The first Goosebumps book about camping.
Billy is going to Camp Nightmoon and very quickly makes a few friends. The bad news is that just as quickly, things start going wrong. Kids start having accidents happen to them before going missing, but the counselors don't seem to care. Billy has to figure out what is going on, before it's too late.
This book was adapted into episodes 5 and 6 of the first season of the 1995 TV series, with a novelization based on the episode being released as book 3 of the Goosebumps Presents series.
It was reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2010 as a companion release to Little Shop of Hamsters.
The book provides examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: All the adults don't seem to care when campers vanish, and even act as if they never existed., Uncle Al seems to be a subversion early but later is played straight. It turns out it was all part of a test, and no one really died. The kids return unharmed.
- Badass Adorable: Billy. He's just a kid, but he's willing to stand up to someone he thinks is a total villain.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: A cabinmate in Bunk 4 named Colin likes acting tough, and he constantly wears a red bandanna on his forehead to show off.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal one. Early on, Uncle Al uses a rifle to scare off some creatures. This establishes that he is the kind of guy to have one and use it. Near the end, he gets one out again...to hunt down the girls that escaped from the girls' camp.
- Darker and Edgier: Though not to the same extent as Welcome to Dead House or Stay Out of the Basement, this book is surprisingly really dark compared to the other books in the franchise. The campers have to worry about a monster named Sabre coming out in the middle of the night. Not to mention the disappearance of the campers.
- Drill Sergeant Nasty: Uncle Al slowly becomes one, especially near the end when he forces all the kids to hunt down the girls.
- False Reassurance: In the climax, Uncle Al tells Billy that the guns they're told to use to hunt down Dawn and her friend don't have bullets. Instead, they have tranquilizers. Obviously, Billy is not reassured and turns his gun on Uncle Al.
- Foreshadowing: Billy finds it odd that his parents told him to "do your best" when he left. Turns out they said that because everything was a test, and they wanted him to do his best on it.
- Human Aliens: It turns out everyone is one.
- I Never Got Any Letters: The campers are expected to write to their parents every day. Except main protagonist Billy discovers an entire sack full of these letters, which aren't being mailed out.
- Just Following Orders: Invoked. It turns out that the test was to see if Billy would know when to follow rules and when not to do so, especially when it would be a violation of common sense or basic decency. Billy ends up passing when he refuses to hunt down Dawn and turns his tranquilizer gun on Uncle Al.
- Mandatory Twist Ending: The final sentences reveal that the book takes place on an alien planet.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: When he's ordered to hunt down Dawn and her friend, because they ran away from camp, Billy refuses. He says this camp is weird, and he's not shooting any of his friends. This ends up being the right answer; Dawn and her friend were never in danger, and the camp was testing Billy to see if he would cross that line.
- Secret Test of Character: The twist is that the events were all a test to see if Billy can obey the rules at the right time and defy them at the right time as well. The test is done to see if he can handle an expiation to the dangerous planet...of Earth.
- Shout-Out: The twist, especially with how it's delivered, was clearly inspired by the Twilight Zone episode "Third from the Sun".
- Summer Campy: The first story in the series where a visit to a summer camp takes a turn for the strange. From monsters to councilors who don't care about their campers getting hurt and will even go out of their way to make them get injured, Camp Nightmoon is a decidedly dangerous place.
- Sunglasses at Night: Again, Colin. He never takes them off, not even at night, something that Billy finds weird. They do come off when he is hit in the face with a baseball, and Billy is surprised to see that his eyes are blue.
- Tomato Surprise: Everyone is an alien on some other planet, and this was all a test to see if Billy can survive a trip to Earth.
- Wham Line: "It's a very strange planet called Earth."
- Women Prefer Strong Men: A bunkmate in Cabin 4 named Jay, who kept talking about sports and is a good athlete, tried to invoke this trope on the bus towards camp at the girl campers, by flexing his muscles in their sight. None of them are impressed.
