Chris and Goosebumps

[RagtimeRoastBeefy]

BwhahaahahaahahahahhahHahHaahhaahah beautiful!!!

 

[milkshark]

When I was a little kid I was scared of puppets and animatronic stuff like ET or the knock-off Mac and Me. The way they moved creeped me out. Kids have strong imaginations and and I grew up remembering a short movie promo clip of a dog with a full-on, perfectly realistic human head. The memory made me "Nope" until I was in my teens when I got into horror movies and forgot about it. A few years ago I finally saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers and saw... a dog with a really corny, rubber human mask on his face. It didn't match my memory at all. My imagination had warped it to such a scale that 99% of what made it scary was from me.

So yeah, kids will always remember shit as scarier than it really was regardless of production value.

I had a similar experience with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I loved that movie as a kid but would run out of the room during Large Marge's scene. As an adult, I watched Large Marge for the 2nd time in my life, and was totally underwhelmed by the goofy stop motion bug eyes that apparently my imagination had built up into the face of Satan itself.

Regarding the original topic, I remember really getting into Goosebumps books in 5th grade, which for me was in 1994. It seemed to be a pop culture phenomenon, because every kid had read at least 2 or 3 of them. They were pretty good horror stories for kids, but not nearly as scary as the Stephen King movies or Tales from the Crypt episodes I also watched. I read them occasionally for about 3 or 4 years after that, dropping off right before high school. For Chris to read Goosebumps in High School in the late 90's really marked him as special and immature to other classmates. Keep this in mind when considering how the Gal Pals regarded Chris. At the age they are, those girls all read at least 3 or 4 Goosebumps novels in their grade school years and enjoyed them, just like nearly every average kid in that generation. When they sat at the lunch table with the goofball in rainbow stripes reading Monster Blood II, they might as well have been sitting with a young child in a sailor suit licking a giant lollipop. Chris thought he was 8-) when he was always a to the Gal Pals, and honestly very little has changed since. Definitely not taste in video games, that's for sure.

 

[Jewelsmakerguy]

When I was a little kid I was scared of puppets and animatronic stuff like ET or the knock-off Mac and Me. The way they moved creeped me out. Kids have strong imaginations and and I grew up remembering a short movie promo clip of a dog with a full-on, perfectly realistic human head. The memory made me "Nope" until I was in my teens when I got into horror movies and forgot about it. A few years ago I finally saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers and saw... a dog with a really corny, rubber human mask on his face. It didn't match my memory at all. My imagination had warped it to such a scale that 99% of what made it scary was from me.

So yeah, kids will always remember shit as scarier than it really was regardless of production value.

I had a similar experience with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. I loved that movie as a kid but would run out of the room during Large Marge's scene. As an adult, I watched Large Marge for the 2nd time in my life, and was totally underwhelmed by the goofy stop motion bug eyes that apparently my imagination had built up into the face of Satan itself.

I remember being afraid of the Energizer Bunny when I was a kid. Now that I look back on it, boy was that stupid.

And in regards to the original topic, I remember reading maybe 10-15 volumes during my elementary/junior high (live in Canada after all) years, I think my favorite ones were 'Cuckoo Clock of Doom', 'Shocker on Shock Street' and 'Attack of the Mutant'. Bizarrely, I wasn't even scared by them.

 

[The Fair Lady]

Ah yes, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I have no idea why I tended to read them before bed. As mentioned before, it wasn't the stories, but the pictures.

 

[JeffGoldblumIRL]

Just going to say it's prophetic how many Goosebumps titles have applicable Chris pictures/art to go with them.

For those who are making covers, here's a handy list of published Goosebumps books to get inspired by: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goosebumps ... nal_series)

 

[Butta Face Lopez]

^Definitely. It's a shame the books themselves weren't nearly as disturbing.

Of course, some of them do have nightmare fuel qualities. I remember the episode of The Werewolf of Fever Swamp scaring the hell out of me when I was little, so I decided to rewatch it a few years ago. While I realized that the acting was awful, some parts were still pretty creepy.

Spoiler

The scene where they find the shoe in the swamp always had me convinced that a kid had drowned in it. And then at the end, the werewolf boy ends up dying this way.

I like that you used spoiler tags for the ending of a twenty year old episode of Goosebumps.

 

[The Fair Lady]

^Definitely. It's a shame the books themselves weren't nearly as disturbing.

Of course, some of them do have nightmare fuel qualities. I remember the episode of The Werewolf of Fever Swamp scaring the hell out of me when I was little, so I decided to rewatch it a few years ago. While I realized that the acting was awful, some parts were still pretty creepy.

Spoiler

The scene where they find the shoe in the swamp always had me convinced that a kid had drowned in it. And then at the end, the werewolf boy ends up dying this way.

I like that you used spoiler tags for the ending of a twenty year old episode of Goosebumps.

I like that you care how old it is.

 

[MysticMisty]

I read almost every Goosebump book in my day because my cousin had a learning disability and they were the only books he'd read by choice when he was younger, and I'd have a look after he'd finished them. The only one I remember having nightmares about was the haunted house one where there was a beating heart and a screaming decapitated head on a plate. That might have been one of the "older kids" ones, though. I always saw the show as a poor man's AYAOTD, though maybe that's just because I knew all the endings because I'd read the books.

I do remember the computer game Escape from HorrorLand being pretty scary. There's a part where a vampire tries to legit rape you.

I played Escape from HorrorLand with a classmate/neighbor in 6th grade. I don't remember a vampire trying to rape the character, but I do remember we knocked the parents into the vat of chemicals or whatever it was on purpose so they would show up in the ending as monsters. We thought it was hilarious.

The books themselves I never cared much for. Maybe the few I read were regarded as lame in general? I dunno, they just never caught on with me and I love reading. I remember them being wildly popular with my classmates in elementary school, however in spite of nobody ever being frightened by them (at least nobody who admitted to it) supposedly some parents found them too scary/inappropriate/whatever for kids so you couldn't give Goosebumps during gift exchanges nor could they be chosen by the teacher as the class book.

 

[Ace_Reloaded]

That said, there are so many other young adult books on the market that are better written than Goosebumps. Narnia, The Hobbit, and Maradonia and the Seven Bridges, just to name a few.

Legit at Maradonia. Well played.

 

[whitepaws]

I remember reading the Alvin Schwartz books and some other kiddie horror anthologies when I was little. I don't think I ever read any of the Goosebumps though.

There's one such book that I'm trying to remember the name of, but damned if I can remember it. Maybe someone here can jog my memory?
The story I remember best involved a little boy and his family moving into a haunted house where the "ghosts" took the form of malevolent shadows that would move around in the dark, and if one of them should catch you unaware and land on your face, you were dead. Of course the kid quickly became afraid of the dark and started sleeping with the lights on, to banish the ghosts, much to his parents' annoyance. One night a storm rolled through and the power went out, and the little boy was so scared he insisted on sleeping with his parents with a candle burning. He did not sleep well and woke up some time during the night, when the candle had burned down to almost nothing, maybe a minute of light left. He looked and saw his parents had already had their faces covered by the shadows, and as the candle burns out, the last thing he sees is another shadow dropping onto him from the ceiling.

Another one I remember, I think from the same book, involved a kid torturing some ants in an ant farm, some time later he returns to find they have spelled the word "HATE" with their tunnels and take their proper revenge some time afterward. All the stories in the book had endings that were unusually dark for a kiddie horror anthology; the ghosts/demons/etc. usually won, the heroes usually died.

Does anyone remember the name of this book?

 

[DustyR]

Sometimes people cling to things from their childhood at great length. There are many old people that collect toys from their youth. It is, however, rather unusual to continue liking those things from one's childhood throughout one's entire adult life. There is usually an interval of disinterest for a period of time. He may mention them with such fervor because it brings up memories and because of how poorly read he is. It's accepted that he has read little, if anything, in the last several years.

 

[The Joker]

Chris's reading level is incredibly low. In one of the mailboxes he talked about his favorite goosebumps books but even then hardly seemed to remember or understand it.
He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

 

[Horde Prime]

Chris's reading level is incredibly low. In one of the mailboxes he talked about his favorite goosebumps books but even then hardly seemed to remember or understand it.
He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

Speaking of horror, Joker, your new look in the comics is pretty damn terrifying.

 

[DustyR]

Well, in his defense, the American Dream has to remind you that Chris probably was trying to recall plot lines from books he had read 10 years prior. They are small little books, so I can't blame him for not remembering much.

I also have always thought it was odd Chris even got into Pokemon in the first place. Wasn't he like 14 or 15 when the franchise started? I am nearly the same age as Chris, and it was never even on my radar until probably 2006 or 2007, and I could not begin to see the appeal. It seems rather odd that someone his age would become so obsessed with a children's entertainment. I suppose it's different for people who are even just two or three years younger than Chris, because they still would have been children when the franchise started, and certainly a lot of people seem to be younger than him. It certainly would have been rather bizarre though for someone the age of Chris to get involved with Pokemon, especially back then.

 

[MysticMisty]

He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

This is what I think honestly, and we're probably not the only ones. I mean, he couldn't visualize the characters in his head based on their descriptions. Or even make up ones. He had to insert Sonic characters. Imagining Hogwarts or even Britain in general would be hard for him.

 

[bradsternum]

What are you talking about, Misty? He is a CREATIVE GEINUS.

 

[A-Stump]

I'm surprised Barb didn't give him the knockoff series, Shivers. It was a very convincing ripoff back in the day but check this out http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HRYJLW/ref=cm_sw_su_dp I know a child drew that but come on it's probably because the guy was too cheap to pay the artist for the original art to use it in another work. Just really damn stupid looking

 

[The Joker]

Chris's reading level is incredibly low. In one of the mailboxes he talked about his favorite goosebumps books but even then hardly seemed to remember or understand it.
He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

Speaking of horror, Joker, your new look in the comics is pretty damn terrifying.

They just take the smile right off my face. Punpunpun

Could Chris even understand most comics today? I don't think Chris could even understand one of the new batman sagas like Death of the Family. He would say the relationship between Harley and the Joker was "sweet"!

 

[DrChristianTroy]

Chris's reading level is incredibly low. In one of the mailboxes he talked about his favorite goosebumps books but even then hardly seemed to remember or understand it.
He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

Speaking of horror, Joker, your new look in the comics is pretty damn terrifying.

They just take the smile right off my face. Punpunpun

Could Chris even understand most comics today? I don't think Chris could even understand one of the new batman sagas like Death of the Family. He would say the relationship between Harley and the Joker was "sweet"!

I haven't read comics in about a year but I'm sure something like Avengers would throw him due to there being non-recognizable characters and stories with long running continuity. His brain would fucking melt. Then there's the whole thing about him fucking up the narrative and point of a story. Him twisting something amazing like Y: The Last Man into some sort of self serving narrative just bugs me. Or seeing The Boys and finding the awful shit the supers do as "Just hanky panky" is cringe worthy to me.

Honestly unless it is based on something he already knows or for really young kids I don't think he could handle it.

 

[Count groudon]

Chris's reading level is incredibly low. In one of the mailboxes he talked about his favorite goosebumps books but even then hardly seemed to remember or understand it.
He could have hated Harry Potter because it was too hard for him to read while competing with his beloved pokemon.

Speaking of horror, Joker, your new look in the comics is pretty damn terrifying.

They just take the smile right off my face. Punpunpun

Could Chris even understand most comics today? I don't think Chris could even understand one of the new batman sagas like Death of the Family. He would say the relationship between Harley and the Joker was "sweet"!

Well, considering that he thought that a violent rape scene was just two people having fun sexy times on the beach, that sounds about right.