Camp Nightmare has one at the end of the first chapter, then everything that happens from there progressively raises the stakes. It gets exhausting pretty quickly (I’m looking at you, Night of the Living Dummy ). It’s one of Stine’s worst tendencies to have a slew of gotcha scares at the end of each chapter throughout the first half of the book. One of my favorite things about Camp Nightmare is that it is refreshingly short on gag scares. Even though this one doesn’t have any paranormal elements (my usual favorites) this still really worked for me. Stine uses the summer camp setting to maximum effect in Welcome to Camp Nightmare, with an increasing emphasis on themes of isolation and the unfamiliar throughout the book. I never went to sleep-away camp as a kid, and my social anxieties around meeting new people in that setting could have been a horror novel in and of itself. Score: 5Įrmahgerd #9: Welcome to Camp Nightmare. It’s easily the strongest in the series that I’ve re-read so far.

Even though I remembered the ending from seeing the TV episode as a kid, I still really appreciated this one.

It creates an isolation effect for the main character, Billy, as his friends are taken out around him. The most unsettling part of the book was the indifference that the camp councilors seem to show towards kids actually dying, suffering various injuries, and disappearing. Welcome to Camp Nightmare wastes no time getting to the good stuff, and maintains good suspense all the way to the final scene.

Welcome to Camp Nightmare by R.L. Stine