Hello R.L. Stein Story Club members, I'm Ivy, your ghostly host and keeper of those strange and spooky tales from the hidden vault of R. L. Stein. Today is another chilling tale.

This furry tale story club members might make you never want to be serenaded by cute animatronic

animals ever again.

It's one I call Howie's House of Fun.

Peter David hid in the janitor's closet of the Howie's House of Fun restaurant.

He was terrified and out of breath.

So far tonight, he'd been chased by Millie Mouse, Barry Bear,

Frida Flamingo, and of course Howie Hippo, the star of the scary show. Come to Howie's

House of Fun, they said. It'll be a load of laughs, they said. Yeah, some fun. Not when the

animatronic animals had come to life and were chasing him down. Peter wondered how his brother, Philip, was faring.

A few hours earlier, everything had been different.

Peter had invited his friend, Nick Evans, over for a Saturday night sleepover.

They thought it'd be fun to mess with Peter's brother, Philip, as he was the night janitor at Howie's House of Fun.

It was an Italian food restaurant known for their famous All You Can Eat Spaghetti and Meatballs.

On the performance stage were animatronic furry animals that would sing happy songs to the guests.

It was mostly a place that appealed to younger kids who would have birthday parties there.

The place had fallen out of favor over the years and was in

disrepair. Philip David, Peter's brother, worked their nights as the janitor. He cleaned up all the

messes the parents and the kids left behind. Lately though, Philip, who was a senior in high school,

had been acting weird. He was saying that Howie and the rest of the band would sometimes move on their own.

At first, Philip thought that was just the bad wiring in the old animatronic puppets, each of which

stood over eight feet high. But some nights, Philip had said they seemed to watch him as he cleaned the floors and scrubbed the tables.

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