The first Goosebumps book.
The Benson family have just moved to the dreary town of Dark Falls after the father inherits a spooky mansion from a great-uncle he didn't know he had. Things immediately start to look bad. For one thing, the family's new house is clearly haunted. Petey, their dog, is aggressive to all the neighbors. The trees are really tall and dense, blanketing the entire town in shade. Everyone else wears long, heavy clothing in the middle of summer, and is never available when the sun is out.
This new town is dead weird.
By which we mean that everybody is dead, as you can tell from the fact that we used "dead" as an intensifier and emphasized it.
It was adapted into episodes 20 and 21 of the second season of the 1995 TV series.
It was later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2010 as a companion to When the Ghost Dog Howls.
The book provides examples of:
- Affably Evil: The antagonists are friendly with the main characters except that they have to invite them over, especially Karen Somerset, who says she wants to be a nice person but everyone needs fresh blood to survive. Same with the TV version of Karen, who would actually be an Affably Evil Anti-Villain since she actually seemed reluctant to engage in the "feeding" that everyone in the town had to do to survive, repeatedly saying she wanted to be friends with Amanda and Josh.
- Alas, Poor Villain: The Dark Falls residents as Amanda destroys them. Especially Karen, who just wanted to be friends, and actually thanks the girl for ending her suffering.
- Bitter Sweet Ending: Amanda and her family escape the gruesome fate the townsfolk have planned for them and destroy most of the undead. But they've still lost their beloved Petey, as they're driving away it's revealed Dawes somehow survived and is ready to repopulate the town... one family at a time.
- Bloodier and Gorier: This book is quite a bit more violent and gruesome than the majority of the series, with graphic descriptions of faces being melted off and bone being exposed after a villain's head is smashed.
- Company Town: The rural town of Dark Falls revolves around the now-defunct Dark Falls Chemical Factory, where most of the now unemployed residents used to work (in the book, the factory is a plastics production plant and does not play a significant role in the story).
- Early-Installment Weirdness: This is the very first Goosebumps book. In addition to being more gruesome than usual, it has fewer chapters than later books and the chapters themselves are longer. Not to mention, the family dog is actually killed, offscreen, by the villains.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: Petey, the Benson family dog, barks at everyone in the town because they are zombies. He gets killed by them eventually because of it.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Josh is foolish, Amanda is sensible.
- New House, New Problems: This new house is in a town full of some sort of undead.
- Old, Dark House: The titular "Dead House", a tall, old and somewhat creepy building where everyone lives when they first arrive in town.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Dark Falls residents are technically zombies, as they state that they all died from the chemical accident, but rose from their graves because they couldn't rest. They also easily disguise as living people, speak quite well and can run extremely quickly. However, they also have traits of vampires, requiring fresh blood once a year and dying when exposed to sunlight.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Everybody's actually one of the walking dead.
- Unexpected Inheritance: Dad inherits the house from his uncle whom he never even seen. Turns out that it was a setup by Dawes to make them come to the town.
- Weakened by the Light: The undead townsfolk possess some qualities of vampires, and can't stand direct sunlight. At the end of the book, when they are trying to eat Josh and Amanda Benson's parents, Josh and Amanda push over a big tree blocking the sun from shining directly on the townspeople, causing them to die. One person escaped though.
