The Definitive Ranking of Every Goosebumps Episode (That I’ve Seen)
About a year ago, I started watching the 1990s Goosebumps TV series on Netflix. What began as a way to pass time while I was bored quickly became an obsession for me, turning me into a Goosebumps stan. I even went to meet RL Stine even though I never read any of the books.
This series really has it all: scary monsters, twist endings, and bad Canadian child actors. As good as the series is, not all Goosebumps episodes are created equal. So that’s why I have decided to take it upon myself to rank all 30 Goosebumps episodes that I’ve seen, from worst to best. Fair warning, I’ll be spoiling all the twist endings of these episodes, so reader beware!!
30. “Attack of the Mutant” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 2, Episodes 2 and 3
This has to be the most boring episode of Goosebumps that I’ve watched. It was so boring that I didn’t finish the second episode of its two parts because I was so tired of it. I tend to dislike Goosebumps’ two-part episodes, as they are usually a lot more slow-paced than the regular episodes. I think it’s just hard to extend a short Goosebumps book into almost 45 minutes of television. Anyway, this episode is definitely the worst offender of the two-parters. RL Stine has stated that in his Goosebumps books the children are never in any real danger and no one ever dies. However, in most books/episodes the children encounter something that is at least somewhat scary. This episode’s premise revolves around a kid who keeps seeing a fictional supervillain’s headquarters in real life. Who gives a shit! That’s not scary. The actual supervillain himself doesn’t show up until the first half is almost over, and by that point, I had completely lost interest. Zero out of ten waste of an episode.
29. “Don’t Go To Sleep” — Season 3, Episode 4
This episode was really lame. It’s pretty obvious from the beginning of this episode that everything happening is all part of a dream, which is a really lame narrative cop-out. Even though the episode ends with a twist that suggests it all might not have been a dream, everything before that was devoid of tension. Would not recommend this one.
28. “Phantom of the Auditorium” — Season 1, Episode 7
This is where we get into episodes that aren’t necessarily bad, but are sort of forgettable aside from some funny moments. The plot of this one revolves around students trying to put on a school play in an auditorium that may or may not be haunted. It’s pretty standard Goosebumps stuff, but I really like the special effects in this one scene:
27. “Teacher’s Pet” — Season 3, Episode 22
This is another episode that’s sort of forgettable except for some funny imagery. The plot of this episode revolves around a teacher who is making new hybrid animal species. This sounds like a batshit premise for an episode, but unfortunately I think the budget limited them to only including a couple animal hybrids in the episode. These hybrids include a snake bunny and this incredible human/fly hybrid:
26. “Ghost Beach” — Season 2, Episode 9
I don’t really remember this episode that well. I think it was pretty good. Idk. This isn’t a very prestigious list.
25. “Don’t Wake Mummy” — Season 2, Episode 22
Not a bad episode, but definitely one of the most predictable Goosebumps episodes. A family gets mailed a sarcophagus, and guess what? There’s a mummy inside it. No crazy twists, nothing special about it.
24. “Say Cheese and Die” — Season 1, Episode 15
This was an OK episode, but it is most notable for being Ryan Gosling’s first acting role. That’s all I really remember about it.
23. “Haunted House Game” — Season 3, Episode 10
“Haunted House Game” definitely has a good premise, with two kids getting sucked into a haunted board game. It also clearly had a pretty big budget, since they built an elaborate set for the board game. Unfortunately, I don’t think the episode fully lived up to the potential of its concept.
22. “Awesome Ants” — Season 3, Episode 15
Not the scariest episode, but it has a good twist ending where giant ants imprison all of humanity inside a glass cage as a reverse-ant farm.
21. “One Day at Horrorland” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 3, Episodes 8 and 9
This is a good example of a two-parter that would have been better if it had been condensed into one episode. There are a lot of funny parts in this episode, but there are also a lot of scenes that probably could have been cut. The twist ending in this one is good though because it ends on a literal cliffhanger.
20. “Werewolf Skin” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 3, Episodes 13 and 14
Another two-parter. This one features the main character blowing up two werewolf pelts so his aunt and uncle stop turning into werewolves.
19. “How to Kill a Monster” — Season 2, Episode 18
This episode takes place in the bayou, presumably in Louisiana. They let you know this episode takes place in the bayou by playing really loud creepy banjo music throughout the episode. They also mention gumbo like twenty times in this episode. The step-sibling protagonists of this episode actually disable the monster using really spicy gumbo, so I guess the constant gumbo references had a payoff.
18. “The House of No Return” — Season 3, Episode 3
“The House of No Return” is most notable for providing the namesake of emo-rap duo Danger Incorporated. While I find Danger Incorporated’s music to be kind of hit-or-miss, they incorporate a lot of Goosebumps references into their lyrics, so I have to respect them for that. I think “Atlanta Neighborhood” is probably their best song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLRzPyGVwq4
Anyway, this episode follows a group of kids in a club called Danger Incorporated as they try to haze their new neighbor into joining their club. The episode had a kid named Nathan in it, so that was cool.
17. “Monster Blood” & “More Monster Blood” — Season 2, Episodes 15 and 16
A lot of Goosebumps stories follow similar formulas. It seems like half of the episodes of Goosebumps either involve a kid moving to a new house/neighborhood or staying with one of their weird relatives.
The first half of this two-parter follows the “staying with a weird relative” formula and doesn’t really do anything new with it. The second half at least switches it up a bit and is basically Snakes on a Plane (2006), but with Monster Blood.
16. “My Hairiest Adventure” — Season 1, Episode 11
Now this is where we get into the good episodes. All the episodes listed before this point either have some sort of flaw or are just forgettable. The rest of the episodes I list are the ones I would actually recommend.
This was actually the first episode of Goosebumps that I watched, and when I watched it, I noticed it seemed to have strong anti-vax themes. I am not sure where RL Stine stands on vaccinations, but if it ever comes out that he’s an anti-vaxxer, this episode would make a lot of sense.
The plot of this episode revolves around a boy, Larry, who suddenly starts to grow long hair all over his body. At first I thought this episode was going to be a metaphor for puberty but as the episode went on, I started to notice the anti-vax subtext. It turns out that Larry wasn’t growing hair because of puberty, but he was growing hair because of shots that his doctor was giving him. Larry repeatedly asks his doctor and his parents why he’s getting these shots, but none of them give him an answer. At the end of the episode, the shots cause him to turn into a dog. Also, every kid on his street was turned into a dog by the same doctor. So basically, the lesson of the episode is don’t trust doctors or your parents and don’t get shots.
15. “The Cuckoo Clock of Doom” — Season 1, Episode 3
This episode was on some Benjamin Button shit. If Benjamin Button kept getting owned by his little sister.
14. “How I Got My Shrunken Head” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2
This is one of the most potentially problematic episodes of Goosebumps. The plot of this two-parter revolves around a boy, Mark, who is obsessed with “the jungle”. This is shown through him collecting a bunch of African tribal artifacts and having a leopard print rug in his room. Mark is mailed a shrunken head by his explorer aunt, and is then invited to visit her in “the jungle”. Mark then travels to the vaguely Southeast-Asian country of Baladora to rescue her from evil British imperialists who are hunting for her because she learned the secret of “jungle magic”. Mark then saves her and they shrink the evil British people and keep them in a cage.
There’s a lot going on in this episode, and there’s also a lot of great side characters in it. There’s the pilot on Baladora who is dressed as Elvis for some reason. There’s also Mark’s aggressively horny single mother. At the beginning of the episode Mark is attacked by the shrunken head and his mom shows no concern for his wellbeing and is just annoyed at him for cockblocking her. It’s implied that she gets some dick at the end of the episode, so good for her.
All in all, aside from some maybe problematic stereotyping of Southeast Asians, this is a very good episode of Goosebumps and a definite recommend.
13. “Attack of the Jack O Lanterns” — Season 2, Episode 10
This episode has aliens that look like this:
12. “Stay Out of the Basement” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 1, Episodes 12 and 13
This was actually the second episode of Goosebumps that I watched, and this was the one that really got me hooked. This episode revolves around two kids discovering their father’s secret botany lab in their basement. It’s been a while since I’ve watched it so I don’t really remember all the twists, but I remember liking it, so you should probably watch it! Idk. This isn’t a very prestigious list.
11. “The Blob That Ate Everyone” — Season 2, Episode 23
“The Blob That Ate Everyone” has to have one of the wildest twist endings of any Goosebumps episode. The episode revolves around a boy, Zack, who gets electrocuted while using a typewriter. After that, everything that he types on the typewriter happens in real life, such as a blob monster attacking people. This is a pretty common fantasy trope where whatever you write becomes real, and I thought the episode would just end it there. However, the twist ending reveals that it wasn’t the typewriter that had the power to will things into existence, but Zack himself. Then the episode just ends there. What does Zack do with this power? I don’t know. This episode has a kid become a literal god and then just leaves us hanging. Wild shit.
10. “Scarecrow Walks at Midnight” — Season 2, Episode 14
Now we’re in the top 10. This is where the big boys are.
This is another potentially problematic Goosebumps episode, mainly because it features a character who is supposed to be mentally handicapped, Stanley. Characters throughout the episode just describe him as “slow”. It’s never explicitly stated that Stanley is inbred, but that was probably RL Stine’s intention. Stanley works as a farmhand for an elderly couple, and uses black magic to bring scarecrows to life to bully them. When the couple’s city slicker grandkids come to visit, Stanley terrorizes them with his scarecrows. Eventually the kids discover what’s going on and defeat the scarecrows using the farm’s harvester. Everything goes back to normal, but the episode ends with Stanley accidentally bringing the harvester to life, which attacks the house and presumably kills everyone.
So, this episode is kinda crazy, and has lots of country stereotypes and some creepy banjo music like “How to Kill a Monster”, so if you’re into that, I’d check this one out.
9. “Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes” — Season 2, Episode 8
There’s a lot of political subtext in this episode. “Revenge of the Lawn Gnomes” follows two households living next door to each other. One of them is the Chad military veteran, Major McCall, who is really obsessed with lawn maintenance for some reason. The other one is a family headed by a submissive liberal dad, Mr. Burton, who lets Major McCall bully his son, and is also obsessed with lawn maintenance. At first I thought it was implied that Mr. Burton was single but his wife does show up for like one minute of screen time.
The two households are both entered in a neighborhood lawn decorating contest, and Mr. Burton buys a pair of lawn gnomes for his yard. These lawn gnomes end up coming to life, and frame Mr. Burton’s son, Joe, for destroying the Major’s yard. Hijinks ensue.
My favorite detail of this episode is how the two lawns represent each character’s personality. Mr. Burton’s yard is tacky and full of kitschy decorations, while the Major’s yard is neat and orderly, and literally has an area called “The Pentagon” (because it’s shaped like a pentagon). I guess this episode can be seen as a metaphor for the war between liberal and conservative America, and the gnomes are supposed to represent outside agitators or something. Maybe the gnomes are Antifa.
8. “Click” — Season 3, Episode 5
This episode shares the same name as the 2006 Adam Sandler movie Click, and also contains a very similar plot. I am not saying that RL Stine should sue the producers of Click (2006), but he should maybe look into it.
Like the movie Click, this episode starts with our protagonist, Seth, receiving a remote that allows him to control reality. Like Adam Sandler, Seth uses the remote for selfish purposes, such as muting his annoying sister and cheating on tests by pausing time. Seth also sort of becomes a vigilante with the remote, using it to humiliate bullies. Seth’s friend, Kevin, sees Seth going mad with power and tries to get him to throw away the remote after he almost permanently pauses his family. Seth briefly does throw away the remote, but unlike Adam Sandler, he doesn’t learn from his mistakes and starts using the remote again. When Kevin confronts him about it, Seth tries to use the remote to attack Seth and ends up hitting the menu button, trapping himself in a dark void, presumably for eternity. This is one of the darker Goosebumps endings, which I have to respect.
7. “Strained Peas” — Season 3, Episode 17
This episode features a baby telepathically bullying her older brother. That’s all I need to say about this one.
6. “Calling All Creeps” — Season 2, Episode 19
This is probably one of the darkest Goosebumps episodes. The episode starts with a boy, Ricky Beamer, getting bullied by the student newspaper kids, because we all know that the student newspaper kids were always the bullies at school. Ricky’s only friend at school is a new girl named Iris, who is genuinely nice to him. After Ricky tries to pull a prank on the newspaper to get revenge for being bullied, he starts getting phone calls from random kids who tell Ricky that they are “Creeps” and that they want to meet with him. Eventually, Ricky gets pulled aside by a few of his classmates, who reveal that they are actually shape-shifting aliens known as Creeps, and that they think Ricky is their leader. They tell Ricky about their plan to use “seeds” to turn everyone in their school into Creeps. Ricky tells Iris about this, and they make a plan to stop the Creeps. The Creeps put the seeds inside cookies, and bring them to the school’s bake sale. Ricky and Iris plan on warning the students not to eat the cookies. However, when Ricky goes to the podium to warn the students, none one listens and everyone starts making fun of him. Ricky looks out at all the students bullying him, and instead encourages everyone to eat the cookies. Iris tries to get him to stop, but Ricky ignores her and eats a cookie himself, thus transforming into the leader of the Creeps. So basically this episode features a kid becoming alien Hitler.
5. “An Old Story” — Season 3, Episode 6
As I stated earlier in this list, RL Stine has two rules that he follows when he writes Goosebumps stories: The kids are never in too much danger and no one ever dies. However, this episode breaks both of those rules. This episode has the classic Goosebumps setup of two brothers staying with their weird aunt. It seems like pretty standard Goosebumps stuff at first, and then the aunt literally tries to sex traffic the two brothers. She does this by feeding them prune juice that turns them into old men and tries to sell them to her two old lady friends. The boys figure out that it’s the prune juice that turned them old, so they escape by dumping prune juice on their aunt, which literally kills her. Like she turns into a skeleton and crumbles into dust.
“An Old Story” also features a good twist ending where one of the brothers eats too much baby food (the antidote to the prune juice) and turns into a baby. Also, the makeup in this episode is legitimately good.
4. “Perfect School” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 3, Episodes 11 and 12
Most Goosebumps episodes feature the kids facing some sort of supernatural threat, but I like this episode because it actually keeps things pretty grounded. It’s more of an action/thriller episode than a horror episode, and is easily one of the most entertaining two-parters.
The story follows Brian O’Connor, who is sent to a militaristic boarding school as punishment for pranking his little brother too many times. While he’s there, he discovers that the school is cloning the students and sending the well-behaved clones back to their parents while the real students are locked in the school’s basement. Brian tries to escape multiple times and eventually has to face off against his own clone. The ending makes it seem like Brian was captured and his clone was sent back to his parents, but it is revealed that Brian is just impersonating his clone by being well-behaved and is secretly plotting to free all the students at the school. Good shit.
3. “Go Eat Worms” — Season 2, Episode 6
This episode is about a kid with worms in his brain. By that I mean the boy, Todd, is literally obsessed with worms. His room is decorated with worms, he does experiments on worms, he has a worm farm.
This is an… interesting premise for an episode. I believe there’s a lot of subtext here though. Personally, I think the episode might be a metaphor for homosexuality. Todd’s parents don’t understand his obsession with worms, and repeatedly ask him why he can’t be interested in something more normal. At one point, Todd wakes up with worms in his bed, which might be symbolic of a wet dream. Throughout the episode, Todd is attacked by worms, which culminates with him getting attacked by a giant worm in a cave. The giant worm could possibly be a phallic symbol. Anyway, after he escapes the worm and emerges from the cave, he sees his sister and says “I could kiss you”. So, there’s also some potential incest going on in this episode. Maybe him escaping the cave represents him overcoming homosexuality and reverting to heterosexuality? Maybe RL Stine is homophobic? I might be reading too much into this, but I’m sure someone could perform a fascinating Freudian analysis on this episode.
Another fun fact about this episode is that Todd is played by Noah Shebib aka 40, Drake’s main producer. You know, the one Pusha T made fun of for having Multiple Sclerosis. It’s crazy how 40 has been involved with two Canadian cultural institutions: OVO Sound and the Goosebumps TV shows.
2. “Piano Lessons Can Be Murder” — Season 1, Episode 8
When I first started this episode, I thought it was going to be a basic “kid moves into a new house and it’s haunted” Goosebumps episode, but it ended up being so much more. The episode starts with Jerry Hawkins moving into a new house where he finds a piano that’s haunted by the ghost of an old lady. Pretty basic stuff. Things get interesting after Jerry gets horny for one of his neighbors and signs up for piano lessons to impress her. This is where the episode introduces one of the best characters in the entire Goosebumps series: Dr. Shreek.
Dr. Shreek is Jerry’s piano teacher who is REALLY obsessed with hands. When Jerry first meets Dr. Shreek, the first thing he does is compliment Jerry’s hands. Jerry also meets Mr. Toggle, Dr. Shreek’s janitor who builds robots.
As the episode goes on, the piano ghost keeps warning Jerry to stay away from Dr. Shreek. During one of his lessons, Jerry keeps messing up, and Dr. Shreek glitches, revealing himself to be one of Mr. Toggle’s robots. Dr. Shreek then starts chasing Jerry while yelling “BEAUTIFUL HANDS!” Jerry escapes him and encounters Mr. Toggle, who shuts Dr. Shreek down and then asks to see Jerry’s hands. Mr. Toggle reveals that he is trying to build piano playing robots but finds the hands to difficult to build, so he needs Jerry’s hands. Before Toggle can take Jerry’s hands, the old lady ghost shows up and saves Jerry, who escapes. Mr. Toggle is then subjected to playing piano for the ghost for eternity.
This episode really goes off the rails and is one of my Goosebumps episodes. I know some people who don’t like this one as much as I do, but fuck the haters, this episode rocks.
1. “Welcome To Camp Nightmare” (Pts 1 and 2) — Season 1, Episodes 5 and 6
Not only is this the best two-part episode, but it’s also the best episode of Goosebumps (that I’ve seen). The twist ending of this one really just blew me away. “Welcome To Camp Nightmare” follows Billy, a boy whose scientist parents send him to summer camp. The episode gets off to a strong start with Uncle Al, the camp’s director, blowing up a wolf-monster with a flare gun. Other than the wolf-monster, this episode is similar to “Perfect School” in that it keeps the threats pretty grounded. Throughout the episode, Billy’s fellow campers disappear one by one after getting injured by things such as snake bites, baseball accidents, and drowning. Billy tries to confront the camp counselors about what is happening, but they all act like nothing is happening. Eventually, Billy tries to escape, and encounters Dawn, another camper who is trying to escape. Billy is then found by the rest of the campers, who are hunting for Dawn using crossbows. Uncle Al tries to coerce Billy into joining the hunt, so Billy responds by fucking shooting him with a tranquilizer dart.
After Uncle Al gets shot, there is a Timmy Thick-esque reveal that the whole camp was a government experiment and that everyone there was an actor. Billy’s parents emerge from the woods, and reveal that Billy passed the test. Apparently, Billy’s parents are going on a dangerous expedition and wanted to bring Billy with them, but in order to do so, Billy had to pass a series of tests. When Billy asks his parents where they’re going, they respond “Earth”.
Apparently this whole episode took place on an alien planet which happens to be close enough to Earth so that Earth is visible in their sky. I did not see this twist coming at all, and that’s what gives it the number one spot on my Goosebumps list.
