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The Nightmare Club #10
Die Laughing
When his buddies PJ and Ryan play a practical joke on Kelly by abandoning him at the town cemetery, they do not realize that Kelly will return from the experience acting terrifyingly different.
220 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published March 1, 1994
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68 people want to read
About the author
Vincent Courtney
31 books13 followersVincent Courtney was born with a pen and paper in hand which made for a very uncomfortable delivery for his mother. He is the author of 18 books. He also created a writing course, "Scary Good Writing with Mr. Butt and Bonefish," used by teachers across the United States to teach their kids the parts of speech and how to write effective essays.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
August 3, 2023
Forget Nightmare Club, I want to join the Astral Society.
Three doofuses and a prank gone bad lead to maggot-filled toads, screaming trees, and maybe a little demonic possession. Oops.
There are a few squicky horror scenes that were very fun to read in this one.
Three doofuses and a prank gone bad lead to maggot-filled toads, screaming trees, and maybe a little demonic possession. Oops.
There are a few squicky horror scenes that were very fun to read in this one.
December 12, 2025
Bought a kindle version of the book.
The author had his early 90s YA horror reprinted so Vincent Courtney rewrote it to be more up to date technology wise with people having cell phones and watching things like Netflix and Hulu. If you didn't know that this was part of a series back in the day, you do now.
The author has kept only a few details the same, but the town is not called Cooper Hollow, and the Nightmare Club is called The Elemental. The owners of the club are the Grimm sisters, Gretel and Astrid, and no longer father and daughter Jake and Jenny Deimos.
I'm not really a fan of trying to cater to modern readers because the teens in this book use a few four-letter words and yet possess a weird sort of 90s slang to their vocabulary. I think another thing that threw me a little is that well...the main characters just *sigh*
I'll try to explain...
Ryan and P.J. have been friends forever and five years ago, new guy Kelly moved to town with his mother from Georgia. They played football together and bonded over loving The Three Stooges, which I have nothing against since my dad was a big fan.
Being the newest member of what they call The Mega Stooges; Kelly is the butt of a lot of pranks pulled by his two buddies. After all, Kelly is considered the Curly of their group with P.J. as Larry and Ryan as Moe. One of their pranks at school got Ryan's cell phone taken away by his mom and that should have been the end of it.
The book opens with Ryan and P.J. looking around a pet cemetery where people have the audacity to let their dogs walk around and poop everywhere. They are looking for something that looks similar to a Baby Ruth for their latest Kelly prank.
Good lord and these are high school football players!
It goes about as well as you would expect and then they end up going to a cemetery full of human bodies this time again to scare Kelly. Trying to get some payback, he makes Ryan and P.J. think something bad happened to him by not going back to the car or answering when they cry out.
Karma decides to play its own joke on Kelly because he ends being possessed by a spirit from a nearby grave with his own soul tormented to relive the death of being hanged while his so-called friends watch.
Reuniting, the two other boys then find Kelly with a mean streak to his own jokes and talking as if he were from a different time. It takes them a long time to figure things out and they need a little nudge from the smartest character to appear in this book.
Her name is Debbie, and she is part of a group of girls who call themselves The Astral Society. They dress all in black but practice white magic and Debbie ends up being Ryan's new love interest.
Kelly pulls a prank on her by throwing water in her face, but she and Ryan end up making amends when the pranks start taking on a more supernatural tone. Draining Ryan's car of its brake fluid and also pretending to be a cop calling him to say his mother is dead weren't malicious enough it seems for the ghoul possessing poor Kelly.
If it weren't for Debbie being a witch, the boys would literally be toast.
Die Laughing is just too masculine yet so childish that it provides only a few laughs and a lot of cringe. The more paranormal aspects of the trees in the woods attacking you, roadkill coming back from the dead and a bunch of toads with razor teeth terrorizing you as they drink your blood is the other saving grace besides Debbie.
I suppose Ryan isn't too bad since we learn his dad ran off on his mom with his boss and left her behind to raise him and his kid sister. He also sticks up for Debbie and gets royally pissed when the prank call about his mother goes way over the line. Can't even fault Kelly too much since he is possessed most of the book and the butt-monkey at the beginning.
P.J. gets better as the book goes along but most of the time I kind of want to punch him in the face because he is just so annoying.
If I could have gotten my hands on an original printing without the edits, I may have given Die Laughing more than two stars. Even on its own as a standalone book with no connections whatsoever to the previous Nightmare Club books I have read, it just seems to be trying way too hard to reach a teen or YA audience of today's brand of horror.
There's no school like the old school.
The author had his early 90s YA horror reprinted so Vincent Courtney rewrote it to be more up to date technology wise with people having cell phones and watching things like Netflix and Hulu. If you didn't know that this was part of a series back in the day, you do now.
The author has kept only a few details the same, but the town is not called Cooper Hollow, and the Nightmare Club is called The Elemental. The owners of the club are the Grimm sisters, Gretel and Astrid, and no longer father and daughter Jake and Jenny Deimos.
I'm not really a fan of trying to cater to modern readers because the teens in this book use a few four-letter words and yet possess a weird sort of 90s slang to their vocabulary. I think another thing that threw me a little is that well...the main characters just *sigh*
I'll try to explain...
Ryan and P.J. have been friends forever and five years ago, new guy Kelly moved to town with his mother from Georgia. They played football together and bonded over loving The Three Stooges, which I have nothing against since my dad was a big fan.
Being the newest member of what they call The Mega Stooges; Kelly is the butt of a lot of pranks pulled by his two buddies. After all, Kelly is considered the Curly of their group with P.J. as Larry and Ryan as Moe. One of their pranks at school got Ryan's cell phone taken away by his mom and that should have been the end of it.
The book opens with Ryan and P.J. looking around a pet cemetery where people have the audacity to let their dogs walk around and poop everywhere. They are looking for something that looks similar to a Baby Ruth for their latest Kelly prank.
Good lord and these are high school football players!
It goes about as well as you would expect and then they end up going to a cemetery full of human bodies this time again to scare Kelly. Trying to get some payback, he makes Ryan and P.J. think something bad happened to him by not going back to the car or answering when they cry out.
Karma decides to play its own joke on Kelly because he ends being possessed by a spirit from a nearby grave with his own soul tormented to relive the death of being hanged while his so-called friends watch.
Reuniting, the two other boys then find Kelly with a mean streak to his own jokes and talking as if he were from a different time. It takes them a long time to figure things out and they need a little nudge from the smartest character to appear in this book.
Her name is Debbie, and she is part of a group of girls who call themselves The Astral Society. They dress all in black but practice white magic and Debbie ends up being Ryan's new love interest.
Kelly pulls a prank on her by throwing water in her face, but she and Ryan end up making amends when the pranks start taking on a more supernatural tone. Draining Ryan's car of its brake fluid and also pretending to be a cop calling him to say his mother is dead weren't malicious enough it seems for the ghoul possessing poor Kelly.
If it weren't for Debbie being a witch, the boys would literally be toast.
Die Laughing is just too masculine yet so childish that it provides only a few laughs and a lot of cringe. The more paranormal aspects of the trees in the woods attacking you, roadkill coming back from the dead and a bunch of toads with razor teeth terrorizing you as they drink your blood is the other saving grace besides Debbie.
I suppose Ryan isn't too bad since we learn his dad ran off on his mom with his boss and left her behind to raise him and his kid sister. He also sticks up for Debbie and gets royally pissed when the prank call about his mother goes way over the line. Can't even fault Kelly too much since he is possessed most of the book and the butt-monkey at the beginning.
P.J. gets better as the book goes along but most of the time I kind of want to punch him in the face because he is just so annoying.
If I could have gotten my hands on an original printing without the edits, I may have given Die Laughing more than two stars. Even on its own as a standalone book with no connections whatsoever to the previous Nightmare Club books I have read, it just seems to be trying way too hard to reach a teen or YA audience of today's brand of horror.
There's no school like the old school.
February 11, 2024
Three best friends who sort of idolize the three stooges and call themselves the mega stooges. Lame as hell. They even have nicknames with the original stooges. They do these lame tricks on people and each other. Ryan PJ and Kelly are the trio but Ryan and PJ gang up and trick Kelly mostly. Great friends there, the big truck is to leave him at a graveyard and scare him. Then of course he is possibly a spirit of another trickster. They use the help of Ryan’s gf/love interest Debbie who just happens to be a witch. Not really scary and only a few tense gross moments. And of course a happy ending where you just have to believe in magic to overcome the evil. And in the end they are now the four mega stooges. Barf
October 5, 2013
Everything about this book screamed awful. A bunch of knucklehead high school football players who call themselves the Mega Stooges. They get their jollies playing pranks on anybody they can. And there is a haunting ghost who also loved to play pranks on people. But honestly, I was pleasantly surprised by this book. By no means is this great literature. The dialogue is predictably juvenile. But for what it is, Die Laughing is a decent book.
The characters are likable enough and certainly relatable. The plot, although pretty goofy, is actually quite interesting. There is a nice mix of humor, suspense, and action. And the ending is kind of cool too.
Don't go into this book expecting a classic. It is what it is. And that is a pretty interesting piece of horror that is some nice dumb fun.
The characters are likable enough and certainly relatable. The plot, although pretty goofy, is actually quite interesting. There is a nice mix of humor, suspense, and action. And the ending is kind of cool too.
Don't go into this book expecting a classic. It is what it is. And that is a pretty interesting piece of horror that is some nice dumb fun.
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December 5, 2017I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14829935
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/14829935
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews