Welcome to Dead House

Welcome to Dead House is the first installment in the original Goosebumps series. As such, it is the catalyst for what has become an internationally best-selling series that has spawned several spinoff series, television shows, movies, and video games. The original Goosebumps series contains 61 books, but the Goosebumps universe has over 200 volumes throughout the original series and others: Goosebumps Series 2000, Give Yourself Goosebumps, Tales to Give You Goosebumps, Goosebumps Triple Header, Goosebumps HorrorLand, Goosebumps Most Wanted, and Goosebumps SlappyWorld. Another series, Goosebumps Gold, was written but never released. The books inspired two television series and two feature-length films, the latter starring Jack Black as a fictionalized version of Stine himself. Across countries and cultures, the Goosebumps books have garnered popularity for their exploration of themes pertinent to children, such as agency and self-discovery—two prominent ideas within Welcome to Dead House.

Welcome to Dead House exemplifies the main structure of the Goosebumps books, each of which focuses on a different child/children in a unique location. The protagonists are always of the middle class, which both makes them accessible to the most readers and also limits the range of experiences the series tackles. The main characters often find themselves in remote or isolated locations and have either recently moved or been sent somewhere. By doing this, Stine places children in new situations so that they are then forced to use their intelligence to find solutions, rather than falling back on the comfort of things they know. The tales also often contain twist endings, such as the new family that arrives in the final moments of Welcome to Dead House. While this first installment lays the groundwork for the following installments, it also contains references to blood and gore, as well as violence. Concern from parents caused Stine to tone down such elements in the following books, and while there is debate as to whether this was necessary, Stine attributes the success of the series to the books not relying on such factors, implying that the scary stories themselves are the driving force behind Goosebumps’s popularity.