Give Yourself Goosebumps: A Ranked Dissection of the Original Goosebumps ⋆

If you were a thrill seeking child of the 90s, you were more than likely a fan of the Goosebumps series. These scary reads for the 9 to 12 age group were well stocked in any school’s library for kids brave enough to enter their spooky pages.

The lettering was iconic, the cover art amazing, and the stories, legitimately scary and tense for the younger crowd. Forget about the show with its cheesy acting and early 90s all denim wardrobe, the Goosebumps books were where the real scares were.

I’ve been an avid reader pretty much since I learned to read, and weekends during my third grade year (I definitely remember reading the most of Goosebumps in grade three) were often spent turning down invites to go to a friend’s house and avoiding natural light at all costs to curl up on the couch with whatever Goosebumps book I’d selected.

There wasn’t any spooky topic out of bounds for R.L. Stine. You’ve got your classics like ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Then you’ve got the more modern classics with dolls, amusement parks, and aliens. Then you’ve got the ones that just go completely off the rails. A cuckoo clock that travels through time? A trippy alternate dimension forest filled with monsters? Lawn gnomes? R.L. Stine has got you covered!

When I think about the media I ingested as a child that might have influenced me nowadays, Goosebumps is at the top of the list. These books seriously shaped who I am as an adult. And that kind of adult is a horror fanatic who will pop on A Nightmare on Elm Street for “quiet background noise”.

But what are the best ones of the series? Of the original Goosebumps series, there are sixty-two books in total. Sixty two books to a single series! I’m determined to read and (probably) over think them all. Be it for parents whose kids read them, or just the wide-eyed 90s nostalgic like myself, I will get through every last one, posting from the worst and making my way to the best.

R.L. Stine, you are iconic. Truly a master at your job, which is aptly described on Twitter as “terrifying kids”. Please, should you ever see this series or any of the live-tweeting threads, don’t consider the sass that’s going to appear in upwards of sixty-two articles as a slight.

The sass comes from a place of love.

Some of the protagonists you penned for me taught me as much.

The definitive Goosebumps dissection starts tomorrow and continues everyday through till Halloween! If you’re interested in the Twitter threads for each and every story, click the links below to go to each thread.

And now, because how could I resist, reader beware, you’re in for a scare!

Spooky regards,
Amelia

#GiveYourselfGoosebumps Twitter threads: