Do you remember Shivers?

Let’s get a little nostalgic today.

When I was a kid, the book series Goosebumps was my jam. I had all the books I could get my hands on. I read them over and over. I even had a Goosbumps bedspread with Curly on it.

But there was another series I loved more than Goosebumps. One that is often seen as a knock-off, but was much beloved by my fellow Millennials and me. And today, I want to share that series with you.

Today, we’re talking about Shivers.

Written by M.D Spenser, Shivers was a children’s horror book series. The first edition, The Enchanted Attic, was published in May 1996. The last, Madness at the Mall, came out in December of 1997. How did Spenser write and publish 36 books in less than two years? Simple, they’re short and formulaic. And, if I’m being honest, the first few are kind of terrible. Which is part of why I loved them.

Shivers set off a lifelong love affair with bad horror. I mean, really bad horror.

Don’t get me wrong. Good horror is fantastic. Deep horror that strikes at the heart of what actually scares us is fantastic. But there’s just something about a bad, campy, cheesy horror story. We usually see examples on the small screen or in comics, like Creepshow or the much-loved Tales From The Crypt. These are gooey, gory stories that make us laugh at their absurdity. And that’s the sort of energy Shivers’ books bring.

That being said, the quality of the writing did fluctuate from book to book. The Enchanted Attic, book one, was of better writing quality by far than Ghost Writer, for instance. And The Locked Room was quite a fun retelling of the classic fairy tale Blue Beard.

I started this post by comparing Shivers to Goosebumps. And while I do think that comparison stands, I also want to point out one strong distinction.

Goosebumps never went as hard as Shivers did.

You’d never read in a Goosebumps book about giant spiders who planned to actually rip some kids apart. Or a stepfather plotting to murder his step kids and new wife. Or farm animals trying to full on eat their farmers.

None of this happened, of course, but just the fact that it was mentioned was still leaps and bounds beyond anything in Goosebumps.

(Not that R.L Stine couldn’t stomach the dark stuff. Fear Street didn’t play. If you’d like a nostalgic review of that, let me know.)

If you’re interested in dipping into some of these Shivers books, I hope you saved them from your childhood. Because the books are hard to find nowadays. I did manage to score a few from ThriftBooks, but they were all at least $10. Some titles cost over $100. Seeing as how they were originally $4 a pop in the US, that was sort of irritating. Though that didn’t stop me from buying five of them.

However, if you’re just dying to get your eyeballs on the stories and you don’t care about getting the original copies, I might have some good news for you. Many of the books are available now as ebooks. And, there’s an active petition online to get the whole Shivers series republished. I’ve signed it already.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this spooky walk down memory lane with me. If you liked it, let me know, and I’ll write more like this.