Welcome to Dead House

Welcome to Dead House was the first book in the Goosebumps book series. It was followed by Stay Out of the Basement. It was released in July 1992 and was 123 pages long.

The cover illustration featured an old, burnt-down house during the night with the door slightly opened. This Book Features Murder, super kids, and weird characters

Sypnosis
Amanda and Josh Benson go to Dark Falls to see a new house and mostly — they have been face-to-face with zombies and they are not deal with them!

Plot
When the family takes their first trip to Dark Falls to meet with the real estate agent, Compton Dawes, and view their new home, only the two children and their dog, Petey, immediately sense that something is not quite right. Despite the fact that it is the middle of July, the entire neighborhood seems covered in an artificial darkness created by massive, overhanging tree limbs. Dead brown leaves, shade, and shadows are everywhere. Then there is the house itself, which obviously was not constructed any time in the recent past. It is an enormous, dark, antique structure with two big bay windows on the second floor that look eerily like a pair of observing eyes. While Josh proceeds to impatiently whine in protest over the latest tragic development in his life, Amanda watches with amazement as a boy appears suddenly in the doorway of her new bedroom and disappears suddenly.

Amanda feels much better after seeing her bedroom. She goes outside to tell Josh about it, but he is gone. She finds him a little while later in the cemetery... being chased by someone. Amanda keeps seeing other children in her home and hearing strange sounds. Also, the friends she makes all seem a little different. It is later revealed that the children are all dead, having been murdered when they lived in that house. Once a year, they must have the blood from a freshly killed person to sustain their "living dead" existence for another year.

One of the undead children, Ray, attacks Amanda in the cemetery, while her brother, Josh, is still looking for the dog. Josh saves her at the last moment, when he shines his light on Ray’s face. This results in Ray disintegrating and becoming a pile of bones. Amanda and Josh run home but when they arrive, they are attacked by the dead children who explain that there is no dead great uncle and that the letter sent to their parents was a trick to bring the Benson family to Dark Falls. “This is the dead house...Once a year, you see, we need new blood," the dead children say, as they move forward to kill Amanda and Josh. Suddenly Mr. Dawes, the real estate agent, appears at the door and the dead children vanish. He tells them that he has already saved their parents from the dead people and that he will take them to join their parents.

As the family is leaving the dead house, they meet on the driveway a new family coming to move to the house. Only someone too familiar is there, and Amanda is sure it's Mr. Dawes.

Trivia

 * The original premiere of the television episode, as well as the VHS and DVD release, included R.L. Stine as the television episode's host.
 * On the TV version of the book, the house isn't the one that turned the townspeople into zombies. It was a chemical plant accident that infected the town.
 * R.L.Stine revealed that he made a lot of mistakes, like for example the words he typed to the book, were written wrong.
 * This is the first book of the series.
 * This is the first book and has 122 pages.