Rereading Goosebumps–Fifty Two/Sixty Two

I was determined to complete this challenge without spending a dime, but four books were eluding me: How to Kill a Monster, Bad Hare Day, Deep Trouble II, and Chicken Chicken. My friend came through and I was able to get copies of these books, securing access to all 62 original Goosebumps books in e-book format.

Here’s the penultimate batch:

The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena (#38)
How To Kill a Monster (#46)
Bad Hare Day (#41)
Deep Trouble II (#58)
Chicken Chicken (#53)
The Headless Ghost (#37)
Night of the Living Dummy III (#40)
Vampire Breath (#49)
Beware, the Snowman (#51)
Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns (#48)
How I Got My Shrunken Head (#39)

For some reason, Attack of the Jack-O’-Lanterns was a little more difficult to get a hold of, but I was also looking at it around Halloween, which is the prime time for reading a Goosebumps book about Halloween.

In this batch was the classic, How I Got My Shrunken Head, and two snowmen-related books which is appropriate for the current early winter season. I enjoyed Vampire Breath, and Chicken, Chicken should have never made it past Stine’s editor, but most importantly, I unraveled a childhood mystery while reading this batch of books.

When I was around 11 or 12, I had a recurring nightmare that I thought I’d turn into a ~bestselling~ horror book one day. It involved a scary house I had to get out of, with a large blind monster thumping down the stairs behind me, and at the bottom of the stairs was a piano and I would always hear a scary few notes playing on the piano. For years, this was just my nightmare to the point it almost became a normal dream, but I couldn’t place where any of it came from.

Until I picked up How to Kill a Monster. How to Kill a Monster is responsible for a nightmare I had for over a decade. Without giving away any spoilers, there is a monster living in a house and, in one minor scene, a piano. There also happened to be a piano at my grandparents’ house, which I couldn’t play but enjoyed trying to make scary sounds with.

My mother recently went through my book collection at their home and was nice enough to list all of the Goosebumps and other Stine books that I own. Apparently I own books #1-47 (my mom couldn’t find #16 but I told her that I definitely had that one because it was one of my favorites as a child and had pulled it out to reread a few years ago and must have put it in a different box) and #49-51. #48 must have been lent to a friend or put in a different box, and by #51/1997, I had started reading more adult fiction.

I plan on finishing collecting the original 62 Goosebumps with their original covers, which the internet tells me may be a bit hard with the last few books, but I’m in no rush to complete the collection as I move around a lot.

I have ten more books to go, and this silly side quest of 2024 will be complete.