"Nightmare Hour" by RL Stine

It’s very tempting to laugh at a full-grown adult reading anything by RL Stine, considering that he’s been dubbed “the Stephen King of children’s fiction”. The operative word in that tout is of course “children’s”. But when you actually take “Nightmare Hour” off the shelf and start tooling through it, you begin to think to yourself, “This is children’s fiction? Really?” While it is true that there are no swear words or sexual situations, this anthology isn’t short on disturbing moments. How would you like to have a horde of fuzzy brown spiders crawling up and down your arm…and eventually underneath your skin? Or if you don’t have a heart attack just yet, picture your head being on the end of a pumpkin vine for some sick farmer’s enjoyment. Still keeping your distance from that bottle of Xanax? Try picturing having your foot chopped off after being mistaken for a kid with diabetes. These moments mark some of the scariest in the entire book. I would dare say that these stories are a complete 180 from what I’ve read in the Goosebumps series during my middle school days. Goosebumps is merely TV-Y7-rated material. Always has been and continues to be when the TV version is being syndicated on The Hub. Would you like to take a guess as to where on the TV rating spectrum Nightmare Hour lies? I’d say somewhere between TV-PG and TV-14. Of course, the stories in Nightmare Hour that managed to make it on TV don’t agree with this philosophy. It could be because translations to television aren’t always faithful to the book. I haven’t seen these syndicated episodes, but after seeing the nasty shit that happened in the book, it’s definitely on my bucket list. Hell, I just may kick the bucket while watching an episode of an RL Stine TV show due to having a massive heart attack that even faithful McDonald’s customers never experience. If you’re an adult and reading this book, don’t be ashamed. It’s okay to be frightened and disturbed, but being ashamed is definitely out of the question. Boogedy-boogedy-boo!

　

***TELEVISION QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“I hope that when your head is separated from your shoulders, it’s treated with a little more respect than what you’ve shown our victim.”

-Ducky from “NCIS”-