Stine never lets it go that far.
My Hairiest Adventure
When Larry and his friends try out some tanning lotion that they find in a dumpster, he finds that the lotion is making him grow hair throughout his body. Then, his friends start disappearing. Over time, Larry learns that he and his friends were part of a science experiment to turn dogs into humans, and the serum that they were being given in the form of allergy shots is no longer effective.
The cover of this book always stuck out to me as a kind of kid werewolf story, and that’s not too far off. Where the fear comes in, though, is that the life these kids thought they were going to have is over. And even a kid knows that pets don’t live nearly as long as humans. So, how much longer does Larry have? It was unsettling to me that a kid’s lifespan could be shortened, even if he seemed to be enjoying his remaining years as the family pet.
Welcome to Camp Nightmare
Billy arrives at Camp Nightmoon under the watch of its director, “Uncle Al.” One thing after another occurs, but the last straw is when Billy’s fellow campers start to disappear. Then, Uncle Al recruits Billy and some of the boys to hunt down and capture two girls who ran away from the girls’ camp. Billy assumes it’s the two girls that he befriended at the camp, and he refuses to do so. So, instead, he aims the tranquilizer rifle he’s been given at Uncle Al and fires.
Tranquilizer or not, a kid pointing a gun at an adult, even a seemingly evil one, is a scary image. And this was before the era of school shooters and other similar real world situations, such as kids being molested by camp counselors.
Billy is essentially on his own, and that leads him to take desperate measures to ensure his and his remaining friends’ survival. Then, we learn the twist. These kids are actually aliens from another planet, and Billy has unknowingly been put through training to learn how to interact with humans when he joins his parents on a research trip to Earth.
The fact that this civilization finds humans to be this dangerous is actually a scary, and ultimately not so far-fetched, concept. It’s an interesting idea to put into a children’s story and to show us that the fact that we were able to buy into such an extreme situation as truth just goes to show how acclimated to violence and danger we are in this world.
The Cuckoo Clock of Doom
An antique clock transports Michael back to his infancy and a time when his annoying little sister wasn’t around. However, he still has the consciousness of his 12-year-old self and wants to return to his existing body.
Michael eventually figures out how to return to the present. But once there, his sister is still nowhere to be found. However, he finds that he’s pretty much okay with that and seems to have no plans to correct the situation at the book’s end.
Throughout the story, Michael’s little sister, Tara, is a brat, and we’ve all had moments when we wanted our siblings to disappear. But the fact that Michael can’t find one redeeming quality worthy of bringing his sister back to existence and being willing to live with the fact that he knows she once existed and no longer does because of him makes him feel like the real villain of the story. And it feels like he has gotten away with something truly despicable.
Stay Out of the Basement
Margaret and Casey’s botanist dad loses his job and spends all of his time conducting secret experiments in the basement. When their mom goes out of town, the siblings are stuck with their dad who begins to take on the characteristics of a walking, talking plant. The kids begin to investigate and realize that a plant monster developed in the lab has been impersonating their dad, and they have to rescue their real dad from wherever he is being held in the basement.
As a kid, we rely on our parents to take care of us. When they no longer can for one reason or another, it leaves us in a vulnerable state. This makes this story a true nightmare tale for kids, especially once their mom leaves home, and they have to fend for themselves, which includes disobeying their father’s orders which works out for them.
Unfortunately, this book doesn’t get the happy ending that it initially appears to be heading towards. Instead, a week after their father is rescued, a small flower outside calls out to Margaret that he’s their real father. Is this just another imposter from the lab experiments, or is this one telling the truth? And if so, how do you convert your dad from a flower back to a human?
Piano Lessons Can Be Murder
Jerry finds a piano in the attic of his new house, and he begins taking lessons from Dr. Shreek in order to learn how to play it. Dr. Shreek is a bizarre man who appears to be obsessed with Jerry’s hands. Jerry learns that Dr. Shreek is just a robot created by Mr. Toggle, but Mr. Toggle also wants Jerry’s hands.
This book is an introduction to body horror. It’s difficult to imagine somebody chopping off one of your limbs, particularly both of your hands. Even without having seen an actual dismemberment, either for real or in the movies, the very idea of it is disturbing.
What’s worse is that nobody believes Jerry’s clearly true assumptions. Part of that is because it is such an extreme claim. But when you can’t turn to the adults you trust, what hope do you have?
What are your scariest Goosebumps moments? Leave your answers in the comments below!
Buy it!
This is an affiliate link, and I will earn a commission on any sales.
Pin it to Pinterest!
