Goosebumps 1 – Welcome to Dead House

R. L. Stine's Welcome to Dead House is a creepy Goosebumps story for 8 year olds about a family who move into a free house nobody has lived in for a while.

What happens

Amanda is twelve and her brother Josh is eleven. Dad has been left a big old house by a great-uncle none of them can remember. It's in a town called Dark Falls, and it really is dark. Dead leaves cover the front garden in the middle of July.

Josh hates it on sight. Amanda quite likes her new room (it has a window seat!). Then she sees a blond boy standing in her doorway. He's gone a second later, and the estate agent laughs and says no ghost comes with the house.

Their little dog Petey doesn't like the estate agent one bit. He growls at him, then bolts off and leads Josh on a chase through the cemetery.

Amanda tells the story, so you're right there with her as the odd things pile up. Curtains billow at a window that's shut. Whispering comes from an empty cupboard. A strange girl smiles down from the landing, and nobody else ever seems to see anything. Isn't that the worst feeling, when the grown-ups just won't believe you?

There's plenty of brother-and-sister bickering to break it up. Josh's idea of a joke is creeping up behind her and grabbing her shoulder. She gets him back by lying very still on the floor with her head hidden in the wardrobe.

It's worth knowing this one is properly spooky, and that's only the first few chapters. Amanda has a nightmare where the whole family are skulls sitting round the dinner table, eating bones off their plates.

A reader who's jumpy at bedtime might want this as a daytime book. If your reader likes being scared and then laughing about it, they'll race through it.

What to read next

For another Goosebumps family with a secret in the house, try Stay Out of the Basement. Margaret and Casey's dad is a plant scientist who won't let anyone see what he's growing downstairs, and he's starting to act very strangely.