It Came From Ohio! Read online

  TITLE PAGE

  DEAR READERS

  INTRODUCTION

  CHAPTER 1:

  “I MADE MY MOST IMPORTANT DISCOVERY WHEN I WAS SEVEN …”

  CHAPTER 2:

  “YOU THINK YOU’RE PRETTY FUNNY, DON’T YOU?”

  CHAPTER 3:

  “WHEN YOU WERE A KID, WERE YOU CALLED A NERD OR A GEEK?”

  CHAPTER 4:

  “I REALLY HAD THEM LAUGHING!”

  CHAPTER 5:

  “IN COLLEGE I BECAME JOVIAL …”

  CHAPTER 6:

  “IT WAS THE SCARIEST THING I EVER DID …”

  CHAPTER 7:

  “I WAS A WRITER IN NEW YORK—SORT OF …”

  CHAPTER 8:

  “THERE’S A WORLD OF COMMUNICATION IN BOTTLE CAPS …”

  CHAPTER 9:

  “I WAS HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE …”

  CHAPTER 10:

  “MY FIRST BOOK AND MY FIRST BUNNY EARS …”

  CHAPTER 11:

  “THE MATT STINE STORY.”

  CHAPTER 12:

  “I MEANT TO DO THAT!”

  CHAPTER 13:

  “WHAT’S A SCARY NOVEL … ?”

  CHAPTER 14:

  “I GET GOOSEBUMPS …”

  CHAPTER 15:

  “VIEWERS, BEWARE …”

  CHAPTER 16:

  “TALES FROM THE TRIPS.”

  CHAPTER 17:

  “WHERE AM I? AND HOW DID I GET HERE?”

  CHAPTER 18:

  “AUTHORS DO THE STRANGEST THINGS …”

  CHAPTER 19:

  “WHERE DO YOU GET YOUR IDEAS?”

  CHAPTER 20:

  “LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MAX AND BERNIE.”

  CHAPTER 21:

  “WHO COULD PLAY YOU BETTER THAN YOU?”

  APPENDIX:

  R.L. STINE’S TOP 20 MOST-ASKED QUESTIONS

  ALSO AVAILABLE

  COPYRIGHT

  R.L. Stine was not one of America’s bestselling authors when I met him. And he wasn’t called R.L. Stine.

  “The name is Stine,” he said. “Bob Stine.”

  The meeting took place when we were college students at Ohio State University. I can still see him, typing at a desk in the back of the Sundial office.

  Sundial was the campus humor magazine. Written and edited by students, Sundial’s cartoons, comics, jokes, and articles all made fun of college life.

  Bob’s official title at Sundial that year was “Contributor.” Contributors turned in stories and jokes to the magazine.

  I came to the office because I had written an incredibly funny spoof about a space flight. I could hardly wait to give it to the editor.

  The editor had other things on his mind. He was in a panic. He said the printing company had moved up the deadline to three o’clock that afternoon.

  “Bob, are you going to have that story finished?” the editor wanted to know. The editor was so nervous he had chewed his fingernails completely off. I thought any moment he was going to start on his toes.

  Bob just nodded and kept on typing.

  I thought the editor was kidding me when he said Bob was writing the whole magazine. Turned out he wasn’t kidding. This was nothing new to Bob. He had been writing and editing his own magazines since he was in fourth grade. And it was very funny stuff. That’s important in humor magazines.

  With time running out, Bob really hammered away on that typewriter. Except maybe “hammer” isn’t the right word.

  Not too many people know this—but R.L. Stine is a one-finger typist! That’s not to say he has only one finger. He has five of them on each hand. What I mean is, R.L. Stine types his stories with one finger.

  Luckily for me that day at the Sundial office, Bob suddenly grabbed that one finger. He was hurt! In a frantic last-minute rush to finish the issue, Bob had jammed his finger between two keys. The typewriter was fine, but Bob had a serious injury. His typing finger was scratched!

  It was lucky for me only because there was now space in the magazine for my piece.

  And so, on that same day in 1962, an article of mine was printed—and I met R.L. Stine.

  He has been my best friend ever since.

  Bob never forgets my birthday, and I never forget to remind him of his. When Bob was writing funny books and magazines, his choice in birthday gifts ran mostly to rubber chickens.

  Now that he’s the king of scary stories, Bob is beyond rubber chickens. Now he sends me rubber eyeballs.

  I’ve followed Bob’s writing career from his years as editor of Sundial, through his jobs with fan magazines, trade magazines, and funny books. I’ve been with Bob when he was just another face in the crowd. And I’ve seen the traffic-stopping celebrity who is swamped by thousands of fans wanting his autograph.

  He sure stopped traffic when he came back to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, for a book signing.

  You should have seen the mob of people and cars trying to get into the bookstore parking lot! Streets were tied up in all four directions. The store manager told us he had never seen such a large crowd to meet an author. “It was amazing,” he said.

  R.L. Stine’s life as a writer is pretty amazing. And it is a pretty good story. It’s the story of how my friend—a young man with a portable typewriter and a lot of crazy ideas—went from making up little magazines at home in his room to becoming one of America’s bestselling authors of all time.

  He’s written over 330 books.

  And he’s done it all with one finger!

  But I’ve gone on long enough. All the rest of this story is in Bob’s words. I have written it down just as he told it to me. Enjoy …

  Joe Arthur

  I was born October 8, 1943, in Columbus, Ohio. My parents called me Robert Lawrence Stine (now you know what the R.L. stands for). One of my earliest memories is a scary one. It’s about Whitey.

  Whitey was our dog. In pictures, Whitey looks like he was half husky, half collie, and half elephant. He was so big that when we allowed him in the house, he knocked over vases—and the tables they were on! That’s why we kept him in the garage.

  When I was four, it was my job to let Whitey out of the garage every morning. As soon as I stepped outside, I could hear him scratching at the inside of the garage door.

  Slowly, I’d push up the heavy door. And Whitey would come charging out at me. His tail would wag furiously and he would bark like crazy. He was so glad to see me!

  Barking and crying, he would leap on me—and knock me to the driveway. Every morning!

  “Down, Whitey! Down!” I begged.

  THUD! I was down on the driveway.

  THUD! Every morning.

  Whitey was a good dog. But I think he helped give me my scary view of life. I wonder if I would have become a horror writer if I didn’t start every morning when I was four flat on my back on the driveway!

  I grew up in the town of Bexley. Bexley is a suburb of Columbus, and Columbus is right in the middle of Ohio.

  When I was little, we lived in a three-story house. We had a big yard with a lot of shade trees.

  My brother, Bill, is three years younger than me. He and I shared a bedroom on the second floor. The third floor was an attic. It was strictly forbidden. Mom told us never to go up there.

  I asked her why. She only shook her head and said, “Don’t ask.”

  That attic from my childhood is also one of the reasons why I write Goosebumps and Fear Street today.

  I used to lie in my bed at night and stare at the ceiling. What terrible thing is up there in the attic? I wondered. I pretended I could see through the plaster. Of course I couldn’t see anything. Except plaster. But my imagination sure could.

  In my imagination, a coatrack stood at the top of the attic stairs. Next to it, a three-legged
table, several cardboard cartons, and an old windup record player. That dark shape back in the corner was a mysterious old trunk. Oh, and there was a dusty moose head. I could see this stuff as clear as day. But it was only furniture. It wasn’t scary.

  The scary part was the monster in the attic. I made it up. And I made up stories about the monster with trunks and moose heads. These stories seem silly to me now, but at the time they were the best answer I could come up with to the question, What’s in the attic?

  I knew it had to be something truly awful. Otherwise my mom wouldn’t make such a big deal about it.

  So I didn’t go up to the attic. Not right away.

  This doesn’t mean I had a weird, haunted childhood. I didn’t.

  My family was a typical family. Dad worked for a restaurant supply company, and Mom was a housewife. We didn’t have much money. But my parents worked hard to make sure we never felt poor. There were three of us kids—me, Bill, and my sister, Pam, who came along when I was seven.

  My favorite activity as a kid?

  Listening to the radio. Believe it or not, we didn’t get a TV until I was nine. So I spent hours and hours listening to the radio.

  When I was a kid, radio wasn’t just music and talk shows. There were wonderful stories, mysteries, comedies, and westerns on the radio every night. I would listen to such exciting shows as The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, The Whistler, and Gang Busters.

  There was one show that terrified me. It was called Suspense. I still remember how scary it was.

  In the beginning of the show, a long gong would chime. And then a very creepy announcer with a deep voice would say: “And now … tales … calculated … to keep you in … SUSPENSE!” His voice was so terrifying, it gave me chills. And I’d reach out and click off the radio before the scary story would come on.

  I never heard one story. I was too scared.

  I still remember that creepy voice. Today, I try to make my books as scary as that announcer’s voice on the Suspense radio show.

  I had a big, powerful radio that could pull in radio stations from all over. As I became older, my favorite stations were in New York City.

  One New York station had a man named Jean Shepherd on the air every night. Shepherd was a wonderful storyteller. He’s the guy who wrote the movie A Christmas Story. I like the scene where the kid gets his tongue frozen to a flagpole. If you see the movie, that’s Jean Shepherd narrating it, too.

  Shepherd’s radio show was broadcast live, from midnight to early morning. Shepherd told wonderful, funny stories about his childhood, about his family and friends, and about New York City.

  I loved the guy’s humor. I loved the way he made up stories. And I started dreaming about someday going to New York. I think everyone dreams of faraway places. I know I did. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but New York City. I still can’t.

  If Jean Shepherd awakened in me a love of story­telling and New York, he awakened my parents, too! Mainly because I was up late on school nights laughing like an idiot! My parents could stand it only so long. Finally, Mom would scream upstairs, “Turn off that radio!”

  I never did.

  Late at night, when we were supposed to be asleep, Bill and I gave each other goosebumps.

  We would lie in our beds, stare up at the shifting shadows on the ceiling, and take turns telling each other scary stories.

  Our stories were about ghosts and haunted houses, werewolves and mummies. Some were about walking through the woods near our house. Monsters leaped out from behind trees. Werewolves howled and bats fluttered.

  My usual plot in those days had a little kid—a kid who looked and sounded very much like my brother—being chased around his house by one of my monsters …

  The kid is in his room, and he’s terrified.

  All he got was a glimpse of the thing. What is it? The boy doesn’t know. It looked like a man, like a big, stooped man. But the head—it wasn’t exactly a man’s head. Men didn’t have faces with fins and dripping lizard scales.

  The kid can hear the footsteps. The thing is searching the other bedrooms.

  Where should the boy hide? He hasn’t got much time.

  Should he hide in the closet? What about under the bed?

  No way! The monster would look in those places first.

  The kid starts running.

  Forget about making noise! Hurry! Out in the hall. The kid reaches the landing. He scrambles down the stairs. Two, three steps at a time.

  Don’t trip! he tells himself, screams to himself.

  The lizard-monster is right behind him. It’s so close, the boy can hear it hiss, feel its hot breath on the back of his neck.

  And he can see that he’ll never reach the front door alive. The door is too far away.

  The kid makes for the hall closet instead. He yanks open the door.

  The kid stops. His eyes open wide. He is shocked by what he sees in the closet. Stunned! It’s horrible. Gruesome. The kid starts to scream.

  At that moment in the story I would stop. “Turn out the light, Bill,” I would say. “Time to go to sleep.”

  “Huh?” This made Bill very upset. “That’s not fair!” he would cry. “What’s in the closet? What about the monster? Does he get the kid? Come on, tell me! Finish the story, Bob!”

  “Sorry. Too tired,” I would reply, yawning. “Good night. I’ll finish the story tomorrow.”

  And I would fall asleep with a cruel smile on my face, leaving my brother in total suspense.

  Today, in my scary books, I do the same trick at the end of every chapter. I try to leave my readers in the same state of shock and suspense that I left my brother in all those years ago.

  These stories Bill and I shared in our house in Ohio were a clue to our futures. We both turned out to be writers. And the creatures from the dark woods, the frightening shadows that came alive in our walls, the mummies and the werewolves—they all followed me into my Goosebumps and Fear Street books.

  Why did I like scary stories when I was a kid?

  I think because I found the real world pretty scary. I was a fearful kid. I wasn’t bold or adventurous. I liked staying in my room and writing stories and making little magazines and comics.

  When my parents sent me to day camp one summer, I wasn’t very happy about it. At day camp, I had one of my scariest, most panic-stricken, embarrassing moments. It happened at the end of camp.

  All campers had to demonstrate our swimming skills to get our Red Cross badges. I was in the beginner Tadpole group. I had my Tadpole badge. I was trying for the next badge—the Turtle.

  To get a Turtle badge, swimmers had to jump into the pool, swim to the other side, then swim back. We Tadpoles all lined up at the edge of the pool. We would take turns jumping in, one by one.

  As I got closer and closer to the front of the line, panic swept over me. I knew I couldn’t jump in. I could swim easily from one end of the pool to the other. But the idea of jumping into the pool froze me in terror. What was I going to do?

  The whole camp was watching. All the counselors. All the kids.

  My turn.

  I stepped up to the edge of the pool.

  I gazed into the water.

  I froze. I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t jump in. Everyone was calling to me, urging me to jump, calling out support.

  “JUMP!” they called. “YOU CAN DO IT! JUMP!”

  But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I was too afraid.

  I turned and walked away.

  It was a moment of total panic. And I think back to that moment whenever I write about a kid who is really terrified. I remember how I felt—and I try to write that same feeling of fear into my character.

  To this day, I have to climb into a swimming pool. I can’t jump in.

  When my nephews were eight years old, they thought this was very funny. They were always teasing me and trying to get me to jump. They thought it was funny that a horror writer was afraid to jump into a swimming pool.

&nbs
p; Maybe they were right. But I also guess it’s important for a horror writer to know true horror!

  One day, when I was about seven years old, I saw a FOR SALE sign in my front yard.

  I asked my mother what was going on. She shrugged and told me, “We have to move.” I didn’t understand such things then, but I learned later that Dad had changed jobs. We couldn’t afford such a big house anymore.

  I decided that if I wanted to discover the secret of the attic, it had to be now. That night I told Bill about my plan.

  “When Mom finds out,” Bill said, “you’re going to get it.”

  “If you say anything,” I warned him, “Captain Grashus will get you!”

  That shut him up. He was scared to death of Captain Grashus.

  And who was Captain Grashus?

  Captain Grashus was the world’s strongest, bravest, most invincible superhero. I know because I made him up.

  In fact, I was Captain Grashus.

  Dressed in his super suit—a bath towel tied around the neck like a cape—the Captain could outmuscle Superman and declaw Catwoman, all with one hand tied behind his back.

  In my dreams.

  Mostly, the Captain ruled our bedroom.

  Bill was the Grashus Ranger. The Ranger’s job was to do exactly what Captain Grashus told him. No questions asked. It was great to be the older brother!

  Sometimes Captain Grashus’s orders included non-superhero-type activities, like mowing the grass or cleaning our room. It’s hard to believe, but Bill didn’t always want to play the Grashus Ranger game.

  And this was one of those times. Even Captain Grashus couldn’t make Bill go up to the attic.

  I wasn’t in the mood to argue. What I was in the mood to do was go upstairs. I had to see for myself the secret in the attic.

  I eased open the door. The attic steps led up into an inky blackness. I didn’t have a flashlight.

  Captain Grashus wouldn’t let a little darkness stop him. The only trouble was, there was a lot of darkness.

  So the Captain snapped on the light. The switch sounded like a cannon.

  Had Mom and Dad heard? No. Not a creature was stirring, not even my parents.

  Slowly, one step at a time, I started up into the attic.