R. L. Stine

When Zach moves to Madison, the man next door wants nothing to do with anyone. He forbids his daughter, Hannah, from making friends and tells Zach to stay away from the house. Zach later learns his neighbor is R. L. Stine, the author of Goosebumps, living under a fake name.

Stine's house has a shelf of locked manuscripts. Each one holds a monster his imagination created. Once the books are opened, the creatures walk into the real world, and Slappy treats the writer like a father who has to pay for what he did. Stine has to face his own creations and races the clock to write a new story, on his old typewriter, that can trap them all again.

At the end of the first film, Stine reveals that Hannah came out of his imagination too. She sacrifices herself and gets trapped with the monsters. Later, Stine rewrites his daughter's story and brings her back. He becomes a substitute teacher in Madison and starts dating Lorraine, Zach's aunt.

In Goosebumps 2, Stine only shows up at the end, in a short, uncredited turn from Jack Black. He praises Sonny, Sam and Sarah for beating Slappy and gives Sarah advice on her college essay. But the dummy survived, and in the last scene he traps Stine himself in a new story.

The real R. L. Stine has been writing Goosebumps books since 1992. He makes cameos in the movies: drama teacher Mr. Black in 2015 and Principal Harrison in 2018.