Goosebumps From Memory: #1 Welcome To Dead House

#1 - Welcome To Dead House

Oh shit, right out of the gate and I barely fucking remember one of them already. What I do remember was picking this one out at a Kmart or Target and being incredibly dismayed that this was the only one available on the rack that I didn't already have. I mean, look at the cover. For starters, it was mostly pink and as a twitchy 8-year-old who was incredibly insecure about outside perceptions of his masculinity I certainly did not want to bring home a pink book to read. Also, what's with that title? Even as I dumb kid I sneered at that title. How about "Welcome to THE Dead House", or "Welcome to the House of Dead"? Both of these are better than "WELCOME TO DEAD HOUSE". Plus, there's nothing scary about a dead house. Houses are supposed to be dead. It's the alive houses you need to stay away from. Don't you know anything, R.L. Stine? The house on the cover doesn't look scary at all. It's pretty well-kept if you ask me. Arrrgghh, come on, scary houses have broken windows and shit falling apart and ghosts flying out the chimney and demon trees grabbing children from their beds and kids getting sucked into TVs. And Craig T. Nelson as the dad.

- PLOT -
I remember there were two kids, an older sister and a younger obnoxious brother, who were moving with their family to their new house in some town no one ever heard of. I don't remember the reasoning behind the move, but knowing Goosebumps it was definitely some hackneyed and lazy plot device like they probably inherited the house by some creepy relative and they had to stay there for at least one night to claim it as their own. Perhaps mom or dad had relocate for career purposes? Maybe they got run out of their old home by vampire demons and needed to seek refuge.
I'm pretty sure this town was completely empty, except for some weird, unsupervised kids running rampant like it was Children of the Corn. The main two kids, our young naive heroes, befriend some of these kids and they turn out to be jerks. Like, "oh no we can't play anymore the sun's going down you guys, shit shit shit SHIT SHIT okbyeseeyoutomorrow!-", which leaves our heroes perplexed.

And when I call them "heroes" that's using the term very loosely. I'm pretty sure they were morons.

Anyway, eventually the reader discovers that all the kids in town are dead and their mission is to kill the kids that are not yet dead. This smacks of some real discrimination and intolerance bullshit, an issue that R.L. Stine completely ignored but whatever. The kids get out of town alive. I don't remember how. They were probably like "Mom, Dad, our new friends are trying to kill us!" and then mom and dad say "yeah ok let's go somewhere else forever I guess the kids are in charge here."

The End. Yawwwwwnn.

- FINAL THOUGHTS -
I might be so bold to suggest that not only did I not find Welcome to Dead House frightening as a kid, but I don't think I found it interesting either. Which means I probably only read it 10 times instead of the 25 average the rest of the series got. I think I even remember as a kid a very similar plot on Are You Afraid of the Dark?, which in turn stole all of its plots from the Twilight Zone and Stephen King novels. So basically R.L. Stine found a way to make money doing something completely unoriginal, is that it? Is that what we're dealing with here? How admirable. I can't wait to weed through 61 more ripped-off plots, Stine.

R.L. Stine Sez: "Boy, that house sure was spooky, huh kids? Heh heh. Boooo!"