Night of the Living Dummy

Night of the Living Dummy was published in 1993 and is one of the best-known volumes of R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series. It introduced the dummy called Slappy, who returned in later books and became the closest thing the series has to a recurring villain, and it set the pattern for the series' other famous volumes: a domestic setting, two children in competition, and a threat that behaves like a person.

The story is built on sibling rivalry rather than on gore. Lindy and Kris are twins, and the dummy becomes the thing they compete over, which means the reader spends the first half unsure whether the nasty incidents are a practical joke by one sister at the expense of the other. The book is short, told in the first person with short chapters, and its scares depend on things moving when nobody is looking, which is the technique Stine used throughout the line.

Goosebumps ran to dozens of books across the 1990s and was adapted for television, and the series has been revived in films and new printings for later generations of readers. Stine wrote the books quickly and deliberately for children who did not yet think of themselves as readers of horror, and this volume is usually named alongside Welcome to Dead House and The Haunted Mask as the entry points.

The dummy is the reason the book is remembered: a wooden figure that is either alive or being used by somebody, and a story that keeps both answers available until the last pages. Slappy's later appearances make this the volume that introduced the series' most durable villain as well.