Spooksville is a series of middle grade horror/adventure books by Christopher Pike. They concern twelve year old Adam Freeman, who moves from Kansas to a town called Springville. He meets a girl named Sally who informs him that most people call the town "Spooksville", as it is a hotbed for all kinds of weird and supernatural happenings. At first he is skeptical, but he soon discovers that her claims are all too real. They, along with another boy named Watch, then find themselves on many life threatening adventures.
The series lasted for 24 books from 1995 to 1998, and was turned into a live action television series in 2013. See tropes concerning the series here.
This book series provides examples of:
- Aborted Arc: In The Wicked Cat, Ann hints at what they need to do to find out why Spooksville is the way it is, and she occasionally hints at the kids being prepared for a "great destiny". If there ever planned to be a payoff for this, the series ended before this could come to pass.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Neernitt in Phone Fear, a being created through the internet that threatens the gang and wants to turn humans into robots.
- Adults Are Useless: Most of the adults are not aware of what goes on in Spooksville, so the kids generally can't come to them for help, with some exceptions. A notable example comes in The Creature in the Teacher, where they try to tell the principal about a missing student. Not only does she not seem to care, she apparently told the student's mother she can just get another child.
- After the End: At one point in The Living Dead, Watch uses the time machine from Time Terror to take them to 10 billion years in the future, where everything on Earth seems dead, and even the stars appear to be dying out.
- Alien Episode: Aliens in the Sky, as well as The Wishing Stone, The Creature in the Teacher and The Witch's Gift.
- All Trolls Are Different: The trolls in Ann's castle are generally what you would expect from trolls, but one of them turns out to be a good guy and even the other trolls at least have a vote on if they should eat the kids or not.
- All Witches Have Cats: Discussed in The Wicked Cat, as they theorize that Madeline turned Jesse into a cat so that it could be a familiar for her.
- Alternate Self: At the end of Time Terror, Watch goes back in time to prevent them from finding the time toy to begin with, but he has nowhere to go back to so now there are two Watch's, with this one planning to travel the world to avoid bumping into the others. This becomes important in The Dangerous Quest, where Watch dies and the Watch from the other timeline shows up to take his place.
- Alternate Universe: The town has a secret path that allows you to travel to other universes. Usually, it's another version of Spooksville but in The Dangerous Quest it takes them to a more fairly-tale-esque universe.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Usually averted, with many monsters being Good All Along, or, at least, neutral all along. Played straight with a few cases, such as the Cold People (who have a somewhat sympathetic background, but are still all evil), the Kasters in The Wishing Stone (a race of evil lizard people who use the wishing stone's to enslave people in order to "pay" for the wishes they grant, and, most of all, the demons from The Dark Corner, who are all petty, sadistic assholes who like to torture humans horribly for trivial reasons and don't even make a pretense of giving the kids a fair trial (at one point they blame them for burning the church down, even though the demons themselves did that. When the kids point this out, they just claim it's their fault for "making" the demons have to do this to try to kill/catch them in the first place.
- Anti-Hero: Downplayed with Sally. She's still a good guy, but is definitely the edgiest of the main characters.
- The witch Ann Templeton is a more straight example. While it's strongly implied most of the horror stories about her are false, she does still give the kids wishes she knows won't go right as punishment for sneaking into her castle, and in the same book we learn she has giant spiders and trolls living in her basement.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Lampshaded in The Secret Path, as Sally questions why Adam doesn't believe in ghosts when a tree just ate him an hour prior.
- Apparently Human Merfolk: The citizens of Mimba in Attack of the Killer Crabs actually used to be human, but when their city started sinking, they somehow learned how to grow gills so they could live underwater.
- The Assimilator: The titular monster in The Creepy Creature attempts to eat and take on the form of whoever it devours. It turns out they were created by a doctor to help out in a war but they went rouge.
- Attending Your Own Funeral: Watch does this in The Dangerous Quest, when a version of him from an alternate timeline appears after he dies.
- Badass Adorable: All of the kids, but Bryce is by far the most badass (he's regarded as a hero on multiple planets he helped.)
- Balancing Death's Books:
- In The Living Dead, Grim Reaper wants Watch's soul, and Ann offers her in exchange. However, she ultimately tells him that because the Watch that died wasn't technically the real one, as noted above, Watch owes Grim nothing.
- Watch's sacrifice in The Dangerous Quest could also qualify. He and another version of Watch had been cursed by someone who had made a deal to pass the cure onto someone else as it was previously on a woman he loved. Watch asks if his life can be worth two and so he dies in place of both the other Watch and the woman.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: In The Witch's Revenge, the gang gets magic necklaces that grant their greatest desire, but at a price. Adam wants to be mature, but he grows so much he becomes on the brink of death, Sally wants immortality but soon turns into a baby, and Cindy wants beauty but starts shining too bright.
- The Wishing Stone is an interesting example as while the wishes work as intended, it causes them to stack up a bunch of debt from some aliens, and they are forced into slave labor.
- Becoming the Costume: The Evil House has this happen to the gang after entering the titular house.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Cindy is probably the nicest of the main characters but still has some of this. In The Dark Corner some demons are planning to eat her, she responds by saying she had hepatitis as a little girl and they could get it if they try to eat her. The demons are sufficiently scared by this they decide eating her isn't such a good idea after all. And in Night of the Vampire she stakes Queen Shaetore, remarking that while she is normally against killing people, she makes an exception for Shaetore because of how evil she is.
- Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: The Haunted Cave features a race of bigfoot called the Hyeet. They are stated to be the fabled missing link.
- Bittersweet Ending: As mentioned above, the ending of Time Terror. Watch managed to reverse all the damage they did, but now he must keep a distance from them or he'll cause more problems by possibly bumping into his past self.
- The Creepy Creature: They manage to defeat the creatures but Olos, a robot woman they meet, sacrifices her life to save them.
- Blind Without 'Em: Watch, to the point where he they go to Ann's in The Witch's Revenge to see if she can help fix that. In the end, she improves his vision enough so that he won't bump into things, but he still wears the glasses, as she thinks he looks better with them on.
- Blob Monster: The titular monster in The Creepy Creature.
- Character Focus: Each book has at least one section where the group gets split up, allowing some extra focus to everyone in the group.
- Characterization Marches On: In The Howling Ghost, Sally tells the others not to be mean to Cindy, which is in stark contrast to how she treats her in the rest of the series.
- Cheated Death, Died Anyway: In The Living Dead, Ann mentions she had a friend whose husband died. When the Grim Reaper showed to collect him, she made a deal where her husband is brought back for just one more day with her. However, she attemped to have him cheat death by running away in a space ship provided by Ann. Grim Reaper caught on and collected them both while Ann isn't paying attention.
- Chekhov's Gun: Early on in The Wishing Stone, Adam uses the stone to wish for "galactic peace" but nothing happens. Near the end, the aliens that made the stone have to let the kids go as they can't grant his wish and thus he has no debt to pay yet, and all the other kids charges are dropped as well because they must finish granting all the wishes on their order.
- Chronic Hero Syndrome: Adam always feels the need to save people that aren't as strong as him, which is a trait that Cindy actually finds admirable. Bryce has this too to an extent, but in a somewhat more egocentric way.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Mireen, Ann Templeton's daughter is introduced and has a major role in The Witch's Revenge, but outside of a mention in The Wicked Cat, she does not appear again. She doesn't even show up to Watch's funeral in The Dangerous Quest nor is she present or addressed when Ann leaves in the final book.
- There's also Tira. After debuting in Invasion of The No-Ones, she seems to start being part of the group. But after two books where she just has a small role, she vanishes and is not seen again. Same goes with George.
- Covers Always Lie:
- The cover of The Dangerous Quest has some kind of demon hand reaching out of a mirror. Nothing even close to this happens in the book.
- The cover of Phone Fear depicts a monster coming out a phone. In the book, the villain is just a voice that has no form like that.
- The cover of Attack of the Killer Crabs has Sally in a bathing suit on the beach being attacked by a crab. In the book, they are all present for the attacks and aren't in bathing suits, they just happen to be walking by the beach.
- The back cover blurbs can be inaccurate as well. The one for The Dark Corner says that they use the Secret Path because Bum told them about an amazing place on the other side, while in the actual book they go there to save Bryce, who used it a while ago and hasn't come back. The reprint has a more accurate blurb though.
- The back blurb for The Little People says that Adam and his friends are happy to welcome the invading fairy tale creatures at first until their pranks turn mean. In the book, they are seen as annoying from the very start. Unlike the above, the reprint doesn't change this.
- The back blurb for The Hidden Beast claims that the titular beast comes to town in search for a treasure. In the book, the kids come to the dragon looking for the treasure and the dragon leaves for town soon after. As with the above, the reprint keeps this. The front cover reflects this inaccurate blurb by implying they are being attacked by the dragon.
- Dark and Troubled Past: While it's never revealed, Watch is implied to have one. The Haunted Cave states that his vision started going bad around when his family left him, and that he "did not have an easy childhood".
- Deadpan Snarker: Sally, especially towards Cindy.
- Dream Melody: In The Howling Ghost, Cindy sings a poem to herself that her dad taught her. It tells of how the Ocean is a lady who is kind unless she is crossed. It turns out that it was taught to him by Cindy's grandmother who is actually the titular ghost. Cindy sings the poem to her to calm her down after discovering this.
- Dresses the Same: In The Evil House, Sally and Bryce both end up dressing as a vampire for Halloween. It becomes especially bad when they turn into their costume later on.
- Earth All Along: In Aliens in the Sky, they are kidnapped by aliens and taken to an alien space station that is around a planet that turns out to be Earth two hundred thousand years in the future, and the aliens are actually humans after so many years of evolution.
- Earth That Was: In Aliens in the Sky, it is revealed that in the future, Earth is so polluted that the humans had to leave to live a space station.
- Easily Forgiven: Savannah in Phone Fear. She created an evil AI and planned to turn humans into robots but the gang is quick to forgive her at the end..
- Episode of the Dead: The aptly named The Living Dead.
- Emotion Eater: The monsters in The Thing in the Closet are summoned by people's fear. Laughing at them gets rid of them.
- Energy Beings: The titular No-Ones in Invasion of the No-Ones. They are actually the souls of being who died a long time ago.
- Evil All Along: In Night of the Vampires, a nurse at the hospital turns out to be the vampire queen Shaetore in disguise. There's also Savannah Stranger in Phone Stranger, who pretends to be someone being threatened by Neernitt when she actually turns out to be his creator.
- Exact Words: According to Watch, the titular Haunted Cave does exactly what it's told. Adam, Sally, and Cindy end up sealed inside because Sally tells someone else to "keep your mouth shut for 24 hours".
- Eye Scream: The evil version of Ann in The Secret Path likes to collect random body parts, and particularly wants Adam's eyes. We even get to read the description of one of her victims, whose eyes had been sewn up.
- Faking the Dead: Phone Fear briefly pulls this, where Watch is told by the evil A.I. Nernitt to kill someone to prove human lives mean nothing to him. He picks Savanah and seemingly kills her but it turns out the gun was full of blanks and she set it up that way while Watch caught on just beforehand.
- The Fair Folk: The Little People involves a land of magical creatures, some of which are good but a fair few are mischievous, such as a pair of leprechauns.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: In Time Terror, they accidentally cause a man to fall on his sword and die, with there being blood everywhere. This happens to someone in the past so they eventually end up preventing this.
- First Day of School Episode: The Creature in the Teacher revolves around their first day back at school after the summer vacation the previous 12 books place over.
- Forced Transformation: At one point in The Little People, Adam and Sally are turned into chickens. There's also Sally being turned into a cat in The Wicked Cat.
- Friendly Zombie: Two of the zombies in The Living Dead turn out to be pretty nice people, and even help the heroes out.
- Foreshadowing: At one point in The Dangerous Quest, the gang has the feeling they have met Madeline Templeton, even though they have no memory of it. This is because they met her in Time Terror, the events of which were erased by Watch in the end. This is setup for the ending, where the Watch from the end of that book returns after the other Watch's death.
- Giant Enemy Crab: The crabs in Attack of the Killer Crabs. They turn out to be robots.
- Giant Spider: The gang encounters one in The Witch's Revenge.
- The Greys: This is how the aliens are depicted in Aliens in the Sky.
- Godwin's Law: From The Wicked Cat:Cindy: I didn't hurt it. I just pushed it out of the way.Watch: That’s exactly what Hitler said about Poland at the start of World War Two.
- Good All Along: A common theme in the books is the gang meeting someone who seems or acts evil only for them to turn out to be alright, such as Mr. Snakol in Creature in the Teacher.
- Good Is Not Nice: or soft in Sally's case. While she's a good person, she can be quite rude a lot of the time, and is downright ruthless in a few cases (such as planning to blow up an alien spaceship even though she's not sure they're evil or not.)
- Grandfather Paradox: As mentioned above, in Time Terror, Watch goes back in time to prevent them from finding the toy to begin with, thus undoing the trouble they caused with this. This Watch is still there and has to go into into hiding, even though his actions should have caused this Watch to vanish since they never picked up the time toy, thus meaning the other Watch never became this Watch and had to go back in time to begin with. This is discussed in The Living Dead but Watch doesn't have an answer for this.
- The Grim Reaper: He is a character in The Living Dead and is responsible for the zombies rising up. He does this in order to get Watch, upset that he cheated death in the previous book.
- Green Aesop: Attack of the Killer Crabs gives off this vibe with the reveal that said crabs were sent by an ancient underwater civilization who are pissed that humans have been polluting the water.
- Gun Nut: Mr. Patton, the owner of the army surplus store, loves weapons and will relish any chance to bust them out when the gang requests his help.
- Halloween Episode: The Evil House
- Heroic Sacrifice: In The Dangerous Quest, Watch sacrifices his life to save another version of him, as well as a princess from another dimension.
- Something similar happens in The Creepy Creature, where a woman they meet sacrifices herself to protect them from a monster. Her father also sacrifices himself by blowing up the building he was in so that it will also kill rock monsters that were attacking them.
- Hot Witch: Ann Templeton, who is given a flattering description and Adam in particular takes a liking to her through her appearance alone.
- Human Aliens: The beings in Invasion of the No-Ones are an interesting example. In this series, humans evolved on other planets and one group of them became souls when they died, turning them into said No-Ones. In a way, this also applies to aliens in Aliens in the Sky who are actually humans after years of evolution.
- Informed Flaw: The Witch's Revenge mentions that Cindy is vain, even though she showed no signs of this beforehand, or afterwards.
- Kangaroo Court: In The Dark Corner, Watch, Adam, and Sally are put on trial by demons who have already decided to convict them because they're very biased against humans.
- Killed Off for Real: Played with in The Dangerous Quest. Watch dies, but while a version of him from another timeline shows up to replace him, the version that died stays dead.
- Longer-Than-Life Sentence: Taken up to eleven in The Dark Corner, where Sally makes the demons so mad they want to sentence her to 10 eternal sufferings. Good luck figuring out how that's supposed to work..
- Love Potion: Downplayed in The Witch's Gift, where Cindy wishes for the boy she likes to like her more and it includes both Adam and Bryce, but Adam just thinks about her prettiness a bit more and Bryce shows no major signs of loving her too much more.
- Love Triangle: Definitely seems to be the case with Sally and Cindy for Adam, which is the main reason they don't like each other. Being a kids series, it never really goes anywhere. The addition of Bryce turns it into a bit of a love square, although Sally is less involved in all of it when this happens.
- Market-Based Title: The U.K. version of The Creature in the Teacher is called Alien Invasion. Also, the U.K. version of The Living Dead is called Return of the Dead.
- Minor Living Alone: Watch. His family is scattered all over the country, with no explanation as to why they left. He actually initially claims he lived with an aunt but later on it becomes clear he lives all by himself.
- Mr. Exposition: Bum and Ann's primary role in the series is to give the kids the backstory of the Monster of the Week.
- Never Trust a Title: Despite the title, phones don't play a big part in Phone Fear. It's just a way for a mysterious voice to talk to them early on and eventually the phone aspect is dropped entirely.
- Nonindicative Name: The titular cave in The Haunted Cave isn't actually haunted, but the characters keep referring to it as such.
- Never Say "Die": Averted, death is not only a constant but is usually referred to as such.
- No Ending: Other than Ann Templeton leaving for another planet the final book (The Witch's Gift), doesn't really seem like an ending, while the kids do get some wishes, and go to another another planet to fight some evil aliens, both of these things have happened in previous books, and things mostly go back to normal by the end. Apparently, Pike was planning to write more books and give it a proper ending, but a bunch of real life complications prevented this from occurring.
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: Despite following a generally normal timeline for most of the series, Phone Fear, as well as the following book, says a few times this it has been two years since the series started, and yet they all still seem to be 12. This is confirmed in The Witch's Gift.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Watch. His real name is never revealed. There's also Bum, the town's former mayor. This also applies to the town itself.
- Only One Name: Again, Watch. Apparently, he doesn't even remember his last name.
- Our Demons Are Different: The Dark Corner depicts a universe where there are demons who alternate versions of the people in Spooksville and they can assume the human form of them.
- Our Dragons Are Different: The dragons in The Hidden Beast are stated to come from another planet, thus making them alien dragons.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: In The Evil House, they meet a kid who turns out to have a ghost despite still being alive. The reason is that a long time ago he used magic to prolong his life and his ghost appeared until he was willing to move on.
- Our Time Machine Is Different: The time machine used in Time Terror looks like a toy figure, with a clock on it. It also clones another version of the machine that stays behind when you are transported.
- Our Vampires Are Different: In Night of the Vampires, Vampirism can be reversed, or at least pushed back a bit, by injecting pure human blood into them.
- Parental Abandonment: Part of the villain's backstory in Night of the Vampires is that her mother abandoned her because she had so many deformities.
- Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: It is only a theory on Bryce's part, but in The Creature in the Teacher, they take a dying alien race back in time to 70 million years ago so that they have a place to live, and he guesses that perhaps that this was destiny and that they lead to the extinction of the dinosaurs.
- Police Are Useless: Sally says the trope directly in Creature in the Teacher as the cops would be useless against any of the threats that Spooksville is invaded by.
- The Power of Love: The reason Adam's blood works to cure Cindy's vampire-ism in Night of the Vampire is that he/it is full of love, which the vampires don't have much of.
- Really 700 Years Old: Tira Jones. Two hundred years ago, she was possessed by an energy being which allowed her to be immortal. The being leaves her at the end of Invasion of No-Ones but she sticks around, with no memory of the time the being was in her.
- RetGone: In Time Terror, they accidentally cause the death of Bryce's great great great grandfather, which erases Bryce from existence, and they must fix this.
- Reusable Lighter Toss: In The Thing in the Closet, Sally tosses the lighter she always carries around into a fire to distract the monsters.
- Robotic Reveal: In The Creepy Creature, the gang meets a woman while in another world who turns out to be a robot.
- Rock Monster: The group faces a race of these kind of beings in The Creepy Creature.
- Saw a Woman in Half: Marvin in ''The Evil House' does this trick at one point, and it turns out to be real.
- Second Episode Introduction: Cindy is introduced in the second book, The Howling Ghost.
- Scary Librarian: Mr. Spiney, who is obsessed with bones and comments on how the kids would make "great corpses".
- Shout-Out: The town has an Army Surplus Store owned by a man named Mr. Patton
- Significant Anagram: Neernitt in Phone Fear, which is an anagram for "Internet', where he comes from.
- Sixth Ranger: Bryce starts out as one, only joining them when needed, before becoming a permanent part of the group. After that, George Sanders and Tira Jones take on this role, although they join them far less often after their introduction.
- The Spock: Watch. Being the most logical one sometimes leads to him seeming a bit callus. That tendency is toned down later on.
- Spoiler Cover: The U.K. cover of Attack of the Killer Crabs spoils that the crabs are robots.
- Stable Time Loop: Early on in Aliens in the Sky, one of the aliens attacking Cindy mysteriously drops down at random. After discovering that the alien ship is also a time machine, Cindy later uses it to go back and take down that alien, revealing that it was her who did it.
- Terror-dactyl: The plot of The Deadly Past is kicked off by the gang being attacked by a pterodactyl, who proceeds to take Cindy to its nest.
- 13 Is Unlucky: Shaetore in Night of the Vampires was the 13th child in her family and was cursed by her mother on accident, and was born with 13 deformities as a result.
- Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: The time machine in Time Terror allows you to travel through time, but not space.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Spooksville itself. It's not quite revealed why it got this way but it's implied to be a curse from Madeline Templeton.
- Toxic, Inc.: In Attack of the Killer Crabs a paint factory called "Glow Bright" had been dumping chemicals into the sea. Then gang ends up blowing up the factory in the end.
- Vitriolic Best Buds: Sally and Cindy. Despite arguing and insulting each other in practically every book, they really do care about eachother, with one book straight out admitting Cindy only pretends to hate Sally but actually admires her, which
makes you wonder if there is more going between them than the books state outright. - Year Inside, Hour Outside: In The Dark Corner, the demon infested version of Spooksville, time works this way. Bryce ended up stuck in there for almost a year, while Sally had just talked to him in the real world just a week prior.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Marvin in The Evil House and Tira in Invasion of the No-Ones both actually seem to like being immortal at first but it turns out to have unforeseen consequences and the kids must convince them to give it up.
- Wicked Witch: Ann subverts this but the evil version of her in The Secret Path plays it straight.
