Amy's ventriloquist Dummy Dennis keeps loosing his head, for real. So Amy begs her family for a new dummy. That's when her dad finds Sloppy in a local pawnshop. Then horrible, nasty things start to happen for the first time because there something odd about Sloppy, something not right, something evil.

Robert Lawrence Stine (born October 8, 1943), known as R. L. Stine and Jovial Bob Stine, is an American writer. Stine, who is often called the "Stephen King of children's literature", is the author of dozens of horror fiction novels, including the books in the Goosebumps, Rotten School, Mostly Ghostly, The Nightmare Room and Fear Street series. Some of his lesser-known works include a Space Cadets trilogy, two Hark gamebooks, a two-part novel The Beast and dozens of joke books.