#fear hall

[devilselbow]

Jude Recaps Fear Hall: The Conclusion by R. L. Stine

Title: Fear Hall: The Conclusion

Author: R.L. Stine

Cover Artist: Franco Accornero

Tagline: “Welcome back to the most terrifying dorm on campus!”

Summary: “A Special Message From R.L. Stine”

Dear Readers:

I hope you’ll join me for the conclusion of Fear Hall. I think it’s one of my scariest finishes ever!

Where will Hope go now that her secret has been revealed? Does she realize that her friends aren’t real friends? Does she know who the vicious killer really is? Are there more shocking surprises in store for her?

Find out the answers in FEAR HALL: The Conclusion. I had so much evil fun writing it, I scared myself!

[Wing: I am still both charmed and confused by Stine’s special message on these books. Why? How? … Why?]

Initial Thoughts

Back to Fear Hall for the last time. Were you guys scared by R.L. Stine’s take on mental illness? I know I was!

[Wing: “Scared” might not be the right word for my response last time… I do hope this goes better. I doubt it will. Also, student loans are terrifying.]

The ending of this tragedy follows directly after the last book’s climax, and believe me, everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. If you haven’t read the recap for the first book, I insist you do so because otherwise it’s gonna be difficult to understand what’s going on and why, even with the short recap.

READ THE RECAP

[fearisnear31]

October 19

Woods

Wearing a raincoat

walking through morning dew;

A hand grabbed him—

Thunk, the sound of wood.

Remix/found poetry with text from:

Stine, R.L. Fear Hall: The Beginning. 1997. Pocket Books: New York, pages 80-83

[fearisnear31]

October 15

I don’t believe in ghost stories anymore

until the purple shadow seen at

Fear Hall

on the thirteenth floor.

Stine, R.L. Fear Hall: The Begining. 1997. Pocket Books: New York.

Pages 55, 56

[devilselbow]

Jude Recaps Fear Hall #1: The Beginning by R. L. Stine

Title: Fear Hall: The Beginning

Author: R.L. Stine

Cover Artist: Franco Accornero

Tagline: The first part of a shocking two-part special!

Summary: “A Special Message From R.L. Stine”

Dear Readers:

Come with me to FEAR HALL. That’s the creepy college dorm built many years ago by the cursed Fear family.

Hope and her roommates live in Fear Hall. Hope’s boyfriend lives there, too. They’re all good students and best friends. Everything is going great… until one of them becomes a murderer!

Now Hope is about to find out that life at Fear Hall can be a real scream!

I hope you’ll join me for FEAR HALL. This story has so many scares, it took me two books to tell it all!

P.S. You’ll never believe what I came up with for the next book…

Initial Thoughts

I only read this story once when I was in middle school, and I barely remembered what happened after I was finished. I did that sometimes, skimming through a book so that I read it but I didn’t retain anything. This didn’t leave much impact on me at first, but I still found and purchased the two volumes as part of my unfinished effort to collect all the Fear Street books. Then, in the summer of 2011 I decided to re-read the Fear Hall books. I remember that summer. I discovered “Jem and the Holograms” and DC Comics was in the middle of their “Flashpoint” event which ended up ruining the DC Universe for six years and counting. Imagine my surprise when I re-read these books and ended up falling in love with them.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not a perfect story. It’s basically “Fear Street At College” which Stine already did with “College Weekend,” and Stine’s take on mental instability is… well, it is what it is. But I enjoyed it because I really liked the main characters, Hope and her roommates, and the setting. I’ve re-read these books so many times over the last few years they’re all scruffed up and worn. I practically refuse to put them back on my book shelves. I even got Stine to autograph them at that signing last year.

The story is split up in several parts and is one of those books where the narration shifts between different characters.

[Wing: I’ve never read these before, and am, of course, always leery of how Stine (and the other Point Horror and similar authors) handle mental illness, but I love a good horror at college story. Stine is setting the bar for the next book pretty high with his little introduction note, though.]

READ THE RECAP

[fearisnear31]

October 29 “It’s the Police!”

Police officers scurry

down the hall

Daryl is at the door

then in the dark closet

His heart pounding

The murder

and

Almost murder

Two down—

Daryl is under suspicion.

found/remix poem from text of : Stine, R.L. Fear Hall: The Beginning.  1997.  Pocket Books: New York. 

pages 100 to112

[readreadbookblog]

Fear Street: Fear Hall: The Beginning by R.L. Stine

https://www.amazon.com/Fear-Hall-Beginning-Street-No/dp/0671008749

First I was afraid of reading this book. Fear Hall: The Beginning, which implies another separate book, the end, which I did not have access to. Regardless of it’s cliff hanger ending (which you can personally say that is how the book ends if you can live with that), this book did have it’s moment, both good and bad.

Hope is a new freshmen in college. With her roommates, Jasmine, Eden, and Angel, they live in the supposedly haunted Fear Hall. But Jasmine’s boyfriend, Darryl, is causing trouble. He goes up to the girls and says that he murdered someone. Pretty soon bodies start to appear and Hope isn’t sure if she can or should protect Darryl from accusations of murder.

Okay, the plot isn’t exactly that but telling it as it is will cause spoilers, which this book benefits reading blind for the “twist”. The first that readers will probably say is ‘why don’t you call the police’? Regardless if Darryl killed someone or not, when he threats to kill you, CALL THE POLICE. I don’t want to victim blame, but the logic of plots like this that can easy be solved with a simple call to law enforcement, is a manner of story telling that I hate and will call out. Perhaps the problem is that this book suffers from your classic horror movie cliques such as false scares, gaslighting, and lack of telling other people the truth.

Maybe this wasn’t such a problem in media during the 90s (doubt so). The murders are gruesome, which even I was surprised. The ending might convince readers to reread the book. This book could have been better if the cliques were written out. But again maybe this book aged. I did feel big #metoo vibes lots of times reading this book. Domestic violence, abusive boyfriends, and gaslighting were too noticeable for me to not see. I am interested in seeing how R.L. Stine’s other young adult books fare today.

[slimypitofsin-blog]

I'm home for the weekend. 

My mom is out partying with her high school classmates and I'm sitting in my childhood bedroom eating soup and waiting to see if Arrested Development goes live at midnight. 

I'm also reading old RL Stine books that I found. Does anyone remember Fear Hall? Here's the description: "Hope couldn't wait to get to college. She was going to share a dorm room with her three best friends. Even better, her boyfriend, Darryl, would be living on the boys' floor downstairs. Fear Hall was going to be a blast!"[SPOILER ALERT] turns out that Hope is a murderer and none of her best friends/her boyfriend was real. Hope has a mental fracture and starts killing everyone because she's fat. IT IS A CLASSIC JUST KIDDING IT IS VERY POORLY WRITTEN. WHY DID I READ THESE AS A CHILD????  

[stinetown]

#74: Fear Hall: The Conclusion (August 1997)

Based on the cover?

No, no. Among other things, this book isn’t even set in Fear Hall—it’s about students on the run.

The plot:

Hope and friends hide out, as the college killings continue.

Typical quote:

“That’s why I had come to Ivy State, after all. For a normal life. Now here I was, homeless and broke. Hiding from the police because my boyfriend was a murderer.”

Worth reading?

Probably not? These are not two separate books, and splitting them into two books ruins the structure. The big twist came at the end of the first book. The stuff here might’ve had some energy to it if it had come right after the twist, but divided into a separate book, it’s just killing time.

(spoilers after the jump)

A short list of the book’s central assumptions and conceits:

Sometimes when a mother calls her daughter fat all the time, it causes that daughter to develop numerous personalities and kill at random. The mother! This explains everything.

A girl at the center of an elaborate murder scheme might elect to remain on campus and continue classes, even if two of her roommates have been brutally killed and it’s clear that she’s next. Academics first.

Hair color is everything. If a blonde changes her hair to brown, nobody will recognize her—even if her face is all over the national news as a serial killer terrorizing a small university. Who looks at faces? Like, even if someone goes on a date with this girl, he might not recognize her face.

Sometimes the events of Fear Street make the national news! Which is kind of confusing, coming this late in the series. I mean, what about all that stuff with Corky Corcoran? Why didn’t that make the news?

Hot tubs cannot and will not overflow for any reason. Go ahead: pour gallons and gallons of chlorine into that hot tub! It won’t look suspicious!

The twist:

The way this ends is Hope ends up leaping off a balcony, killing herself and all her personalities.

What’s next?

I mean, she’s dead, so that’s that. Maybe Stine could’ve done a third book, Fear Hall: The Epilogue, with the remaining side characters thinking and thinking for 147 pages about how weird this whole thing was and how happy they are that it’s over. Maybe Hope’s crazy mother could’ve make an appearance.