Here we go. A word I used a lot already when describing Goosebumps has been ‘reputation’. I went on to explain, in the intro to my personal favourites list, that the series is remembered for its covers, twists, and all-around camp and cheesiness. While all of that is true, and the books did give us a lot of twists and endings and plot contrivances that made us slap our heads, there are quite a few endings that are perfect.
    In my intro essay to that same 'Favourites' list, I also explored how twist endings don’t always work and how, sometimes, having obvious endings is just as good. It’s all about the ending being satisfactory to the story itself without making people feel cheated. Just because an ending can be seen coming from a mile away doesn’t lessen the impact of it, or its memorability. What needs to be remembered is that, even if you have a great movie, a terrible ending is what people would jump to when it comes to looking back at it. A decent twist ending can be the only good thing about your film, as well. With an ending that is satisfying, even when it’s predictable, lend towards you work being remembered more fondly as a whole.
    Goosebumps did an odd balance of the two. As evident from my ‘Worst Endings’, you can see some of the cases where we were presented with something so ridiculous that you either slapped your head or sighed so hard you started to cough. The positive side to that here, what Goosebumps has that makes even the worse things work, is that it is looked at in hindsight. The awful endings, no matter how undeniably stupid and irritating as they could be, fall into the nostalgic tongue-in-cheek memories of the books. You know it’s stupid, oh-so-stupid, but you get a sense of ridiculous fun from it. It falls in line with the reputation that the series has in the mind of many people who grew up with them.

    But, on the opposite ends of the spectrum, there were moments where the books floored you with surprise. They were entries that had heft, that were funny on purpose, had creative twists to them, or even came together into a package that made you know that you would revisit the story you read at least once before, or that it’s worth talking about. We got endings that were predictable but you couldn’t see it ending any other way. We got endings that were a happy surprise, a twist that genuinely made the story pop and change everything before it. We got endings that didn’t have any twists, because there didn’t need to be one.

    I said I wanted my ‘Favourites’ list to be the capstone of my original five-part look at parts of the books, but, after consideration, it made more sense to have this one. The reason for that is, to fully showcase how great these endings are, I have to spoil the entirety of the book’s plots. That was fine with the worst endings, since it finished books that were already mostly ridiculous themselves, but here we are looking at stories that do have an impact. There are a few endings here that have stuck with me for a very long time, for good reason, and to not have the proper build-up does rob you of a worthwhile, quick read.

    Lastly, I have to apologize. I usually try, and have tried, my best to compact the synopsis of the books, but they’re still relatively long. I would have gone back and cut them a bit more, and thought about cutting it down to basic plot-point sentences, but for a list like this I realized it made more sense to give a full sense of the story. Some I was able to compress as best as possible, the others needed most of their plot points to fully feel the impact of their ending.
    With all of that out there, I happily give you ten endings and twists that make Goosebumps more than what they’re remembered for.

10: Calling All Creeps!

    The Story: Ricky gets called names, harassed, and all-around tortured by his schoolmates, there being four eighth-graders (Wart, Brenda, Jared, and David) in particular that give him a harder time than any others. Ricky is also on the school newspaper, where Tasha, the head of the paper, treats the kids on the team that are younger than her like slaves. But Ricky does have one friend, Iris, who is new to the school.
    The four eighth-graders go on to ruin Ricky’s school reporting a handful of times, leading to Tasha kicking him from the paper for his failing, and Iris confronts her for it, calling her cruel. Before the next day’s paper is published, Ricky decides to get revenge on Tasha by typing “Calling All Creeps, Calling All Creeps. If you’re a real creep, call Tasha after midnight.” Gloating to Iris over the phone about what he did leads her to tell him he’s in trouble, as the next day it is Ricky’s name in place of Tasha’s, her having caught on and changing it. Ricky, already upset, begins to get phone-calls from children asking when they will be meeting.
    The next day, Ricky finds that no one picks on him or calls him names at school, which they have ever since he first arrived. To make things weirder, he finds a note asking him when the creeps will meet. He is taken afterwards to the woods by the four eighth-graders, who proceed to apologize and call him their commander after seeing his message in the paper. They then transform into ‘Creeps’, purple, lizard creatures, and, telling Ricky that ‘Creeps’ are the future and humans are the past, ask him when they will go about with the plan. The plan, of course, is to plant some seeds in the school food, causing the kids to turn into ‘Creeps’ themselves.
    Ricky does his best to sabotage as many attempts as he can, telling kids that the macaroni they put some seeds in is poisoned and the like. Ricky is eventually suspected by the four as being a fake, and demand he transform, but he is saved by an arriving Iris, who labels herself as the commander’s assistant, telling the four that they will use the upcoming bake sale to spread the seeds in cookies.
    The day of, Ricky tries his best to intercept, going so far as to make an announcement for the student body not to eat the cookies, only to be met with everyone making fun of him and pelting him with treats. The four Creep-kids corner him and tell Ricky that once the students transform, they will become slaves to him. He thinks about the words and, starting with Tasha, begins to hand out all the cookies for free.

    The Reason: Starting the list off with a choice that you can see coming at a certain point in the book, what makes Calling All Creeps! work as effectively as it does is the fact that this is the first, and only one of the few, books in the series where either;
    a) the villain wins
    or b) things end up way more pessimistic than you would ever expect.
    A lot of the endings that Goosebumps had never bent in these kinds of ways, their main characters either trying to be good people or receiving their ‘just desserts.’ The reason why an ending that paints the main character as being lesser than we wished and hoped he would be is because it works. Ricky is relentlessly bullied and pushed about by everyone in the walls of the school. Does that excuse what he does? No, but we fully understand his decision once the Creeps present him with what will happen when the others transform. The fact that we understand his motives in the end, and we get a finale that we aren’t used to in these books, make the final moments incredibly satisfying. The twist here isn’t that people end up turning into Creeps anyway, it’s the fact that we got a book where a character so easily made such a decision under what could be considered realistic emotional circumstances.