The new trailer for Goosebumps 2 is out!
The movie is slated to be released in late October. What are we Goosebumps fans to do till then?
Revisit the books, of course!
Here are 5 of our favourite Goosebumps titles by the legendary R L Stine.
5. THE HORROR AT CAMP JELLYJAM
In Camp Jellyjam, whose logo is a purple blob monster, the counselors seem a little too happy and too obsessed with winning. But why...
As more and more winners of the camp games go missing, the main character Wendy goes to investigate and discovers all the winners are furiously cleaning an enormous, purple, gelatinous creature called King Jellyjam.
It turns out that the camp counselors are hypnotized and are recruiting only the winners because "Only The Best" are chosen to be slaves of King Jellyjam, who needs the most athleticly people to keep him clean, and anyone who stops cleaning King Jellyjam gets eaten.
Two weeks later, when they are safely back home, Wendy and her brother smell a disgusting odor...
4. MONSTER BLOOD
One can find loads of things in an old toy shop, including a tin can of Monster Blood. Discouraged from buying by the shop owner (why doesn't the owner just stop stocking it?), Evan buys it anyway and brings it home.
Back at home, Evan and his friend Andy opens the tin of Monster Blood, which they drop, some of which is promptly eaten by the family dog Trigger. Over the next few days, both the Monster Blood and Trigger double in size.
Evan and Andy discover that the Monster Blood is alive as it grows and grows out of control.
Evan and Andy try to take the Monster Blood back to the stop, but the shop has gone out of business. When Evan accidentally knocks over the tin of Monster Blood, the Blood, now freed, expands tremendously in size and starts to chase them, swallowing everything else in its path.
While not as psychologically scary as some of Stine's other stories, Monster Blood is a classic piece of the monster genre that most of us, when we were kids, found utterly terrifying. The series is so successful that it has spawned three sequels that tries to outscare its predecessors.
3. STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT
The book follows sisters Margaret and Casey Brewer, whose father has been acting very strange since losing his job as a botanist at a nearby university, spending an unusual amount of time in his basement.
Margaret and Casey decide to investigate and discovers that their father is conducting experiements on plants that are seemingly alive... They later discover that their father is not their real father, but a hybrid plant clone. Their real father has been bound and gagged in the basement.
The sisters quickly free their father, who grabs an axe and decapitates the clone. A week later, after their father burns all the mutant plants and when things are seemingly back to normal, a plant reaches out to Margaret and whispers that it is their real father...
One of my personal favourites, this is a classic mystery-horror thriller with such cliffhanger of an ending that will put the horror back into you.
2. THE HAUNTED MASK
On Halloween, Carly Beth stumbles into the back room of a costume shop, run by a mysterious shop owner (they are all mysterious), and finds a huge collection of the scariest masks she has ever seen.
When the owner refuses to sell her the mask she wants, which turns out to be the haunted mask, she runs off with it. She puts on the mask and goes to scare her tormentors. Her mask feeds on her negative energy and the fear emanating from those she scared.
When Carly tries to remove the mask, to her horror, she finds out that the mask has fused to her skin, becoming her face!
I bet all my money that, if you had read the book as a kid, it would have surely made you think twice about putting on your Halloween mask.
1. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY
From
Annabelle to
Dead Silence to
Chucky, dolls that scare the living daylights out of our souls are now a staple of the modern horror genre.
Night of the Living Dummy is probably the earliest to pioneer the evil doll genre.
In it, two ventriloquist dummies named Slappy and Mr Wood, owned by twin sisters, come to life and start by committing acts of mischief like hurling insults before escalating to acts of violence like strangling the family dog.
This is probably the most popular of Stine's creations and, arguably, it still haunts us today. Thus, deservedly earning the title of the scariest Goodsebumps book as well as making a reappearance in the upcoming
Goosebumps 2 movie.
I mean, would you ever dare to sleep with a big-eyed ventroloquist dummy in the same room?
Which of R L Stine's Goosebumps books are your favourites or scariest?
Tell us in the comments below!