GOOSEBUMPS MADE ME PUNK
by Buzz Drainpipe
(originally published in Static Fangs Quarterly, Fall '96 Xeroxed Edition—stapled inside a dissection manual from a defunct high school)
I didn’t pick up Goosebumps because I liked reading.
I picked it up because the cover had a swamp monster melting on a skateboard and I thought, finally, literature understands me.
They shelved them in the Scholastic rack next to The Berenstain Bears Go to the Dentist, but these things had slime on the corners and bad ideas in the margins. They were gateway books, man. Not just to horror. To rebellion.
EXHIBIT A: THE STRUCTURE IS CHAOS
Your teacher tells you every story needs a beginning, middle, and end.
Goosebumps says: "What if the end is your brother turning into a sponge and that’s just Tuesday?"
They had twist endings that didn’t teach you a lesson. They punished you for existing. You followed the rules? You died anyway. You disobeyed? You became a chicken. The only moral was trust nothing, not even your reflection.
And that’s the first punk lesson I ever learned:
The system is rigged. You still show up in spikes.
EXHIBIT B: THE HERO IS YOU, BUT WEIRDER
These weren’t Chosen Ones. These weren’t jocks, saviors, or Hogwarts trust-fund kids.
The heroes in Goosebumps were:
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Middle school weirdos with pet hamsters and abandonment issues
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Girls who collected bugs and hated popularity
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Kids who got locked in their basement and came out funnier
They were me, but with worse luck and cooler enemies.
And they didn’t always win.
But they fought weird shit with a flashlight and sarcasm, and that taught me more about being a human than gym class ever did.
EXHIBIT C: THE COVER ART IS A SLIME-SLICKED DIY SCREAM
Tim Jacobus—give that man a fanzine Pulitzer.
His airbrushed madness gave us neon tombstones, googly-eyed mannequins, and skeleton uncles in beach chairs.
Every cover looked like a bootleg Cannibal Corpse single printed on a Trapper Keeper.
The palette?
Lime vomit. Orange soda. Midnight purple.
That was our Sex Pistols colorway.
I learned aesthetic disobedience from those shelves.
EPILOGUE: I OWE R.L. STINE A PATCH ON MY DENIM VEST
I outgrew the books.
But I didn’t outgrow the attitude.
Now when I see a locked door, I open it.
When I see a mirror, I ask if I’m the evil twin.
And when I see a masked ventriloquist dummy, I punch first and ask questions in the graveyard.
Because Goosebumps didn’t teach me to be afraid.
It taught me to scream with style.
To laugh at monsters.
To be okay with being the weird one who writes poems about grave dirt and carries a flashlight just in case.
So yeah—Goosebumps made me punk.
And I’ve got the scarred library card to prove it.
Top 10 ‘90s TV Horror for Kids (From Obvious to Obscure)
Filed under: Glow-in-the-dark tape labels, forbidden school library rentals, and static-soaked trauma
1. Goosebumps (1995–1998)
Obvious, yes—but essential.
The Scholastic juggernaut brought R.L. Stine’s pulpy tales to Fox Kids, turning Slappy, Mask Girl, and that sponge from under the sink into cultural icons. Low-budget brilliance + jump scare editing = nightmare fuel for a whole generation.
2. Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990–1996)
The thinking kid’s horror anthology.
Canadian creepshow where kids told stories around a fire that felt too real. It mixed folklore, tragedy, and metaphysical weirdness. “The Lonely Ghost” and “Dead Man’s Float” still hit hard.
3. Eerie, Indiana (1991–1992)
A suburban X-Files for weird kids.
Marshall Teller unravels conspiracies in the world’s weirdest town: brainwashed parents, Elvis in witness protection, and dogs organizing revolt. Joe Dante produced, and it shows. Brilliantly bizarre.
4. Tales from the Cryptkeeper (1993–1997)
Kid-friendly? Technically.
This animated spin-off of HBO’s adult anthology gave us a sanitized—but still creepy—dose of the Crypt Keeper, with moral tales and spooky visuals. It carried the EC Comics torch for the after-school crowd.
5. The Nightmare Room (2001, but very late '90s in spirit)
R.L. Stine’s other horror show.
Overshadowed by Goosebumps, but arguably darker and stranger. Stories about soul-swapping mirrors, evil shadows, and identity-horror. Featuring early roles from Shia LaBeouf and Kaley Cuoco.
6. So Weird (1999–2001)
The Disney Channel’s secret goth child.
A teen girl tours with her rock star mom and investigates supernatural phenomena. The vibe? X-Files Jr. but darker than anyone expected from the Mouse House. Time loops, possession, and alternate realities abound.
7. Big Wolf on Campus (1999–2002)
Buffy meets Teen Wolf meets Saturday detention.
A football-playing werewolf fights vampires, ghouls, and aliens in a small town. Campy, Canadian, and weirdly heartfelt.
8. Freaky Stories (1997–1999)
“This is a true story… it happened to a friend of a friend of mine.”
Gross-out urban legends animated like a fever dream. Introduced by cockroaches in a diner. Pure ‘90s slime-and-shadows energy.
9. Grizzly Tales for Gruesome Kids (1999 UK)
Britain’s darkest cartoon bedtime tales.
Like Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes gone feral. Grotesque little stories about bad kids who get exactly what’s coming to them. Narrated like a Victorian mortician.
10. Bone Chillers (1996)
The weirdest thing you forgot you saw.
Short-lived ABC series based on Betsy Haynes’ books. School plagued by supernatural weirdness—animated skeletons, monster lockers, and possessed faculty. One season, total chaos.
TOP 10 ‘90s KIDS HORROR TV EPISODES
(Goosebumps vs. Are You Afraid of the Dark?)
Curated by the Midnight Society of Goosepimples and TV-Static Psychosis
10. Goosebumps – “The Haunted Mask” (Parts 1 & 2)
A Halloween mask fuses to a shy girl’s face, feeding on her inner rage. Still genuinely creepy. The sound of her struggling to pull it off? Pure skin-crawling nightmare fuel.
9. Are You Afraid of the Dark? – “The Tale of the Dead Man's Float”
A hidden school pool becomes the watery grave of a melting red ghoul. The tension is real, the creature is terrifying, and chlorine won’t save you.
8. Goosebumps – “Night of the Living Dummy II”
Say hello to Slappy—the ventriloquist dummy with Bela Lugosi energy and divorce-dad aggression. He launched a thousand puppet-fear phobias.
7. Are You Afraid of the Dark? – “The Tale of the Super Specs”
Put on black glasses and see into another dimension? Yes please. A freaky parallel world crosses into our own, cloaked figures and all.
6. Goosebumps – “The Girl Who Cried Monster”
Librarian turns out to be a literal monster who snacks on bugs. Real Lynchian afterschool dread, complete with twisty endings and flickering fluorescents.
5. Are You Afraid of the Dark? – “The Tale of the Ghastly Grinner”
A comic book villain with neon drool escapes into reality. The closest the show ever got to Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II on a kid’s budget. Deranged.
4. Goosebumps – “Stay Out of the Basement”
Creepy botanist dad + plant-human hybrid experiments = Cronenberg for tweens. Slime, stingers, and identity horror all included.
3. Are You Afraid of the Dark? – “The Tale of the Midnight Madness”
Nosferatu rises from the silent film screen in a haunted theater. A love letter to horror history and a perfect kids’ horror story.
2. Goosebumps – “Welcome to Dead House”
The underrated creeper. Family moves to a town full of reanimated corpses feeding off the living. The closest Goosebumps ever got to true nihilism.
1. Are You Afraid of the Dark? – “The Tale of the Lonely Ghost”
Scrawled backwards on the mirror: HELP ME. This one hit differently—quiet, mournful, and deeply eerie. Childhood isolation turned literal ghost story.
Buzz Drainpipe Presents:
“MONSTER by Christopher Pike: The Punk Gospel According to the Blue-Eyed Apocalypse”
A tribute sermon from the podium of the cracked locker room mirror, delivered with a chipped tooth and half a juice box
I read Monster in a Kmart parking lot the day my Walkman chewed up my Pretty Hate Machine cassette. The sun was melting plastic army men on the dashboard. I was 11. By page 3, there was a shotgun and a dead cheerleader on the bleachers. Pike didn’t warm you up. He lit the pool on fire and pushed you in.
This ain’t Goosebumps, baby. This ain’t your cousin’s haunted ventriloquist dummy. Monster is a caffeine-jagged fever scream about alien spores, social hierarchy, body-snatching, and the rot crawling underneath the cafeteria tray. It’s the horror novel equivalent of that moment when the sub takes over class and just wheels in the TV—except the TV shows your town being eaten from the inside out.
Exhibit A: Mary Carlson — The She-Wolf With a Clipboard
Our narrator Mary is the outsider. She’s got “bad friend energy,” meaning she tells the truth before lunch and apologizes after 6th period. She’s the girl who would copy your homework and then help you cry when you got caught. Mary sees her best friend turn into something inhuman—and she doesn’t just scream. She arms herself. With a gun. And with the kind of resolve usually reserved for Vietnam flashback characters.
Exhibit B: The Parasite Plague and the Fluorescent American Nightmare
The monsters in Monster aren’t fanged or caped. They’re popular. That’s the twist. The football team? Infected. The golden girl? Host to an alien colonizer. Pike’s monsters are viral ambition—success as infection. This isn’t body horror, it’s culture horror. The hive mind lives in locker rooms and AP classrooms.
It’s invasion-of-the-body-snatchers with Lisa Frank notebooks. And what’s worse? The infected don’t act weird. They act better. They get perfect grades, smile wider, run faster. They do what your mom always told you to do—but it ain’t them anymore.
Exhibit C: The Blood in the Pool is Real
Let’s talk about the ending. No spoilers, but know this: you can’t kill the system with a shotgun. Pike knew that. Mary tries anyway. There’s a bleak poetry in that. A punk rock hopelessness. Because sometimes the monster wins. Sometimes it was never just one monster.
What I Learned from Monster:
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Fear the well-adjusted.
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Your friends might be aliens, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love them.
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Arm yourself with knowledge, with rage, with a flashlight and some sarcasm.
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The monster wears your face and says you’re doing great.
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Being weird might just save the world.
In conclusion: Monster isn’t just a book—it’s an initiation. A rite of passage wrapped in pulp and packed with paranoia. It’s the kind of book that turns your brain into a haunted locker and your worldview into a conspiracy board covered in Twizzler guts.
You read Monster at the right age, and you don’t grow up.
You mutate.
—Buzz Drainpipe
(writing this from under the bleachers with a glow stick and a signed hall pass from destiny)
90s Horror Kids Special: Little Monsters (1989) as Gateway Horror
“Some kids have imaginary friends. Brian had Howie Mandel in blue face paint and a mullet from hell.”
WELCOME TO THE UNDERBED APOCALYPSE
Little Monsters wasn’t just a weird movie—it was a ritual passage. Released right at the cusp of the ‘90s, it hit kids like a Pop Rocks-and-NyQuil cocktail. Directed by Richard Greenberg (best known for creating title sequences), this misfit of a film became a beloved VHS rental and a secret initiation tape into the world of gateway horror.
WHAT IS GATEWAY HORROR?
Gateway horror is the bridge between Scooby-Doo and The Thing. It’s where gross-outs meet genuine existential dread—wrapped in comedy, but trailing something darker behind the laugh track.
Little Monsters is that bridge—and sometimes it burns it down behind you.
TOP 5 REASONS “LITTLE MONSTERS” IS A GATEWAY HORROR MASTERPIECE
1. It Begins with the Boogeyman, but Ends in Existential Rot
Sure, it starts as a zany kids’ comedy about monsters under the bed, but by the time we get to the underground monster world, it's a hellscape of discarded toys, melted clocks, and actual damnation. There’s decay here. There’s no going back.
2. Maurice is Terrifying
Howie Mandel’s monster is equal parts Beetlejuice, junkie trickster god, and cosmic warning sign. He starts funny—ends tragic. His skin peels, he loses his cool, and he warns Brian what becoming a monster really means.
3. Boy vs. System: Monster World as Anti-School, Anti-Parent, Anti-Structure
It’s a dreamland ruled by chaos—but that’s a trap. Kids think they want no rules, but Monster World steals your time, your humanity, your sunlight. A horror metaphor for addiction, escape, and loss of innocence.
4. Snik is Pure Body Horror
Imagine a Freddy Krueger designed by Garbage Pail Kids. Snik, the bully-beast with blades for hands and dead eyes, was straight-up nightmare fuel—and no adult helped you process him.
5. Boy as Hero, Brother as Purpose
Like all great gateway horror, the stakes are personal. Brian goes through hell not for glory, but to save his little brother from being transformed into something else. Horror with a heart.
THE LEGACY OF LITTLE MONSTERS
This wasn’t just a movie—it was a pre-adolescent panic attack dressed in Nickelodeon slime. For every kid who watched it alone at 11PM on basic cable or taped it off TV, Little Monsters wasn’t about laughs. It was about that under-the-bed feeling you never quite shook.
Without it, we don’t get:
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Don’t Look Under the Bed (Disney Channel, 1999)
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Coraline
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The Nightmare Before Christmas cult
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The obsession with “other worlds” hiding under lockers, trapdoors, crawlspaces
90s Horror Kids Special: Eerie, Indiana — A Retrospective
“The center of weirdness for the entire planet.”
—Marshall Teller, honorary X-Files intern
WELCOME TO EERIE, INDIANA: THE TOWN THAT ATE OUR BRAINS
Before Stranger Things, before Gravity Falls, before the term “cursed Americana” was passed around like candy corn in a haunted cafeteria, there was one show that nailed it with zero budget, maximum style, and suburban twilight energy.
Eerie, Indiana (1991–1992)
A single season. 19 episodes. Every one a freaky relic.
Picture it:
A kid moves to a sleepy Midwestern town with Tupperware parties that trap people in eternal youth, ghost dogs that chase the mailman, and Elvis alive and well in suburbia. Think The X-Files rewritten by a 12-year-old raised on Twilight Zone, MAD Magazine, and the liner notes of Weird Tales.
TOP 5 WEIRDEST, WILDEST, MOST BELOVED EPISODES
1. “Foreverware”
Two twin boys haven’t aged since the '60s because their mom keeps them sealed in Tupperware every night. Satire, horror, and domestic surrealism collide in the show’s pilot—and it never looked back.
2. “The Retainer”
A dental retainer starts picking up dog thoughts. Slowly, the truth emerges: the dogs are planning a revolution. Equal parts Cronenberg and Homeward Bound, if the latter was written by Kafka.
3. “Heart on a Chain”
A tale of teen love, jealousy, and heart transplants—with a literal stolen heart. Tender, eerie, and emotionally raw. This one hurts, in the best way.
4. “The Dead Letter”
A lost love letter from 1929 crosses time and space. Ghosts, regrets, and a stunning emotional climax. Eerie gets metaphysical here, and it works.
5. “Zombies in P.J.s”
Marshall dreams of corporate brainwashing turning his town into TV-watching zombies in pajamas—and then wakes up to find it’s real. A capitalist horror parable that felt like it was aimed directly at the Fox Kids audience—and maybe by accident, it was.
WHY IT STILL RULES:
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Smart Writing: Joe Dante (yes, Gremlins) produced it. The scripts mix Twilight Zone ideas with small-town paranoia.
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Tone: Like David Lynch for middle schoolers—whimsical, deadpan, existential, and satirical.
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Mythology Light, Weird Heavy: There’s a loose continuity, but every episode is a new flavor of uncanny.
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Ahead of Its Time: Cancelled too soon, but it lived on in reruns—and in the nightmares of future horror directors.
LEGACY:
Without Eerie, Indiana, we don’t get:
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Goosebumps TV show
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Courage the Cowardly Dog
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The OA or Welcome to Night Vale
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Or any media where suburban mailboxes whisper back and Halloween never ends.
90s Horror Kids Special: Christopher Pike Paperbacks
“You found them in the school library, hidden behind Goosebumps. The covers looked like Goosebumps' older, goth cousin who smoked clove cigarettes and read Sylvia Plath. These were different. These were dangerous.”
Top 10 Christopher Pike Paperbacks That Warped Our Adolescent Minds
10. Whisper of Death (1991)
Two teens return from a road trip to find their town empty… except for twisted short stories about their own deaths. A surreal, meta mind-melter that feels like The Twilight Zone on acid, written in eyeliner.
9. Fall Into Darkness (1990)
Love, betrayal, and a fake suicide spiral into a murder mystery. Pike’s teen noir instincts on full display. There’s even a court trial. Trust no one.
8. The Midnight Club (1994)
Terminally ill teens gather at midnight to tell stories—and maybe cross into the afterlife. Bittersweet, existential, and ahead of its time. (So good Mike Flanagan adapted it for Netflix three decades later.)
7. Remember Me (1989)
Dead girl investigates her own murder as a ghost. What starts as a paranormal whodunnit turns into cosmic soul-theory. A Pike staple: spiritual horror disguised as pulp fiction.
6. Gimme a Kiss (1988)
A fake diary prank leads to revenge and death. Pike’s exploration of guilt, cruelty, and moral ambiguity hits harder than your average YA.
5. Bury Me Deep (1990)
A Hawaiian scuba trip with past-life flashbacks and a waterlogged corpse whispering secrets. It’s like Point Break meets The Monkey’s Paw.
4. The Last Vampire series (starting 1994)
Before Twilight, there was Sita—an ancient vampire with a tragic soul, violent past, and spiritual awakening. These books are existential blood-soaked thrillers disguised as teen pulp.
3. Monster (1992)
A girl returns to school, shoots her best friend, and mutters “They’re not human.” The weirdest, most violent of Pike’s books. Part alien invasion, part body horror, part Heathers.
2. Chain Letter (1986)
A mysterious note knows all your sins and demands obedience. A perfect morality-slasher hybrid where Pike tightens the noose page by page.
1. Slumber Party (1985)
The OG. A winter getaway turns deadly. Secrets, trauma, and the classic Pike formula: beautiful teens, buried guilt, and sudden death. The book that kicked off his reign as the king of psychological YA horror.
Why Pike Mattered:
Unlike R.L. Stine, Pike didn’t flinch. His horror wasn’t just about monsters—it was about regret, identity, death, God, sex, and the limits of reality. He wrote like a teen philosopher trapped in a slasher flick, daring readers to stare into the void between pages.
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