Spinetinglers is a middle grade horror series that ran from 1995 to 1998. It's another of the series that followed in the wake of Goosebumps. It had 30 total entries. The credited author does not exist, and is a pen-name for various ghost writers. Thus, expect a bit more variety due to the writers' various styles.
The series consists of:
- #01: The Substitute Creature
- #02: Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried
- #03: My Teacher's a Bug
- #04: Where Have All the Parents Gone?
- #05: Check It Out-And Die!
- #06: Simon Says, Croak!
- #07: Snow Day
- #08: Don't Go to the Principal's Office
- #09: Step on a Crack
- #10: The Dead Kid Did It
- #11: Fly by Night
- #12: Killer Computer
- #13: Pet Store
- #14: Blood Red EightBall
- #15: Escape from the Haunted Museum
- #16: We Wish You a Scary Christmas
- #17: The Monster Channel
- #18: Mirror, Mirror
- #19: Boogey's Back for Blood
- #20: Lights, Camera, Die!
- #21: Camp Crocodile
- #22: Student Exchange
- #23: Gimme Back My Brain
- #24: Your Turn - To Scream
- #25: The Curse of the Cheerleaders
- #26: Wear and Scare
- #27: Lizard People
- #28: Circus F:R:E:A:K:S:
- #29: My Dentist Is a Vampire
- #30: Saber-Toothed Tiger
This book series provides examples of:
open/close all folders
#01: The Substitute Creature
- Shout-Out: The tagline for The Substitute Creature is "Here's looking at you, kid!"
#02: Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried
- Back from the Dead: The premise of Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried, where a kid's dog is put to sleep but returns... along with many other dead pets.
- Did I Mention It's Christmas?: Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried is set on Christmas, but it's only relevant in one scene and it's not mentioned too much otherwise.
- Dirty Cop: In Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried, one of the cops is part of a religious cult and uses his police powers to block people from leaving town, forcing them to join the church.
- Scam Religion: The Church of the Kingdom of Resurrected Pets in Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried is an example where the leader doesn't seem to be seeking to scam people, but doesn't really help either. The officer mentioned above however just uses it as a way to scam money out of people, claiming it is for the good for the church.
- Struggling Single Mother: Billy's mom in Billy Baker's Dog Won't Stay Buried. Dad died a few years back and she has been struggling to keep the family financially afloat.
#03: My Teacher's a Bug
- Another Dimension: The four insectoid races are crossing over to Earth from one in My Teacher's a Bug, in order to claim the planet for themselves.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of My Teacher's a Bug, the invading insectoids have all been eliminated or returned to their native dimension. Then Ryan sees another group among the politicians listening to the president making a speech, and thinks the trope name to himself.
- Wicked Wasps: While four insectoid races are invading Earth in My Teacher's a Bug, the wasps are the leaders and the most dangerous, as they plant their larvae in human hosts, with the larvae eventually hatching and devouring their hosts from the inside out.
#05: Check It Out-And Die!
- Shout-Out: The tagline for Check It Out-And Die! says that "you'll get more than goosebumps when you read this book!"
#07: Snow Day
- Bad Future: Milo is a time traveler from a future where humanity's immunity against basic diseases has plummeted to an all-time low, requiring them to kidnap healthy children from the past to use their blood to survive.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Debbi in Snow Day wants a snow day so she can get out of a test. She gets it but it's not announced until after she's on the bus. They get stuck and it spirals from there.
- Darker and Edgier: It presents itself as a book about kids trapped inside a haunted house during a bad snowstorm, when it's actually about kids being kidnapped and harvested for their blood. Even the first chapter is incredibly bleak for a YA horror novel, wherein Debi dreams that Earth's about to be destroyed by a meteor.
- Did I Mention It's Christmas?: Snow Day is set in the days leading up to Christmas, with the kids hoping the schools will be closed due to the weather and their Christmas break starts earlier than usual.
- Haunted House: Played with. The Muhlzae Maze Manor in Snow Day is designed to look and feel like one, only for Debi to realize that it's more like a carnival fun house.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Something keeps pulling the kids into tailor-made dreamworlds based off their personalities and interests, but Debi keeps waking them up.
- Mind Screw: The book repeatedly cuts to one of the kids suddenly thrust into a dreamworld, only for Debi to pop up and break the illusion.
- Oh, Crap!: Snow Day ends on this note when Debi has a terrifying realization. What if her freedom from the Maze Manor was the dream she most wanted?
- Shout-Out: The plot the Milos tell Debi about the Muhlzae house, involving a hangman grandfather and a grandmother who spent all his money adding rooms to the house to appease her guilt, is a nod towards Sarah Winchester and the Winchester House.
#16: We Wish You a Scary Christmas
- And Then What?: We Wish You A Scary Christmas has Shad and Virgil trying to help Emery Slagel when Emery tells them his parents have someone trapped in their basement. When the two boys realize someone really is in Emery's basement, they debate what to do. Shad figures they should call the police and have Emery's parents arrested, but stops to think about where that'll leave Emery. Shad eventually figures that if the Slagels really are holding someone prisoner in their basement, then Emery deserves better parents and would probably be better off in a foster home.
- Christmas Episode: We Wish You A Scary Christmas, where some kids discover someone is possibly holding an amnesiac Santa hostage.
#19: Boogey's Back for Blood
- Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Boogey's Back for Blood features the Boogeyman who in this book is trapped in a book and is unleashed by saying magic words. He goes around kidnapping people who are related to a man who trapped him many years ago.
#21: Camp Crocodile
- Prehistoric Monster: Camp Crocodile revolves around a camp being terrorized by a prehistoric crocodile.
#23: Gimme Back My Brain
- A.I.-cronym: The scientists in Gimme Back My Brain like to give these kind of names to their creations. In the past they made PIG (Position In GeoSync) and MOUSE (Motorized Universally Sensitive Equipment). The creation at the center of the plot is ARTHUR, which means "ARtificial life form created on THURsday".
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Max in Gimme Back My Brain fantasizes of having a robot body so can use the strength to become a superhero. He gets a robot body via an accidentally but it's hard to enjoy the robot powers when he also has to deal with how everyone is afraid of him, on top of other dangers.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip: Gimme Back My Brain has scientists creating a robot, and a machine that is meant to copy the protagonists brain into the robot. However, it ends up switching their bodies, and because they don't think anything went wrong, they think the robot is just being weird when it claims to be the real Max. The twist reveals that it went as planned and the copied brain just assumed it was the real Max.
- The Ending Changes Everything: For most of Gimme Back My Brain, the protagonist has switched bodies with a robot, while the scientists that made it believe that the robot is confused and just believes it is Max. Seems pretty basic but the ending reveals that they were actually right, and this whole time we were following the robot who believed they were Max, and not Max himself. This puts the rest of the story in a different light, as the robot was powering down as the story went on, all for nothing.
- Never Trust a Title: Gimme Back My Brain technically revolves a body being taken, not a brain. The protagonist switches bodies with a robot, and thus says "Gimme back my Body" a few times instead.
- Unreliable Narrator: It seems like the entirety of Gimme Back My Brain is narrated by the protagonist, Max, who gets his brain stuck in a robot's body. It turns out the robot just believed he was Max's brain, and the story actually swapped narrators, and not even the robot knew it. Then after it switches to the real Max, it's hinted that some of what we read didn't actually happen and Arthur, the robot, was lying.
#24: Your Turn - To Scream
- The Game Plays You: Your Turn-To scream! involves a board game where everything that happens in it also happens in real life.
#25: The Curse of the Cheerleaders
- Adults Are Useless: Averted. For once, the adults are genuinely aware that something weird is happening to the point Carla has to use the cheerleaders to get rid of the ones who would pose a threat. The parents of an opposing football team even rush onto the field to save their kids when Carla uses a cheer to make the grass on the field attack them. Diane figures out later on that the reason why more adults haven't done anything to stop her is because Carla is likely perform cheers to ensure most don't stop her.
- Alpha Bitch: Carla Brett rules the cheerleaders with an iron fist and is determined to do anything to get her way.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Diane defeats Carla by using the last uniform to perform a cheer that makes Carla want to study to get good grades.
- Cruel Cheerleader: Curse of the Cheerleaders is about a group of elementary school cheerleaders with the power to make anything they cheer come true. It's actually their uniforms that gives them this power. Naturally, the leader of the group wants to use this power to get whatever she wants while the protagonist and newest recruit is horrified and tries to stop her before someone dies. Interestingly, the book avoids going for the expected popularity-based drama with Diane, the main character, expressing her belief cheerleaders should only worry about having fun instead of arbitrary things like popularity and social status.
- Laborious Laziness: Diane learns Carla's real motivation for using the cheerleaders or rather the magic uniforms to get what she wants is simply because she hates studying, and would rather terrorize the entire town into submission rather than do any actual work to achieve her goals.
#26: Wear and Scare
- Becoming the Costume: The concept of Wear and Scare, where kids buy some costumes from a mysterious shop, and eventually they turn into the creatures they are dressed as.
- Halloween Episode: Wear and Scare, where kids are putting together a haunted house for Halloween, and get some eerily realistic costumes. Sam and his family are noted as being very into Halloween.
- The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: Mr. Slithern's shop in Wear and Scare, which Sam stumbles upon. At the end, it vanishes when Slithern is defeated.
