Giving Myself Goosebumps

Like most kids my age in the early 1990s, I grew up reading the Goosebumps series books, and moved on to The Fear Street books as I got older. R.L. Stine was one of my favorite authors, and I consumed every one of his books I could get my hands on, including his joke books written under the pseudonym “Jovial Bob” Stine. I even watched the television show based on the Goosebumps books, and although they weren’t very good, I still watched them with fervor. This began my love affair with scary stories, and hand in hand, my love for reading. It inspired me to take a stab at writing my own horror stories when I was 10, copying Mr. Stine’s style, and came up with a short story involving a mummified Egyptian queen coming back from the grave to reclaim her stolen jewelry that ends up in the hands of a 10-year-old girl named “Sharon.” Reading it years later, I noticed a few glaring plot holes, but my point is, his books are not only directly responsible for turning me into a big reader, but inspired me to try writing as well.

A few months ago, I started following R.L. Stine on Twitter, rekindling my interest in his work. I wasn’t sure what to expect. My brothers used to tease me for reading his books (“Why does a middle-aged man write so many books from the perspective of teenage girls?”), but I found that he seems like a totally normal person. He even likes Beavis and Butthead, just like me! So, when he tweeted that he was doing a reading in the city one weekend, I reverted back to a giddy 10-year-old at the thought of finally meeting him. When I arrived at the bookstore, I was very aware that I was perhaps the only single adult there; everyone else was accompanying their kid. But I still couldn’t contain my happiness as Mr. Stine launched into a ghost story, with the participation of the kids in the audience. He started by setting up the situation (a father buys a used car that may be haunted), and asked the kids for help describing the main characters, one boy and one girl for balance, giving them names and physical descriptions. He then shared a “true” story of his experience with a ghost one Halloween as a kid. While the stories themselves didn’t give me the satisfying shivers they would have when I was 10, it was heartwarming, and more than a little adorable, to see the tradition continuing with the next generation.

As I lined up to have my books signed, I was a bit relieved to see another twenty-something woman ahead of me who was a fan as a child. When it was my turn to talk to the author (after I had stopped gushing my admiration), he confirmed that it’s mostly seven- to nine-year-olds, and then 25-year-olds, who show up to his readings. “My readers have all grown up!” he says. But judging from the enthusiasm of the audience that day, and the fact that he is still successfully publishing frightening tales, it seems that he will have fans of all ages for years to come, much to my delight…and horror.