Goosebumps - My Favorite Children's Halloween Program

I appreciate the guest post, Kelvin Armstrong

I am a sucker for twist endings. While people feel they are cheap thrills and kill a show's long term appeal, what they feel to realize is that is precisely the verb that makes for good horror shows. There is no other show that executes the twist ending better than Goosebumps.

What makes Goosebumps my favorite children's Halloween program is its ability to make a fresh ghost pancake out of a seemingly conventional horror story. They will take you to a deserted island where lightning storms are more common than oxygen and stand your hair on end with tails of a secret lab and clandestine werewolves posing as professional models. The best part of Goosebumps is their identifiable protagonists. Typically the characters are from suburban backgrounds with middle class mores, which makes them ideal target for spooky monsters. Many inner city kids deal with far more frightening dangers on a daily basis and would chortle in the face of something as banal and innocuous as a vampire who attacks you with his teeth rather than a semi-automatic handgun and is scared to come out into the sun. If these hardened children were chosen as the characters, Goosebumps would not be my favorite children's Halloween program, but because they didn't, it is.

Goosebumps specials air on Nickelodeon during the Halloween season, part of the package available on Best Choice TV.