Doomed Decision: A Choose Your Own Adventure Horror Story

I’m probably not alone in saying Choose Your Own Adventure stories were my introduction to primarily text books instead of picture books. These branching novels, sometimes called multipath books, were all over the place when I was in 3rd and 4th grade, weaving stories together with choices the reader must make every few pages. Any reader wanting to experience every page of the book would have to do several read-throughs, changing their decisions each time. The books were written in second person point of view where the reader becomes the main character. Numerous books focus on that fact with unimaginative titles like You Are a Shark and You Are a Monster, though the subjects of the books vary wildly and cover just about any story you could think of.

I read the books voraciously as a child, excited to see where the story would lead me. I loved feeling like I had some control over how the story unfolded, always taking the most exhilarating or dangerous option. Though the books had multiple endings you could find yourself at, most of them were considered positive, discovering a treasure or inventing something amazing. My favorite book in the series is Supercomputer and I read every one of them I could get my hands on. In 4th grade, I remember being assigned a book report every week and I often used these and would write the report on only one branch of the storyline. I thought I was clever, and I’m surprised the teacher never caught on.

Back in the heyday of the CYOA craze, other publishers came out of the woodwork with their own spin. Some of the biggest were Find Your Fate and Find Your Fate Junior, which adapted a lot of licensed properties. Transformers and GI Joe fell under the Junior line while Indiana Jones and James Bond fit in the main line. R.L. Stine of Goosebumps fame even wrote a few of the books in the latter series. 

But another series took the CYOA torch and ran straight to Elm St. The Plot-Your-Own Horror Stories series works the same way as normal Choose Your Own Adventure books except for one key difference: you die in almost every conclusion. I remember owning the 2nd book in the series, Nightmare Store, where the reader is trapped in a new department store overnight and all manner of things come to life to kill you. Mannequins switch bodies with you, hair dryers light your head on fire, and sports displays hunt you down with bows and arrows. I’m pretty sure the store itself blows up once just to kill you. 

Every department had its own dangers, but the toy section was my favorite. In the book’s most memorable death, a toy robot grows to an enormous size, opens its chest to reveal a square metal box, and stuffs you inside it, before shrinking back down to normal and crushing you within. None of the endings were explicitly gory, of course; there were no mentions of blood and, gratefully, no pictures to show your corpse. But the deaths were generally creative and left you wondering what else the book had in store for you.

As far as I could find, there was only one storyline that ended with you unscathed. I memorized that line of about five choices that dumped you in a vacant lot before the store itself disappeared. I would read that branch over and over again as you avoided living mannequins chasing you with a net and a small explosion in the electronics department. You survive in a few other endings but you still don’t fare that well: one of them has your aunt and uncle, who you are staying with, completely forget about you, and in another, they cease to exist!

The Choose Your Own Adventure series was canceled in the late 90s with the final book, Mayday! coming out in 1998. They have had a bit of a resurgence starting in 2005 and going through 2023, with new books being published along with reproductions of some originals. A cooperative adventure game has also been released called House of Danger, based on the 15th book in the series. At the time of this article, I haven’t played it yet (it’s on my gaming group’s list), but it looks to be a great reintroduction to the series, promising thousands more of the branching paths we used to love reading.