NEW YORK – You might think of the author of “Goosebumps” as the unofficial mayor of Halloween, but R.L. Stine never cared much for the holiday.
Yet, you wouldn’t know that stepping into his home office. From the entrance, Stine’s apartment is unassuming, save for some killer hardwood floor paneling. But step down the hall and you’re in a Halloweentown of his own design.
It’s an odd mixture of office supplies and the spooky memorabilia that got Stine his fame – a giant plastic cockroach opposite a desk where he writes his novels. Slappy the Dummy dots the office in many forms from masks to dolls, but there’s also a practical bin labeled “mail + stuff to deal with.” He has a life-size skeleton that his Scholastic publishers sent him for a big “Goosebumps” bestseller list milestone. He assembled the pieces himself, he grumbles, so one of the knees is backward. On the walls hang posters of his cover artwork. The ceiling and walls are connected with spidery shelving brackets, decorated in the same style as the black webby legs of his desk.
Spend spooky season with ‘Goosebumps’ author R.L. Stine
It’s a rainy day in New York, the dreadful kind of sideways pour that gives Stine’s office an even spookier glow. His rambunctious puppy, Lucky, stumbles into the office with a towel in his mouth after a failed attempt to dry him off post-walk. On Halloween night, Stine will pass out candy and books to a small group of kids in his building. They mostly take the candy, he tells USA TODAY.
“Everyone thinks it’s my favorite holiday, but I’m always working on Halloween,” he says. Just last week, he traveled to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, which was decked out in “Goosebumps” green to commemorate the author.
But don’t ask him to dress up on Halloween.
“The thing about me is I’m no fun,” he jokes in his signature deadpan humor. “I’ve never been any fun.”
Stine’s childhood Halloween memories feel like something out of “A Christmas Story” – he wanted a scary costume, but his parents got him a fuzzy yellow duck suit. His family was poor, he couldn’t afford a new costume every year. Duck it was.
“It was horrible,” Stine says. It did give him some inspiration, though, and became a part of his story “The Haunted Mask.” Future Halloweens would also inspire this book – one year, his son tried on a green rubber Frankenstein mask and couldn’t get it off. In “The Haunted Mask,” a young girl gets a mask stuck on her face and begins to turn evil.
“He’s tugging and tugging, and I thought ‘What a great idea,’” Stine says. “I should have helped him.”
R.L. Stine on keeping things just scary enough
Generations of readers have grown up spooked and intrigued by “Goosebumps.” Stine has written books for all ages, including adults, but the 7-11-year-old range is his favorite.
“It’s the last time in their lives they’ll ever be enthusiastic,” he says. “They want to know you. They want to read you. They want to meet you. They want to buy stuff. They wear your shirts.”
Catering horror to a younger demographic is all about knowing where to draw the line. Stine keeps his scares fantastical. He won’t touch divorce, abuse, drugs or other real-world problems. He wants kids to know that “Goosebumps” can’t really happen in real life.
He isn’t so much of a scaredy-cat now, but Stine was as a kid. He can clearly recall a freezer in his parents’ basement that resembled a coffin and gave him the heebie jeebies. Remembering that “feeling of terror, that feeling of panic” helps him in his writing.
“I was really, seriously, a fearful child, was very shy and just afraid of a lot of things. I think that’s why I stayed in my room writing. It was safe, and I’m building my own world.” Stine says. “I would ride my bike around the neighborhood and come back in the evening, and I always thought something was lurking in the garage, thought something was waiting. I’d throw my bike into the garage, go running into the house. It’s a terrible way to be a kid.”
Later in adulthood, he had a recurring dream that someone was chasing him. But when he started writing horror instead of joke books, the dream disappeared.
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What is R.L. Stine doing now?
Stine has not retired and has no plans to. In fact, he says he’s busier than ever. His wife has Alzheimer’s, so he says writing is a “gratifying” escape from day-to-day life.
He’s currently working on a new adult thriller book, something he swore he’d never do again. But he has a hard time saying no, he says. His wife used to have to coach him to say “I’ll get back to you” instead of “yes.”
Over the years, he’s had to adjust to becoming a figure of nostalgia for adults who read “Goosebumps” when it first published. Maybe when he garners too many generations of readers, he’ll throw in the towel.
“A kid raises their hand now, ‘Are you going to retire?’ No one used to ask me that! Shut up. No one had ever asked me,” Stine says. “Here’s when I quit – this is it for me. Somebody comes up to the table and they say ‘My grandmother loves your books.’”
Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, subscribe to our weekly Books newsletter or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
