Top 10 Goosebumps Episodes

This episode embodied a basic childhood fear: not having anybody believe what you saw! Based on the 8th book of the series, it sees the young Lucy Dark join a summer reading program at her library. One day after hours, she discovers that the program deputy snacks on flies and is actually a monster! What made this episode great was that it really represented those childhood moments when your parents or other grownups wouldn’t believe what you told them - except for the fact that when Lucy’s parents realize she was telling the truth, they eat Mr. Mortman… because they are monsters too!

What’s scarier than being separated from your group? If Scooby-Doo taught us anything, that’s the first thing you gotta avoid! In this episode, siblings Sue and Eddie go on a castle tour in England, get separated in a barred cell of the Terror Tower castle, and are chased by a medieval executioner! What made this story great was that it heightened that childhood terror of being on your own way too soon. Like a good fairy tale though, these siblings meet a sorcerer and discover they’re medieval royalty on the run through time to avoid being killed!

Kids are often afraid of moving to a new home, but sister and brother duo Amanda and Josh’s fears are beyond justified when they learn that all of the residents of their new neighborhood tragically died in a chemical factory accident. To make matters worse, all of their dead neighbors are still roaming the neighborhood… as zombies! This episode took that classic childhood fear of moving away from one’s friends literally to the dead of nowhere. Moral of the story? There’s no place like home.

As we discovered with the previous entry, we all know that moving sucks when you’re growing up. In this episode, Grady moves to a swamp and reluctantly makes a new friend and adopts a pet dog in the same week. But suddenly, neighborhood animals are mysteriously being killed. While Grady tries to figure out whether his pet may be a werewolf or not, he quickly – and painfully - learns that it’s actually his new “human” friend who’s the werewolf! If anything, this “Goosebumps” episode left many of us with trust issues.

Kids hate long road trips… Especially when they feel there’s no escape. The Morris kids suffered this when their parents took them to an amusement park controlled by monsters! While this part of the storyline was creepy enough as is, the episode shockingly ended with the family winning a car and driving off a cliff! Right as every viewer was about to be emotionally scarred for life, it’s revealed that this is a show-within-a-show, ending with monsters watching and discussing how horrifying humans are. Truly the equivalent of the “Twilight Zone” of the ‘90s!

Nobody likes being the source of problems. In this episode, Greg finds an exotic camera hidden in the walls of an abandoned factory and shares his discovered camera with his friends. However, after he takes pictures of them, they all soon suffer misfortunes that were foreshadowed in the photographs. Greg inadvertently causes harm to his loved ones by merely taking photos of them! Imagine if Facebook had existed when this storyline aired… oh and that IS a little Ryan Gosling as Greg!

This episode is one of the darkest of the “Goosebumps” series. Billy is sent to camp by his explorer parents. When two girls go missing, the camp leader gives campers guns and commands them to hunt down the girls. Billy tries killing the counselor, is unable to fire his gun, and learns the experience was a government test he needed to pass so he can travel with his parents. Talk about traumatic! This episode was terrifying because it played on childhood authority fears. Now imagine someone giving you a gun just to see if you’d kill them!

Most classic horror stories seem to involve a basement at some point. Siblings Casey and Margaret belong to what they thought was a normal family. However, they learn that their real dad – who is a scientist – is trapped in the basement, and the man they thought was their father is actually a plant-human mutant clone the real dad invented before clone-dad trapped him. This takes the father complex to all new levels! Like any classic “Goosebumps” episode, nothing is as it seems.

During the era of murderous dolls, like Chucky, what better way to acclimatize kids to this theme than through a ventriloquist dummy? In this episode, Amy’s favorite dummy, Dennis, falls apart due to overuse. As fate would have it, her pawnshop replacement dummy, Slappy, is much more than meets the eye as she accidentally brings Slappy to life and he turns out to be pure evil… While the story ends with Slappy’s head cracking open, this is all too déjà vu for any kid who had a deceptively terrible pet… or sibling.

Before we unveil our number one pick, here are some honorable mentions:
- “Monster Blood”
- “My Hairiest Adventure”
- “The Ghost Next Door: Parts 1 & 2”
- “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom”
- “Vampire Breath”

Ever been told not to make a face because it’ll get stuck that way? Tired of school bullies, Carly Beth buys a mask from a mysterious shop to frighten her tormenters. Caught up in this ability to terrify, her personality changes. Eventually, the mask becomes stuck to her and she’s cursed with this gruesome face. This episode was the premiere story of the “Goosebumps” series and, while Carly Beth was featured in a sequel, this tale is the best! What’s scarier than being not liked by anyone? Being scary to everyone… forever!

Do you agree with our list? What are your favorite “Goosebumps” episodes? For more excellent Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.