'I remember scouring bookstores each month when the next Goosebumps was supposed to come out,' superfan Brian Stelter tells me.Welcome to Dead House is the first book in the original Goosebumps book series. It inspired a kids TV show, merch and – to a certain type of superfan – the books themselves became collectables. It took a while for the 'Goosebumps' hype train to take off, but when it did - it hit big.

And then I can go pretty far with the scares,' says Stine. 'My one rule for writing for 7 to 11 year olds is they can't think it's going to be real. You want to have a little independence, a touch of agency, but also feel safe. You're on the precipice of not wanting to be a kid anymore - which is why 'Goosebumps' protagonists tend to be 12 years old - just a little older than the target age range. It's an interesting age, before you've realized that growing up is kind of awful. It helped her focus on 'what made me love middle grade horror.' She'd actually returned to Welcome to Dead House when working on her first book, during a rough patch of writer's block. Desperate, she told Stine that he could write a horror novel for teenagers.īrown is the author of two horror books for kids - The Forgotten Girl and The Girl in the Lake. She was supposed to be working on a horror book for teens called Blind Date, but the author had just dropped out. One day in the '80s, he was having lunch with his friend Jean Feiwel, who was also an editor at Scholastic.

He started out as a humorist, editing a kids magazine at Scholastic.

He moved to New York with big dreams of becoming a writer – just not the type of writer he became. I get to scare a lot of generations, don't I?' That's a tough pill to swallow,' he says. In a way, Stine is in a sweet spot with his audience - his original fan base is now old enough to be sharing 'Goosebumps' with their own kids. When we met, he was fresh from an appearance at New York City Comic Con, meeting and greeting a hoard of fans, and he was getting ready to appear at the Library of Congress to take questions from children. Stine is celebrating the anniversary with a couple of new books and a handful of appearances. Bookshelves are filled with Goosebumps books and horror-based knick knacks in Stine's home.

Goosebumps welcome