BOOK 7: NIGHT OF THE LIVING DUMMY
The second I decided to do this Goosebumps Retrospective I’ve been excited for this book and Haunted Mask. I have such large memories of those books (yet I don’t remember anything about them).
Kris and Lindy are twin sisters. One day Lindy finds an old dummy in the trash. She names him Slappy and begins making a name for herself in town. Kris becomes jealous and starts asking for a dummy of her own. A few days later her dad finds a dummy at the local pawn shop (who Kris hilariously names Mr. Wood).
Strange things start to happen with Mr Wood though. He seems to be able to move on his own will, speak on his own and constantly finds in weird locations. It’s revealed that this is all organized by Lindy out of anger. Kris confronts her and things go back to normal... or so it seems.
One day while practicing with her dummy Kris finds a yellow card with ancient words on it. She reads the words out loud (never a good thing) and suddenly Mr Wood starts yelling awful things.
Finally convincing Lindy that dummy is actually alive they manage to kill Mr. Wood by throwing him under a steamroller. The two girls go to their room to celebrate when Slappy grabs their wrists and yells “So you finally got rid of that other guy.”
I love this story for what it is. Ventriloquist dummies terrifying and this story knows it. It has a great twist and while there’s elements that I thought were laughable or poorly executed at 27 the fact is 12 year old me would have eaten it up!
THE GOOD: The story is genuinely scary at points with good twists. Mr. Wood is a good villain (although I seem to only really remember Slappy now. Doing research it seems Slappy continued to be the villain in future sequels).
THE BAD: While this probably didn’t bug 12 year old me (or any 12 year old), 27 year old me hates that since all the earlier “weird stuff” was just a giant cruel prank from Lindy it makes them relatively pointless and unneccessary. Also I started to genuinely hate the Lindy (much like how I hated Lefty in Let’s Get Invisible)
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