The Residents of Dark Falls are the main antagonists of the 1st Original Series Goosebumps book Welcome to Dead House. They are the zombified residents of Dark Falls transformed by a strange gas.
Overview[]
Dark Falls was once a normal town, but one day, there was a chemical leak at the Dark Falls plastics factory where many of the residents worked. This chemical leak resulted in a toxic yellow gas being released into the air. The yellow gas floated over the town and infected the entire community. The strange properties of the gas not only poisoned and killed the residents, but also resurrected them as zombies with supernatural powers. The residents were now immune to aging and had abilities such as minor telekinesis and invisibility or teleportation. However, they required blood feeding once a year to maintain their undead existence and could be destroyed by light. Compton Dawes, the town's realtor, was given the task of pawning the titular Dead House off to a new family once a year so the residents could feed on the new family to prolong their existence for another year, while also turning the new family into zombies as well.
In the story, the Benson family is lured into Dark Falls after Dawes tells them they inherited Dead House from a relative. After they move in, the children, Amanda and Josh, meet and befriend the town's kids, including Ray Thurston and Karen Somerset. The two eventually discover the town's secret and save their parents from being killed by the zombies, collapsing a tree blocking out the sunlight to flood the amphitheater where the residents perform their annual feeding, destroying the residents. As the Benson family is leaving however, it is revealed that Dawes somehow escaped the sunlight and is preparing to feed on a new family.
Other media[]
The residents of Dark Falls appear in the TV show. In the episode adaptation, instead of a plastics factory, the incident that transformed the town occurred at a chemical factory. The factory workers were contaminated and died but were later resurrected by the chemicals and contaminated the rest of Dark Falls. The episode shows the adult citizens including the mayor, who was never identified in the book. The townspeople are mostly destroyed by sunlight in the end, but Dawes and at least three other residents remain.
The residents of Dark Falls are also featured in the mobile game, Goosebumps Horrortown. In this version, they were factory workers at Dawes' business before Countess Yvonne transformed them all into her vampire minions. Dawes was sent to Horrortown with the workers to help Yvonne take over the town and find her lost husband, Count Nightwing. The workers are destroyed in the end, but Dawes remains in Horrortown to operate on his own and try to scam the residents out of money.
Personalities[]
All the residents are very polite and welcoming. While they must feed on the blood of the living once a year to maintain their undead state, they hold no ill will against their victims, whom they welcome into their undead community after zombifying. The children in Dark Falls in particular genuinely seem to want to be friends with any new residents, seeking to play baseball with them after transforming them. The children do have a rather nasty sense of humor, however. During the story, they liked to appear in Amanda and Josh's rooms and scare them as a way of playing pranks on them. The children did something offscreen to Josh that left him horrified. Despite this, they do genuinely seem to not hold any real malice against their victims. Karen Somerset genuinely seemed to want to be Amanda's friend and appeared to feel guilty for betraying her. It appears that at least some of the residents hated their undead existence and felt remorse for their actions, as Karen thanked Amanda for destroying her and the rest of the townspeople near the end of the story, freeing them from their undead existence and allowing them to pass on. Strangely, despite this, none of the townspeople seemed willing to attempt to destroy themselves with light to end their suffering, suggesting that the community had some sort of taboo against suicide.
In the episode adaptation, while the residents are still rather affable toward the Bensons and do maintain an element of tragedy to their existence, the story downplays their sympathetic aspect from the book so that they still come off as a threat, with the residents becoming rather maliciously gleeful in the climax when they corner the Bensons. While Karen still genuinely seems to want to be friends with Amanda and promises her that the process doesn't hurt, she does not show any regret for having lied to Amanda and tricked her like in the book, nor does she thank Amanda for destroying them in the end. On the contrary, Karen tries to persuade Amanda not to destroy them.
In Horrortown, the residents are portrayed as mindless slaves of Dawes and Yvonne. They retain their tragic element, but Dawes himself is shown to have been a greedy and power-mad jerk even before his transformation.
