The 13 Most Ridiculous Goosebumps Twist Endings

R.L. Stine may have been unquestionably awesome, but he didn't half take some liberties...

It's an undisputed fact that in the mid-to-late 90's, R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series was pretty much the height of literary greatness. The books were deliciously easy to read, there'd be a new one out each month, and the covers were garishly and horrifyingly bright enough to make your eyes sting (see number 6 on this list for the most terrifying front cover of any book in the world, ever, for instance).

Despite their fear-inducing, bed-wetting awesomeness, though, there was one (arguable) weakness in the series – the twist endings. The gloriously ridiculous, oh-wait-it-was-actually-all-a-dream-and-the-main-character's-really-dead-plus-his-brother-is-an-alien style twist endings.

Below are 13 of the best. To make it easier to see at a glance just how bizarrely ridiculous they all are, each twist has been rated from 1 to 5 on the 'Ridicul-O-Meter':

Ridicul-O-Meter

1 = A bit ridiculous

2 = Fairly ridiculous

3 = Completely ridiculous

4 = Mind-bogglingly ridiculous

5 = Career-riskingly ridiculous

Let the stupidity commence...

1. The Girl Who Cried Monster (Book #8)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: A girl discovers the head of her summer reading programme is actually a rather unpleasant, turtle-eating monster.

Twist: It turns out she (and her parents) are also monsters. The book ends with them inviting the programme leader round to dinner and eating him. Dark stuff.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 2

2. Welcome to Camp Nightmare (Book #9)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: A boy goes a to weird camp and some scary stuff happens.

Twist: The camp is actually a hoax set up by the boy’s parents to see if he's ready to accompany them on an exploratory mission to a place called 'Earth'. Um.

Ridicul-O-Meter Score: 3

3. The Ghost Next Door (Book #10)

Via goodreads.com

Plot: A girl suspects her neighbour is a ghost.

Twist: This one’s a bit vanilla by Stine standards. It’s revealed before the end that the main character is actually the ghost, not her neighbour, and that she was killed along with her family in a house fire that happened five years before.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 1

4. Piano Lessons Can Be Murder (Book #13)

Via bidorbuy.co.za

Plot: The main character starts taking piano lessons at a strange music school, where his teacher (the subtly named ‘Dr Shreek’) may or may not be a psychotic murderer who collects children’s hands.

Twist: Dr Shreek isn’t a psychotic murderer; he is, in fact, a robot, made by the music school’s maintenance man (who definitely is a psychotic murderer).

Ridicul-O-Meter: 2

5. The Barking Ghost (Book #32)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: Cooper and Fergie are menaced by two ghostly dogs.

Twist: The dogs turn out to be humans that have been transformed into dogs, so they transform Cooper and Fergie into dogs and take over their identities, then Cooper and Fergie transform them back but they accidently get transformed into squirrels in the process. Or something.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 4

6. The Horror at Camp Jellyjam (Book #33)

Via goodreads.com

Plot: Wendy and her brother Elliot get separated from her parents and end up at a weird camp, where (like every single other book Stine sets at a camp) odd stuff happens and children routinely disappear.

Twist: The clue is in the book’s title with this one. It turns out the camp’s disappeared children are forced to work as slaves, cleaning a giant monster made of jelly. Obviously.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 4

7. A Shocker on Shock Street (Book #35)

Via bloggerbeware.com

Plot: Two kids get attacked by an array of different monsters while taking a tour of a new theme park.

Twist: If the book’s incredibly naff title isn’t enough of a clue that Stine may have been running low on ideas by this point, the twist – that the two main characters are actually robots – is clear proof.

Ridicul-O-Meter Score: 3

8. Attack of the Jack O'Lanterns (Book #48)

Via manic-expression.com

Plot: At Halloween, a prank goes wrong when some kids are accosted by monsters with Jack O'Lanterns for heads.

Twist: The Jack O'Lantern monsters are actually the main characters’ two friends in disguise – but they're also shape-shifting aliens who eat human flesh. Take that, reader.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 3

9. Vampire Breath (Book #49)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: Two kids find a toothless vampire in their basement.

Twist: The vampire is actually the main character's Grandad. He's also a vampire, but hasn’t grown his fangs yet. (A bit ridiculous by the standards of most other books in the world, but positively tame by Stine standards.)

Ridicul-O-Meter: 1

10. Beware, the Snowman (Book #51)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: Jaclyn moves to a village in the Arctic Circle and investigates the local legend of a snowman living in a cave at the top of a nearby mountain, guarded by a weird bloke in a hut.

Twist: The snowman is actually a scaled monster, trapped in snowman form by magic. The weird man living in the hut on the mountain is Jaclyn's father (although for one wild moment in the book you actually think the snowman is Jaclyn’s father – something that would have resulted in at least a 6 on the Ridicule-O-Meter, and possibly the end of Stine’s career).

Ridicul-O-Meter: 4

11. The Blob that Ate Everyone (Book #55)

Via pixelatedpop.com

Plot: Zackie wants to become a horror writer, but when he writes about a blob monster destroying his town, he finds that everything he types becomes true.

Twist: Stine really outdoes himself with this one. It turns out the whole story was actually written by the blob monster, and the book ends with the blob monster discussing the story with his blob friends. Wow.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 5

12. My Best Friend is Invisible (Book #57)

Via bloggerbeware.com

Plot: Sammy is haunted by a creature he thinks is a ghost.

Twist: The ghost is actually an invisible human, who reveals his Mum made him invisible because he's so hideous looking. It turns out the main characters all have tentacles and multiple eyes, and – in the universe in which the book is set – humans are actually an endangered species. Madness.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 3

13. I Live in Your Basement! (Book #61)

Via goosebumps.wikia.com

Plot: Marco gets strange calls from a boy called Keith, who says he lives in Marco’s basement. Loads of weird stuff then starts happening to Marco, and he keeps waking up from different dreams into different realities.

Twist: The entire book is a dream that Keith, who is actually a monster, is having. Utter madness.

Ridicul-O-Meter: 5

Ridiculous Bonus Graph: Career Progression Vs. Twist Ridiculousness

buzzfeed.com

There you have it: science never lies. Although the results are erratic at best, there's a clear increase in twist ridiculousness towards the end of Stine's first Goosebumps series.