R.L. Stine, famed for his enormously popular “Goosebumps” series, is the undisputed master of children’s horror. Stine, an avowed Upper West Sider, just released his first-ever horror novel for adults, “Red Rain.” Stine’s “Goosebumps” series has sold more than 300 million copies worldwide, but the author began his career on a lighter note. “I started out writing joke books for kids,” he says. “I was known as Jovial Bob Stine. When I turned scary, I decided it was not an appropriate name. So I used my initials.” With his jovial days behind him, Stine regaled The Post with his Creepy New York.
1. American Museum of Natural History, 200 Central Park West, at 79th Street
The life-size dioramas at the Museum of Natural History, especially the ones with the cave people. It’s all stuffed animals, like a big walrus on an iceberg. Then they have ones with the cave people. When my son was little, he thought they were stuffed, too. He thought they were stuffed humans. I told him no . . . or maybe I said, “yes.”
2. The Ramble in Central Park
It’s fun to walk through, but it’s like a maze, and you can make a turn and find you don’t know where you are. You really can get lost in it. Suddenly you’re at the edge of a cliff, or you’re looking at water, and you didn’t expect that. You’re all turned around, and you can’t see buildings or anything. I think that’s the closest thing to wilderness in Manhattan.
3. Bloomingdale’s Ground Floor, 1000 Third Ave., at 59th Street
What are these women trying to spray on you? They’re all spraying stuff. What is it? I think it’s very scary. You don’t know what it is. They don’t tell you. They just spray you as you walk by. You have to remember, I once wrote a book about a scary sponge. So I can pretty much find anything scary, even all those beautiful women at Bloomingdale’s.
4. Trinity Church, 74 Trinity Place
There’s a little graveyard behind the church, and it’s very old. I had to pose there once for a newspaper, and it was a creepy, foggy, misty morning. You know there have to be ghosts there — it’s maybe one of the oldest graveyards in New York, with all these ancient gravestones, all tilted and rubbed smooth.
5. The Lincoln Tunnel
I go though that tunnel, and my imagination starts going. I see cracks in the wall, and I think of those movies where the tunnels blow up and the river comes in. It’s hard not to imagine these things. I think the Lincoln Tunnel is scary to a lot of people, especially people who have to drive through it every day.
6. My office, in my apartment, West End Avenue, in the 70s
I have a life-size skeleton in my office that wears a hideous haunted mask from one of my books. I have eyeballs, skulls and dummies, including a ventriloquist dummy that looks just like me. And, I have a 3-foot long cockroach. I tell everyone I trapped it under the sink. It actually was a stage prop for a play. But it looks like a cockroach, and it’s 3 feet long. Gigantic.
7. My polling place, 72nd Street and Broadway
When you go to vote in any of the polling places, [you see] those people with the book, who are sitting at the tables when you have to sign in. They’re like ghosts. They all look like ghosts, and you never see any of them in your neighborhood. They just appear at polling places. They are ancient, weird people. They have to be ghosts.
8. Bronx Zoo, 2300 South Blvd., The Bronx
World of Darkness exhibit [now closed] — it was for nocturnal animals — mainly bats flying around. Even the name of the place was scary. It was very dark, all infrared. The bats would only come out at night, so that was the only way you could see them.