Early in my writing career I read some helpful advice on how to improve my craft, which boiled down to, “Specialize in one genre.” As far as I understand it, the idea is that if you focus on a specific category, you don’t have to worry about what kind of story you’re going to write, and can focus on the art of telling the story really well. I found it was much easier than jumping around from genre to genre with each new project. Writing a harlequin romance is not the same as writing a western or a harboiled detective story. Each genre has its nuances, tropes, and archetypes.

So for ten years I wrote spooky stuff, before branching out into other types of fiction. Of course, that’s when I discovered the side-effect of specialization: whatever genre you sharpened your writing skills on will flavor EVERYTHING you write from then on. So no matter what I write, regardless of genre or intent, it will always have an element of the weird and macabre in it. This is probably why Dinah-Mite always has a touch of the twisted, even though it is largely family-friendly.

So why horror, of all things? Well, because of this book. This book is also a major reason why I’m so critical of R L Stine. Goosebumps was known for the slogan, “Reader Beware, You’re In For A Scare!” which somehow shares billing with such titles as Say Cheese and Die, or Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes.

Scary Stories for Sleepovers does not rely on false advertising: these tales are actually scary, especially for a kid. There are no silly Halloween masks or kids who turn out to be dogs, and there’s no fourth-wall breaking to keep things light and keep the parents from blowing their tops. The stories range from morality tales to thrillers to surreal nightmares. Most importantly, things rarely, if ever, end well for our protagonists. It feels like a proper kids’ version of Tales From the Crypt. The best horror stories end on a dark note, not a happy epilogue.

And some of the stories still hold up pretty well when you read them as an adult. They’re written for kids, so of course the narrative is much more basic than would be suitable for mature readers, but it doesn’t hold the young reader’s hand or try to keep things light so it doesn’t get “too scary.” Some of these stories were nightmare fuel for a ten-year-old, so when my classmates were talking about how “scary” the latest Goosebumps was, I couldn’t help laughing in their faces because I knew they hadn’t touched this book. If they had, they’d have lost sleep for days like I had.

This first volume was penned by R C Welch, and every volume afterward would be written by Q L Pearce, who did a nice job following up Welch’s bang-up first go at the series. Welch is no stranger to writing spooky tales for kids, since he also wrote two volumes of Twisted Tales, which I didn’t read as a kid. As you would expect for an anthology book, some of the stories are great, and others are weaksauce. But here, Welch still manages to provide some decent scary ideas even in the weaker entries.

The artwork is…okay. Most of it looks like the sort of stuff you’d find in a high school art class, but a few pieces (the ants preparing to eat a kid’s eyeball in particular) are absolutely stellar. The monster breaking down the door is the first image that comes to mind when I think of this collection.

Overall, if you’re an adult the first time you read this book, you may be a little disappointed because you’re not the target demographic. The book was written for ages 10 to 12 or so, and to fully appreciate it you have to put yourself in that age range’s mentality. If you’re in that age range and are dissatisfied with the “safe” horror that Goosebumps provides, buckle up and dive into this one. You won’t regret it.

Except the part where you sleep with the lights on for a week. That’s what I did when I was ten.

The way I structure anthology reviews is like this: The first half of the article gives my overall impressions, and whether I recommend the book or not. In the second half I’ll go over the stories in detail, which means SPOILERS. So I won’t be signing off like usual, because I don’t want to force you to read spoilers to get to my final thoughts. If you haven’t read Scary Stories For Sleepovers and want to enjoy it for yourself, stop reading now.

I will also take a stab at what the moral of each story must be. Good horror usually has a moral. I think.

~

The Hermit of Collins Peak

SUMMARY: Kurt, the new kid in town, learns from his new friends about the creepy old hermit Mr Collins, who lives in a homemade shack on the side of a mountain. The boys don’t know why Mr Collins lives up there all alone, but they have no problem cooking up all kinds of stories about him: that he’s a maniac who eats kids, that he’s guarding a secret gold mine, and so on. Kurt soon learns from his dad that apparently Mr Collins’s wife died giving birth to his son, and that he went to live on that hill shortly after his son vanished, and he’s probably targeted by all the kids in town and just wants to be left alone.

When the old man suffers a heart attack, Kurt and the boys see an opportunity to explore the old hermit’s shack and discover a barred door that leads into a cave in the side of the mountain. As the dying hermit’s spirit watches helplessly, the boys open the door, and are devoured by the evil force lurking inside the cave. Mr Collins dies before he’s able to warn anyone about the cave or what’s happened to the boys–the fate that presumably befell his own son.

MY THOUGHTS: Better than I remembered it, but even as a kid I felt it wasn’t the strongest opening for the anthology. Feels more like a dark fantasy tale than a horror. I do like the mystery built around the hermit: you get so many stories about the guy you have no idea which ones are true. Late in the story the narrative switches back and forth between the kids going to his shack, and the hermit being laid up in the hospital, and the whole time you’re wondering where it’s leading. More could have been done to build up Mr Collins as something to be feared before the reveal at the end, though.

MORAL: Mind your own business. Also, always lock your doors.

~

Dead Giveaway

SUMMARY: Terry freaks out and thinks he overslept on a school day, until he remembers school is out that day…because of his teacher’s funeral. Terry feels bad about it because his teacher always picked on him, and his cat Midnight had run away one day and left him in a foul enough mood to wish something bad would happen to her. Same night, teacher dies in a car wreck after swerving to avoid an obstacle in the road. He feels better when Midnight returns that day and Terry doesn’t give his teacher another thought, turning his focus on his hatred of the school bully Howard…until Howard falls into the lion exhibit at the zoo and is torn to shreds!

Now Terry becomes paranoid and begins to wonder if he has Death Note powers. After roughhousing with Midnight causes an accident that breaks Dad’s antique camera collection, Terry is grounded, and he lashes out at both Dad and Midnight for it. That night he finds Dad has fallen to death down the basement stairs, and he finally deduces that Midnight has been killing everyone who angers her owner. Except now HE has angered the cat, so it’s his turn to go.

MY THOUGHTS: A decent idea, but it’s pretty predictable, although at least right off the bat Terry seems to have the same thoughts we do about whether the cat is involved with the deaths. The real highlight is the end when Midnight chases him through the house while growing bigger and bigger, and Terry’s fate when he remembers too late that Dad barred the windows from the outside. Other than that, it’s mostly memorable for the artwork of Super Midnight smashing down the door.

I have to wonder if Midnight moved on to a new home after killing Terry, to start the process all over again.

MORAL: Don’t wish ill on others. And stay away from cats.

~

The Gift

SUMMARY: Jason is a spoiled brat who’s been grounded for telling his nerdy cousin what he really thought of his birthday gift: an ant farm. This boy is a borderline sociopath who is obviously doted on by his weak-willed parents, and has a sadistic streak that comes out in full force when he relishes torturing the ants in various ways. He buries them alive, he drowns them, he even kills them slowly and painfully with hydrogen peroxide! He then talks his milquetoast dad into letting him go next door to play despite being grounded, and when he gets back the ants have tunneled a hateful message for him in the ant farm. This understandably freaks Jason out, so he fills the thing with peroxide, dumps it in the garbage bin outside, and figures that is that…until the ants come back by the millions that night and eat him alive, from the inside out.

MY THOUGHTS: This is where the book starts to really pick up. “Dead Giveaway” established that this is a collection where the “heroes” don’t get out of the story safe and sound like you’d expect, but “The Gift” brings it into full Tales from the Crypt territory. A lot of good horror stories are morality tales, and Crypt banked on that in every issue. You really look forward to Jason’s comeuppance, and it doesn’t disappoint when it finally comes.

You also get a glimpse into the “nature vs nurture” argument via Jason’s dad. You grounded your boy, he should stay grounded. Clearly this brat is a monster of your own creation. Better luck with the next one, I guess!

MORAL: Don’t be an ingrate. More importantly, don’t torture animals. What are you, a serial killer?

~

A Camping Trip

SUMMARY: Mr Kane is the new science teacher at Alex’s school and already has a reputation as a fat, boring block of wood, so the boys are all pleasantly surprised when he uncharacteristically takes them on an “outdoor ed” adventure to the lake. There they meet the forest ranger, a cowboy with a spiffy crossbow, who tells them where to find his fire watch tower in case of emergencies. They set up camp and toast marshmallows and witness Mr Kane play against type once again as he tells a wickedly gruesome ghost story about an Indian mummy who was found by two boys in those very woods. The mummy came to life and ripped one boy’s heart out while the other went insane, and supposedly the mummy still haunts the area. Mr Kane punctuates the story by warning the boys not to wander away from camp, and everyone somehow manages to go to sleep.

Next morning one of the boys has gone missing, so Mr Kane has everyone skirt the lake for him in pairs, only for another boy to go missing when they rendezvous at camp. When Mr Kane hikes off to the ranger’s tower to radio for help, the boys argue about whether their new teacher has brought them out there to be murdered one by one Jason Voorhees style. Alex and Darrel are the only ones brave enough to hike to the ranger’s tower, despite their fears that Mr Kane is stalking them in the woods. On the way there, they run into the forest ranger and discover two things: that he’s not actually a forest ranger, and he’s just murdered Mr Kane.

MY THOUGHTS: One of the best in the whole anthology, and it subverts your expectations several times. The initial hike leaves you wondering what the spooky element is going to be; then Mr Kane’s ghost story plants the idea of murderous mummies stalking the woods; then the boys’ paranoia about their teacher being a maniac. Amusingly enough, they don’t really entertain the ghost idea very much, and mainly suspect Mr Kane. The fact that it involves a real world danger, rather than a supernatural one, is one of its biggest strengths and contributes to the variety of the collection.

MORAL: Camping sucks.

~

Mummy’s Little Helper

SUMMARY: Anne can’t sleep in her new house because a child’s voice keeps sobbing and begging her for help, and her parents can’t hear it for some reason, so she hasn’t mentioned it to them for fear that they’ll think she’s crazy. She finally tells her friend Robin about it at school, and begs her to sleep over at her place that night, if only to learn if anyone else can hear the voice. Robin reluctantly agrees, and sure enough, she can hear it, too!

Now validated, Anne becomes empowered to learn where the voice is coming from and solve the mystery. They follow the voice to the basement and pry up the floor boards, where Anne finds the mummified corpse of a child in a shallow grave. Just as she turns to gloat at her friend cowering on the basement staircase, the thing grabs Anne and drags her into the hole to eat her alive, while Robin falls into hysterics.

MY THOUGHTS: Surreal and nightmarish, or outright silly, depending on your point of view and your taste in horror. The idea of a disembodied voice in my house (and on that note, a dead person lurking in my basement while I’m none the wiser) terrifies me. It’s especially unnerving when Anne turns on the basement lights and the voice suddenly goes silent. I imagine the hideous thing under the floorboards trembling in silent anticipation as it’s on the cusp of getting what it wants.

There’s no explanation for the horror in this one. Sometimes you don’t need one. Sometimes explaining the horror makes it less scary. Sometimes not explaining things enough makes the story seem lazy and silly, but I always thought it worked fine here. I don’t need to know why this awful thing is buried under Anne’s house: the idea is scary enough. How can you possibly know the full history of the house you just moved into, or the land it was built on? Who knows what kind of weird stuff happened before you arrived.

MORAL: Don’t live in talking houses. That one should be obvious.

~

Shadow Play

SUMMARY: David and his parents have just moved into a new house, and initially David’s only concern is that he has to make new friends all over again. That changes when a neighbor kid cryptically hints at the horrible fate of the house’s previous tenants during a thunderstorm (and the fact that the family was mean to the core). The first night in the new house, David discovers that the shadows in his room move on their own, and they keep coming to get him in his bed. When his cat-and-mouse game with the shadows becomes a nightly occurrence, he’s forced to sleep with his lights on all the time.

David is embarrassed about sleeping with the lights on, but his parents don’t believe his story about the shadows coming for him, and nearly getting him one night when he tries to sleep with the light off. One night a thunderstorm causes a blackout, leaving a hysterical David in the dark with his oblivious parents. Just when David begins to suspect he was paranoid all along, he watches as the shadows come alive and murder his parents, saving him for last.

MY THOUGHTS: This is the one that kept me up at night for a week. You don’t tell a 10 year old kid a story about the shadows in his bedroom killing people in their sleep, and then expect him to dream about rainbows and candy. “Shadow Play” absolutely plays into every kid’s fear of the dark, especially for a kid like me who suffered recurring nightmares and never quite felt alone when walking through a dark house at night.

MORAL: Sleep with the lights on.

~

The Dollhouse

SUMMARY: The new girl Jenny is weird and shy and nobody likes her, but that doesn’t stop Karen from trying to get her to come out of her shell. When Karen brings a highly detailed elephant miniature to class, she notices Jenny’s obvious fascination with it, and builds a rapport with her about their mutual love of miniatures. She invites Jenny over to see her collection, at which point Jenny shows off an item from her own collection: a matchbox-sized wardrobe so intricately detailed that Karen’s jaw hits the floor.

Karen is now dying to see the rest of Jenny’s dollhouse, and goes over to her place to see it. The moment she sees Jenny’s home, she knows something isn’t quite right: the lawn is unkept, and the house is a pig sty, and there’s no sign of Jenny’s parents. The dollhouse, however, is a work of art, and everything in it is amazingly detailed and realistic…including the man and woman living in the house, who frantically pound on the tiny windows crying for help. They’re Jenny’s parents, shrunken down for angering Jenny. And when Jenny realizes Karen doesn’t like her anymore, she prepares to add her to the collection of tiny, weeping children in the dollhouse’s backyard.

MY THOUGHTS: I would have expected to see this story as an episode of The Twilight Zone. Jenny seems really sweet and harmless, if super awkward, and it’s nice to see her finally make a friend in Karen…only to make a heel turn in the final stretch. The first sight of Jenny’s dilapidated house is a good exercise in tension building: the obvious lack of care and cleanliness is a big red flag and the first sign that something bad is about to happen to Karen.

MORAL: Don’t try to be everybody’s friend. It’s not your job. Don’t be a Karen.

~

Frankenkid

SUMMARY: Jeffrey watches a movie about a killer robot. He decides to build his own robot. He builds his own robot. It kills him.

MY THOUGHTS: Dull and stupid. The anthology would be much stronger without it.

There are two bits that actually work, but by no means save the story from the Pit of Mediocrity. The first exchange between Jeffrey and his wiener of a little brother Curtis is pretty good. The finale where he thinks Curtis is trying to scare him with his own robot, only to realize that the robot is moving on its own and Curtis is nowhere to be found, was pretty effective. Neither makes the story really worth suffering through.

MORAL: Quality over quantity.

~

The Girl of Their Dreams

SUMMARY: Lisa and Chris have new neighbors who just moved into the dilapidated mansion across the field from their house: a girl named Brinn and her dad. They keep having dreams about her before they even meet her. Lisa dreams about the mansion being filled with treasure and jewels, and Chris dreams that it contains a museum of weapons and armor. When they finally do meet the gorgeous Brinn, both kids are fascinated by her, although she insists she can’t leave the house because she’s on the tail end of recovery from an illness.

A dream about Brinn dying shakes the siblings to their core, and they are driven to go see Brinn again. This time Brinn takes them to separate rooms containing the objects of their dreams, and Lisa loses track of the hours admiring all the jewelry in Brinn’s display room. Eventually Lisa suspects something isn’t right, and when she leaves the room, she discovers that everything was a dream-like illusion: the house is an ancient dump, Brinn’s dad is a pile of bones, the couch is a coffin. They’ve been playing in an abandoned house. When she discovers a monstrous, adult Brinn devouring Chris in a vampiric frenzy, Lisa flees back to her house, only to end up right back in Brinn’s house…and the hungry Brinn’s awaiting arms.

MY THOUGHTS: Another surreal one that could be hit or miss for each reader. It was a hit for me as a kid, and I still shudder at the idea of romping around a gorgeous mansion while unable to see it for the dilapidated vampire lair it really is. Brinn is one of the scariest characters in the anthology: I have to wonder if she answered the door in the form of her dad the first time the kids came to introduce themselves, since he claimed Brinn hadn’t arrived at the house yet, and we never see him move or speak again after she shows up. Brinn can create all kinds of illusions, including the illusion that she’s the same age as Lisa and Chris, so it stands to reason that she could pretend to be anything. The finale is violent, sudden, and confusing in a way only bad dreams can be.

My brother hated this story. I think it actually made him cry. What a wiener.

MORAL: Don’t take your dreams seriously. Or meet the neighbors. Or be a wiener.

~

A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing

SUMMARY: Craig and his classmates theorize about the latest “Autumn Slasher” killing, where a delivery man was found dismembered in an alley. The new kid, Jack, suggests its a sewer-dwelling monsters, but Craig quickly shoots this down and insists that it’s just a psycho on the loose. He quickly burns bridges with Jack when he gets his classmates to laugh at him for his silly suggestion of monsters and boogeymen.

Craig stays late at school that day, and it’s winter time, so it’s getting darker earlier. Craig also has hopelessly negligent parents who can’t be bothered to safely drive him to and from school, so he’s forced to walk home through the seedy downtown areas. When he realizes he’s being followed, he gets understandably spooked: the Autumn Slasher is still on the loose, after all. Fortunately he runs into Jack, also walking home, and Jack leads him through several alleys in an attempt to ditch the slasher. Unfortunately it turns out Jack is the slasher, and a werewolf, who gets the last laugh as he mauls the skeptical Craig.

MY THOUGHTS: Coulda been better. While the overall story is nothing to write home about, the sequence where Craig is being stalked on his walk home is really intense.

MORAL: Don’t walk home alone. Or with monsters. Especially with monsters.

~

The Thrill-Seekers’ Club

SUMMARY: Peter is desperate to join the Thrill-Seekers’ Club, a group of troublemakers at his school. He’s so desperate he agrees to go steal the flower pot from Old Man Stamper’s grave as proof that he went to the oldest and scariest part of the city cemetery and risked incurring the wrath of the cemetery gardener, Mr Finch, a cantankerous old goat who practically lives out of the cemetery. Peter’s friend David keeps trying to talk him out of the dare, but Peter will do anything to fit in, I guess.

Peter and David make it to Old Man Stamper’s grave, but Peter botches the flower pot recovery and breaks the pot completely. He is caught by what he assumes to be Mr Finch while trying to escape the ancient cemetery, only to realize too late that he’s being dragged deeper into the graveyard…by the grim reaper.

MY THOUGHTS: Pretty weak, especially for the last story, although the cemetery is pretty atmospheric. The ending always lost me a little bit. Did Peter die when he fell? Did he anger Old Man Stamper or some other graveyard ghoul by defiling the flower pot? Who knows.

MORAL: Peer pressure bad.

~