Literature / More Tales to Give You Goosebumps

More Tales to Give You Goosebumps is the second short-story collection from the Tales to Give You Goosebumps series, containing ten stories with a summer theme and originally released with a Goosebumps book light.

It contains the following stories:

• "The Werewolf's First Night" - A boy named Brian attends a day camp at Thunder Lake, which is supposedly occupied by werewolves.
• "P.S. Don't Write Back" - A boy at summer camp starts receiving strange letters that lead him to investigate another camp nearby.
• "Something Fishy" - A boy manages to shrink himself to the size of a fish, letting him swim around in his fish tank to escape the summer heat.
• "You Gotta Believe Me!" - A young boy tries to warn everyone about an alien invasion, and ends up having to fend them off himself when nobody will listen to him.
• "Suckers!" - Three kids accidentally unleash a blob-like monster from a trunk, and have to re-trap it.
• "Dr. Horror's House of Video" - Ben Adams visits a new movie shop where real monsters are used to make the movies being offered for sale.
• "The Cat's Tale" - A girl named Maria discovers her new cat is out to steal her body.
• "Shell Shocker" - Tara Bennett visits a beach and discovers a talking shell, which promises to lead her to an even bigger one if she'll help it.
• "Poison Ivy" - Matt discovers that his new summer camp is occupied by intelligent poison ivy plants with malicious intentions.
• "The Spirit of the Harvest Moon" - Jenny and her parents visit a strange resort, which is revealed to be haunted by a body-stealing ghost.

It was later collected in the 30 Tales to Give You Goosebumps hardcover set.

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The stories contain examples of:

General

• Summer Campy: "P.S. Don't Write Back", "The Werewolf's First Night" and "Poison Ivy" are all set at summer camps where things aren't normal.

The Werewolf's First Night

• Badass Adorable: Brian, when he finally gets his revenge for the prank.
• False Friend: The only twelve-year old in the camp besides Brian is Kevin, who is also teased by the other teenage campers. Because of this, he initially seems to warm up to Brian and confide to him in private. However, Brian soon realizes that Kevin is in with the teenagers to play a prank on them. Due to this, when Brian transforms into a werewolf, Kevin is forced to run along with the others.
• Fat Bastard: One of the atrocious teenage campers, Don, is wide and mean. And in a private conversation with Brian, Kevin says that he'd call him Fatso if he had the guts.
• Parental Neglect: Brian's parents take him to a "summer camp" without counselors (all the campers' parents are staying at a nearby resort) — basically leaving him at the mercy of the other kids. When Brian tries to tell them about what is going on, Dad thinks it might be just a prank but still does nothing, saying Brian should toughen up.
• Red Herring: Turns out all those instances of Brian seeing sharp teeth from the teenagers, wolf prints on the ground, blood on the shirt, and howling in the night were just fake sharp dentures, creative fake prints, meatball sauce, and sounds from a tape recorder. These all mask the revelation at the end of the story that Brian is a genuine werewolf.
• Shout-Out: There are references to I Love Lucy and Star Trek.
• Teens Are Monsters: All of the campers besides Brian and Kevin are fifteen, and they are a nasty piece of work. They all join together and coerce Kevin into making sure that Brian is traumatized enough to believe that they are werewolves. They pay dearly for this when they are shocked to find out that he is a werewolf.
• Tomato in the Mirror: While the other kids were just pretending to be werewolves to prank him, Brian discovers he's a genuine werewolf, and proceeds to chase all the others in revenge for the prank.

P.S. Don't Write Back

• Butt-Monkey: Poor David Stevenson never gets any letters and his parents don't bother to visit him. Either one.
• Contrived Coincidence: Somehow, David gets two letters addressed to someone with the same name within a few days of each other... when those letters were sent in 1964.
• Don't Ask, Just Run: When David meets the other David, he begins to explain that he came from the other camp. The other David immediately becomes panicked and tells him to leave repeatedly, not even explaining why. The protagonist David is so shocked at this that he runs away quickly. That David was probably warning him about the other campers at his camp, whom are actually bloodthirsty zombies.
• I Never Got Any Letters: David is in indignation that his parents have so far not sent him any letters to the camp, even though they had promised to write to him every day. The most he gets (which is actually probably the only one that's really to him) is a letter telling him that he's going to be sent to his great-uncle John.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction: When mentioning that softball is played at the camp and he loves doing it, David begins by saying that he doesn't want to brag or anything. He then instantly begins to praise his own softball skills.
• One-Steve Limit: The plot twist involves an aversion - there are two David Stevensons. For a given value of "are".
• Token Good Teammate: David is revealed in the end to be this. He apparently begged harshly at the main character David to depart immediately because the rest of the campers are maniacal and want to feed on living people in a campfire.

Something Fishy

• Be Careful What You Wish For: Eric wishes he could be a fish and swim around in the aquarium, but finds it's not what it is cracked up to be as the fish are out to get him.
• Covers Always Lie: The back blurb claims that Eric turns into a fish, however in the story he only shrinks to the size of a fish.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Eric gets out of a tank but soon after he tries again and his mother puts a pair of fighting fish in there.
• Disappeared Dad: In a rarity for Goosebumps, it's explicitly mentioned that Eric's parents are divorced.
• Hope Spot: When stuck in the aquarium model ship with fish surrounding him, Sarah comes into the room looking for Eric. When she peers through the aquarium, Eric tries to make himself seen through the ship. But then a gourami came to block him from sight, and when it passed, she was gone.
• Incredible Shrinking Man: Eric shrinks to the size of a fish... somehow.
• Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: Eric's younger sister, Sarah.
• What Could Possibly Go Wrong?: When bringing himself into the tank for a second time, after building a wall between him and the fish and him being on the side that they're not in, Eric thinks this trope to himself. It does go wrong... with mean fish.

You Gotta Believe Me!

• Alien Invasion: For once, it's the driving force of a story and not just the Twist Ending.
• And I'm the Queen of Sheba: When Stanley called his friend Robbie about the aliens that he saw, Robbie sarcastically replied, "Sure it happened. And I come from Jupiter!"
• Chekhov's Gun: The protagonist's brother has a tinfoil ball, and he uses the tinfoil to deflect the aliens' rays.
• Crop Circles: Stanley observes a burned circle in the ground of Mr. Tibble's cornfields one night while sneaking over there.
• Hypno Ray: The aliens use some sort of ray to affect TV broadcasts to brainwash people into thinking aliens aren't real.
• Hypocritical Humor: At the dinnertable, when trying to convince his family about the flying saucers that he saw through his telescope, his older sister Laura and his younger brother Dan each say that he just wants attention and is a geek. Stanley snidely notes that Laura was putting on makeup for a boy she likes, and Dan was the one who made giant balls out of aluminum foil.
• Ill-Timed Sneeze: When stalking the aliens up close at night, Stanley can feel a tickle in his nose. He wants to prevent it, but he can't help it, and he sneezes. This alerts the aliens to his position, causing him to be taken to their ship for probing.
• No-Sell: The aliens try to brainwash Stanley after capturing him by forcing him to watch several hours of "Space Trekkers." However, this doesn't affect Stanley because he never watches TV anyway so he'd need to watch a lot more to get brainwashed.
• Not Now, Kiddo: Nobody is willing to believe Stanley that aliens are invading.
• Police Are Useless: Stanley tries to avert this by approaching their station about the potential alien invasion. But because he's checked to them before about a highly similar claim, they just laugh him off before he can tell them. He decides to just forget it.
• Properly Paranoid: Stanley's parents are convinced that television brainwashes people, and it turns out they were right.
• Shout-Out: There's a show called Space Trekkers and on top of that, there's a character named Mr. Tribble.
• Subliminal Advertising: Stanley accepts aliens are real because, not being allowed to watch TV, he hasn't been hypnotised.
• Thunder Equals Downpour: Happens one night which Stanley sees from his bedroom.
• Title Drop: Stanley says the title of the story: You Gotta Believe Me.
• With Friends Like These...: Stanley tries to paint his friends, Robbie and Melanie, as this. But they aren't so bad. They are exasperated by his talk of aliens and don't believe him at all, yet they give him plenty of money to help buy him supplies for an instrument to get rid of the extraterrestrials. Although, they do ask for their money back after the adventure.
• You Have to Believe Me!: Stanley tries to tell his parents about the alien invasion, but they think he was watching too much TV.

Suckers!

• Asshole Victim: After harassing the main children throughout the story, Alex and Jimmy approach the chest with gummy worms on top, unaware of the lurking beast within it. Ashley, Jimmy, and Greg watch as they open it, with no indication that they want to intervene.
• Clashing Cousins: Ashley and Greg. He constantly makes fun of her, to which she always snaps back at him. However, when it comes to saving each other from the chest monster, they don't hesitate.
• Didn't Think This Through: Unable to find more gummy worms, Ashley and Jeremy run to the general store to buy loads of bags of the food. When they get it all, the store owner (Mr. Simpson) tells them the price. Ashley realizes with terror that they didn't have any money. Luckily, after Ashley explains that it's for Greg (who is the store's best customer), Mr. Simpson says to go ahead, and that he'll simply charge it to their parents' bill.
• Double-Meaning Title: The title indicates both the body parts of the chest monster that it uses to cling to its' victims, and to the foolish bullies at the end whom all approach the chest for gummy worms.
• I Will Only Slow You Down: When racing down to Greg with the gummy worms on their bikes, Jeremy's bike's gear chain slipped and he had to stop. He tells Ashley to go ahead without him, and she does. It turns out to be subverted, as she gets cornered by Alex and Jimmy alone, to which Jeremy comes back up to save her and get them moving again.
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Whilst speeding through the sand dunes to Greg, Ashley notes that it's so quiet and still, with no one else around. That's when Alex and Jimmy approach her to block her path.
• Key Under the Doormat: When Ashley and Jeremy run out of gummy worms to distract the monster from smothering Greg, they run back to their beach cottage and try opening the front door. Of course, it's locked, but Jack flung aside the doormat to get the key.
• Matter of Life and Death: Ashley says this to Mr. Simpson about having to get the gummy worms immediately.
• Shout-Out: The Karate Kid is what the bullies mockingly call Jack.
• Tentacled Terror: The monster is some sort of ravenous octopus blob type thing.
• Too Dumb to Live: After pushing the monster back into the chest with gummy worms, Greg sees a bag of it sticking out, and reaches out to take it. This is just after he was saved from being smushed by the creature within. Ashley immediately calls him out for his utter obliviousness.

Dr. Horror's House of Video

• Bait-and-Switch: A horrific example. When Ben is cornered and about to be chowed down by the movie monsters, Dr. Horror stops the filming and approaches him. It seems as if he's going to untie Ben. But he actually reaches to fix Ben's hair for the shot. He then called to resume filming for the big eating scene.
• Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Ben blinked in the harsh light at the beginning of the story when his mother yanked open the blinds while he sat in the dark room watching a horror movie.
• Snuff Film: Turns out Dr. Horror's movies are so realistic because they film real violence with actual monsters.

The Cat's Tale

• The Cat Came Back: Every time Marla tries to get rid of Misty, the cat has not begone. And by the end of the story, even though the cat died, she still has to put up with her. Only one of her nine lives was just used up.
• Cats Are Mean: This one wants to steal Marla's body!
• Cats Are Magic: Misty at least can turn humans into cats.
• Cats Have Nine Lives: And Misty wants to extend that number.
• Eek, a Mouse!!: When Marla is hanging out with two of her teammates, Sarah and Melissa, after a volleyball game, a gray mouse came running by. The two girls jump on the picnic table that they were standing by in shock, except for Marla, who catches the mouse. Sarah and Melissa stare at her in horror and are disgusted. This causes Marla to realize that she would have reacted to this trope as well if she wasn't under Misty's influence.
• Meaningful Name: Marla calls her cat "Misty" after the fresh mist that she saw outside after the storm had stopped.

Shell Shocker

• Asshole Victim: Tara Bennett just wants glory for finding a talking shell. The shell's mother takes offense.
• Blatant Lies: While walking through the cave, Tara is utterly shocked to find herself stepping on cracked bones. The talking seashell told her that they were just bones from really big fish. What Tara didn't know is that fish are not filled with bones, but of cartilage.
• Copycat Mockery: Tara takes away her younger brother Timmy's seashell, and he started whining that it wasn't fair, to which she mimicked his words back at him. Also occurs, more tragically, with Tara when she's trapped in the giant crab's clutches. She keeps screaming, "Help me!", to which the tiny seashell mockingly repeated her words.
• Exact Words: When Tara asks the talking shell what's so special about the cave that she is going towards, the shell replies that it is home to the biggest seashell in the world. What the talking seashell deliberately left out was the fact that the enormous seashell was also home to the biggest sea crab in the world.
• Eye Take: Upon observing the giant sea shell that she had been looking for, Tara's eyes popped open with wonder.
• Karmic Twist Ending: Tara Bennett helps out a talking shell find something in a cave, but only for the glory of finding a talking shell. It turns out the cave has the shell's mother, a giant crab that grabs her.
• Small Role, Big Impact: Tommy found a seashell at the beach that Tara snatches from him, which turns out to be an actual talking sea crab who lures people to its' mother for prey.
• Spiders Are Scary: While going through the cave, Tara comes across thousands of black, hairy spiders. They crawl all over her, which makes her shriek with panic.

Poison Ivy

• Botanical Abomination: A patch of poison ivy that grows at conservation-of-mass-defying rates and apparently wants to kill all the humans.
• Chekhov's Gun: Brad's aftershave is what ends up getting rid of the monstrous poison ivy at the camp.
• Killed Offscreen: Implied. To combat the freakish poison ivy, counselors Larry and Craig decide to go out at night with weed whackers and weed poison, intending to battle the plant all night long. Matt notes that he never sees them again. And when the rest of the camp is congratulating Matt and his bunkmates for saving them all, Larry and Craig are nowhere to be seen.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Matt and his cabin mates all work together to spray the whole camp with the aftershave to destroy all the poison ivy. They do, but the problem is, the aftershave attracts mosquitoes. And an enormous swarm of them is heading towards the camp.
• Skewed Priorities: When Brad points out that they have aftershave to use while poison ivy is crawling around them, he adds that he doesn't want to waste them. Matt ignores his protest and grabs the cans to start spraying.
• Weaksauce Weakness: The carnivorous poison ivy is killed by aftershave.

The Spirit of the Harvest Moon

• Ambiguous Ending: It's not entirely clear if the spirit was already possessing the dog throughout the entire story, or if the spirit possessed the dog right at the ending. The latter seems more likely, because if the spirit was already possessing the dog then it would've probably jumped into Tyler since he was already outside.
• Animal Motifs: Jenny first sees Tyler and is immediately reminded of a goldfish, with his light orange hair, bulging blue-gray eyes, and tightly-pulled skin.
• Big "NEVER!": Jenn yells this repeatedly to Tyler when he's outside begging to be let in.
• Death Glare: At breakfast, when trying to get rid of Tyler, Jenny gives her parents a look to tell them to not butt in.
• Evil-Detecting Dog: Subverted: The dog is actually evil, and scares away the boy who is trying to protect Jenny.
• For Your Own Good: Tyler tells Jenny this when first relaying the information after asking about the noises at night.
• Loud Gulp: Jenny lets out one while Tyler is telling her about the spirit of the harvest moon.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: This spirit possesses a body every Harvest Moon, forcing the existing soul to spend a year wandering Earth as a mist.
• Tears of Fear: Jenny starts to shed these when Tyler is demanding to be let inside, and she thinks that he's possessed, and she fears for her own safety.