by Nelson
Reader Beware; You’re in for a Scare!
Join us as DoubtFire ventures into the terrifying world of zombies, werewolves, egg monsters, and annoying siblings that is GOOSEBUMPS.
Knowing what they evolved into, this first book is a bit unique. It’s significantly darker than stuff like Why I’m Afraid of Bees or Be Careful What You Wish For. Conceptually speaking, a haunted house story is pretty standard fare horror compared to the wacky escapades to come. That said, there’s also a lot in this debut entry that more or less becomes the template for every other book in the series. Our main characters are the sibling duo of Josh and Amanda. Stine loved using boy/girl pairs as his stories’ central players. I think it probably had something to do with broadening the consumer base with appeals to both sexes. Amanda serves as a first-person narrator – something Good Ol’ R.L. rarely got away from. And, in what will become a Goosebumps staple, the early chapters are full of one fake out scare after the other. Stine absolutely loves doing this, and he’s completely shameless about it. A character will swear they’re falling down a flight of stairs to close out a chapter, and you’ll find out two sentences into the next page that they just tripped. Amanda sees a ghost almost immediately after setting foot in the family’s new digs, but, oh wait, it was just her brother instead. The dog goes missing, oops, no. He was just behind the house. You get the picture.
Welcome to Dead House chronicles Josh and Amanda’s move into a creepy old house in a creepy old town full of creepy old trees that conveniently keep the town dark and shady at all times. The town is called Dark Falls because of course it is. Amanda initially loves the house because it’s huge, and she’s got a bay window in her bedroom, but she and her brother keep seeing kids in random places who disappear as abruptly as they appear. She also keeps hearing someone giggling in her closet. You’d think her parents would be especially concerned about such a thing, but they’re too busy moving into the house. They also seem to fight a lot.
Since they’re always fighting, the parents more or less order their kids to take the family dog, a terrier named Petey, and walk around Dark Falls. The pair comes across a group of quirky acting kids. Petey hates everyone because he knows that they’re ghosts. Except they’re not really ghosts. They keep referring to themselves as “dead,” and they quickly decompose into ash if they’re touched by light. So they’re vampiric zombie ghosts. Except unlike Count Dracula, a mere flashlight will do these kids in. I don’t really understand what’s so threatening about these ghastly creatures, quite frankly. Regardless, Stine gets pretty gruesome when describing the rotting ghost kids – meticulously detailing the skin falling off their faces to reveal their rotting skulls and all that good stuff. See, everyone who moves into Dead House gets turned into a zombie ghost, and all these zombie ghost kids? Well, they all lived in Dead House when they were alive!
Things work out for the best, though. Josh and Amanda knock down one of the creepy old trees to allow the sun to shine on the living dead townsfolk; everyone melts, and the family speeds out of Dark Falls to end the story. One of the things that kept me coming back to these books again and again was the fact that you could never tell right up until the last sentence if you’d get a happy ending or find out that your narrator was actually a robot all along!
All in all, Welcome to Dead House was a solid first entry. It’s not one of my all-time favorites or anything, but, even now, it has me anxious to eat the brains right out of every title from the original run. It’s fascinating to see how much Stine toned himself down and got away from villains threatening kids (and their parents!) with death. And, hey, it inspired me to go ahead with this new feature, so there’s that.
Quote of the Book: “We used to live in your house. Now we’re dead in your house!”
Doubtfire 
Pingback: Saturdays in the Cemetery with Stine | Doubtfire