In 1998, various newspaper outlets in the state of Ohio circulated a contest for kids to win tickets to see Goosebumps Live On Stage. The rules of entry were for participants to submit a two to three paragraph short story.
Three winning entries were published in their entirety in three different papers. Including:
- The Haunted Refrigerator by Eric Sargent: A boy gets dared into entering an abandoned house with a refrigerator containing the spirit of an angry dog.
- The Dolls by Renee Schnabel: A girl's doll collection is implied to be sentient and evil.
- Game Over by Derek Stein: A boy finds himself trapped in a video game called "Dog Pound."
Because the contest wasn't sponsored directly by Scholastic or Parachute Press, it remain buried within archived Ohio newspapers for over twenty years. Fans discovered the lost stories and posted them on reddit here
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Tropes Included:
- Creepy Doll: The premise of The Dolls although they are quickly removed before they do anything really bad.
- Downer Ending: The Haunted Refrigerator ends with Alex eaten and erased, while in Game Over the story has a No Ending where the protagonist is still stuck in the game.
- Haunted House: Subverted. The house in The Haunted Refrigerator is just abandoned. It's only the refrigerator itself that's haunted.
- Here We Go Again!: The ending of The Dolls mentions the girl protagonist started collecting cute bunny figures and so far they haven't done anything strange. Yet.
- Killed Off for Real: The Haunted Refrigerator ends with Alex being eaten by the ghost dog, who then makes Ed forget Alex ever existed.
- The Most Dangerous Video Game: Game Over is about a kid falling asleep and discovering he's now a dog inside the video game "Dog Pound."
- Nobody Calls Me "Chicken"!: Alex in The Haunted Refrigerator is egged on to go into the abandoned house by Ed.
- No Ending: Game Over ends with the protagonist waking up and discovering he's still in the game and has been trapped in the titular dog pound.
- Schmuck Bait: The kid who happily receives "Dog Pound" from a total stranger still plays it after the guy runs off declaring the kid's made the biggest mistake of his life.
- Take Our Word for It: We don't see the possessed dolls do anything in The Dolls but the reaction of the girl's siblings suggest they have to get rid of them now.
- That Was Not a Dream: The protagonist of Game Over wakes up and thinks he dreamed being inside "Dog Pound," only to discover he's still a dog and still in the game with no way out.
- Unperson: Alex's fate in The Haunted Refrigerator after being eaten by the ghost dog.
