literature

Popculture Pandemonium: Fear Street Retrospective

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Goosebumps. Just the word conjures up images of R. L. Stine's timeless series. That slimy green G, the distinctive Tim Jacobus covers, and an iconic rogues gallery that managed to make masks, dummies, lawn ornaments, and even silly putty terrifying for children.

But, before that, Stine did a series of more... Mature horror novels for Pocket Books under the title of Fear Street. No horned Horrors or creeping Creeps to be found here, just teeny bopper murder mysteries and the occasional haunting set in the sleepy, Ohio town of Shadyside. Is Axe Murdering Cheerleader a genre?

The basic premise is that the town is cursed because umpteen hundred years ago, the wealthy, puritanical Fear family (changed from Fier when they moved to the country) burned an innocent girl and her mother at the stake for witchcraft and were cursed by the father (so... Right family, wrong members). I mean, it makes more sense than Cabot Cove, Maine just happening to have a higher murder per populace than New York, I guess. The books were a moderate success, but obviously only a portent of the monolithic literary figure Jovial Bob Stine was to become.

Naturally, Stine did eventually leave Pocket Books, and started a small venture with industry giant, Scholastic and the rest is history.

Cut to the rampant success of Goosebumps. Books, toys, board games, a tv show, and numerous copy cats. My grade school library had its own little section dedicated to all the weird kids horror novels that came out at the time. Bone Chillers, Spine Chillers, Dead Time Stories, Shivers, Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear, the list goes on. Obviously, Pocket Books wanted in on the action too, but unlike the others, they had access to a world crafted by Stine himself. All they needed to do was fill it with ghost... writers.

Yes, the series title "Ghosts of Fear Street" is a clever little double entendre. Not only are the books more supernatural based than their Highschool aimed predecessors, but they're mostly ghost written and presented under Stine's name, but he oversaw it as a sort of producer, I guess you could say. He gave notes, and even penned some of the stories himself, allowing for a similar, yet distinct experience from Goosebumps.

The differences start at the very cover. Goosebumps' covers were creepy, but still relied on smooth edges. The slime borders, the shines and curves of the illustrations and how they stayed within their world, and color pallets that complemented each other. It was perfectly designed. Ghosts of Fear Street, on the other hand, was demented 90s cheese that boggles the mind. Jagged borders, Dutch angles, intense neon colors from across the spectrum leaping out at you. It was grotesque, bordering on seizure inducing.

The stories themselves... Varied. When you have an anthology series being written by multiple people, it obviously will have differing levels of quality, far greater than even Stine's own work. However, each book still has the same location, and the cast of the original books even showed up now and again.

However, Ghosts of Fear Street is interesting in that they it's clearly not Stine's usual writing style. Stine almost always focused on human aspects, often underplaying the monsters. Most of the jump scares in the books are just people being assholes.

The Ghosts of Fear Street books, however, get their premises going fairly early on and stay with them, even having the monsters regularly interact with the kids.

Also, as the books went on, a very interesting pattern began to form. The stories took a turn into body horror for a while.

The Ooze started the trend with a chemistry set prop that sapped intelligence. Next came the Boy Who Ate Fear Street, about a young man who started desiring stranger and stranger cuisines. Following that are my two favorite books in the series: Night of the Werecat and How To Be a Vampire. And finally, Body Switchers from Outer Space rounds out the odd group.

Now, anyone who's followed me long enough knows I'm fascinated by Vampires and Transformations, so, obviously, those stuck out to me and I read them in the latter years of tenure in elementary school. They aren't bad reads, either. One reimagines the idea of becoming a vampire, showing it as this slow process that requires an orientation, almost like a part time job, and the other tells the story of a girl who steals a pendant that causes her to transform into a cat with a star on its head under the full moon. Not even like a cat creature or anthro-cat, just a slightly larger than normal house cat. Obviously, the horror comes from her trying to hide the curse and being disturbed by what's happening to her. Night of the Werecat also seems to be a coming of age story... I mean, a girl on the cusp of womanhood becomes ashamed and scared of her body, until her parents reveal *spoilers* it happens to everyone in their family. Unsurprisingly, this puberty allegory that flew right over my 5th grade head was written by a female writer. Also an interesting exploration into a concept Stine himself touched upon in The Girl Who Cried Monster, connecting monstrous lineage to puberty.

But, like all 90s trends, Ghosts of Fear Street died (heh) fairly young at only 36 books, while Goosebumps still exists to this day, leaving behind some of the most insane covers and underappreciated writing of the kids horror genre. In its place, a series exploring the origins of Fear Street and it's curse.

I actually found How to be a Vampire as well as Night of the Werecat whilst at a used book shop and picked them up for a buck a piece, and plan to re-read them this Halloween.

It's not as subdued and often timeless as Goosebumps, but for something a bit different, you could definitely do worse. Pick them up at your local library or Half-Price Books.
A brief editorial about a book series that was near and dear to me during my fourth through sixth grade years.
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