#61 "Talk about a MONSTER nightmare!"
Marco has a very overprotective mother. She thinks the whole world is out to get them and won't even let her son play on the softball team. So Marco decides to sneak out to a game. When he gets hit in the head with a softball bat he starts feeling really funny. And strange things start to happen. Like the strange phone calls that are coming from someone who says they live down in his basement! ( )

One of the amusing things about my Goosebumps journey is that I'm coming across books I genuinely didn't recall reading. It's only when I get to certain scenes that I remember having read the book before, and then the nostalgia comes rushing back in. This is one of those books. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, this is one of the hardest Goosebumps books to find now as it didn't get reprinted in any of the classic Goosebumps runs. So. Good luck finding it, and read it at your own risk.

Marco is out playing softball with some friends when a girl, Gwynnie, accidentally hits him in the head with her bat. What follows is one of the most disturbing and disgusting Goosebumps books I've ever read. Dream and reality mix and mingle - the protagonist can't tell what's real and what's fiction, and honestly, the reader can't either. It's only in the moments when a character reaches into their mouth and begins pulling their organs out by the tongue that you realize something is seriously wrong... or what about when the main character nearly gets his tongue ripped out but instead it keeps coming, a disgusting pile of ribbon like muscle? This book is messed up, but you just keep reading, even through the cringing.

I'm really torn about how many stars to give it. It's a unique book, a disgusting book, a twisted little foray into horror that I can't deny left a clear impression on me when I first read it, and even more of one now. It very well might deserve more stars and I might need to revisit it for that, but... Yeah. Definitely not a Goosebumps title to miss and unfortunately one that has likely gotten lost over the years due to lack of reprints.

Just. Ugh. For once the thrills and chills were real. ( )

## Talk about a MONSTER nightmare!

Prior to the Goosebumps finale, R.L. Stine seemed to be focusing entirely on the horror. The last 10 books contain almost all of the series' scariest moments: The Curse at Camp Cold Lake, Werewolf Skin, Chicken Chicken, The Haunted School, and the penultimate entry: I Live in Your Basement!

[N.B. This review includes images, and was formatted for my site, dendrobibliography -- located here.]

Ignoring the silly name, I Live in Your Basement! is uncomfortably creepy to the very end. It's easily the scariest entry in the entire series, wasting almost no time on R.L. Stine's usual gags and punchlines. The story opens with 12-year-old Marco avoiding his overprotective mother -- (the only source of humor in the entire book, and a one-note joke at that) -- by joining his friends for a game of softball. Gwynnie, the toughest, tallest girl in the class, accidentally knocks him out cold with her bat. He wakes up to his mother's incessant worry, and from there nothing is quite right to the very end.

It starts with a phone call. A boy named Keith is calling to simply let Marco know that Keith is there with him, living in his basement, and it's up to Marco to look after him from then on. When Marco shares this phone call with his mom, there's no phone in the room, and never has been. The story repeats: He starts seeing and hearing from the boy everywhere. The unreality of it starts extending beyond just Keith, however, as friends and family start asking him about things that never happened; his doctor assures him he's going to kill him to figure out what's wrong with him (and his mom agrees, "the doctor knows best!"); he wakes up one morning to Gwynnie being not a classmate, but his younger sister.

In the single most terrifying scene in the entire series, Marco digs through the basement with his friend, looking for Keith's hiding spot: Without warning, his friend gives a big, cold smile -- too big of a smile. Her mouth opens beyond possibility, and her insides start casually pushing their way out of her mouth to coat the room around Marco. It's disturbing, and would be more at-home in Stephen King's It than R.L. Stine's Goosebumps.

The entire novel carries this confusing sense of dread, as the reader never knows what's going on until the very end. Like most Goosebumps stories, there's a twist ending, and it's a twist that veers off in a new direction, completely ignoring the plot before it. The twist ending here is, as usual, the weakest part of the story. I Live in Your Basement! is good -- not great -- but deserves some extra credit (and a new e-book edition, as it's been out of print too long!) for sticking to the series' horror roots so closely.

R.L. Stine's Goosebumps (1992–1997):
#60 Werewolf Skin | # 62 Monster Blood IV ( )

Goosebumps. This is the series that kept me reading through my childhood. More than any other series, Goosebumps kept me interested in reading, and R.L. Stein is a wonderful children's writer. I applaud his efforts, and can't express enough my gratitude for the series. ( )

I purchased