The Overnight
"Nothing bad will happen," Della O'Connor assures her friends in the Outdoors Club. So what if their advisor can't go on the overnight to Fear Island—won't it be more fun with no adults around? But it's no fun at all when Della gets lost in the woods, and the dangerous stranger appears, whispering threats, driving her to a violent act. Suddenly all of her friends are involved, prisoners in a conspiracy of silence, trying to conceal the terrible truth. But someone saw what Della did. And he's threatening them all, forcing them back to Fear Island to find the evidence they forgot to bury...
Themes & atmosphere
What you might want to know about The Overnight
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Della O'Connor is excited for the Outdoors Club's overnight on Fear Island, even with the strict chaperone Mr. Abner. After a hike on the island, Mr. Abner does not come back to camp. The teens are left alone for the night with a stranger crashing in the trees.
Multiple books share this title. The metadata above lists R.L. Stine, who wrote a Fear Street novel called The Overnight. The most commonly searched is by Ramsey Campbell (2004), a horror novel about a haunted bookstore.
Yes. The Overnight is widely cited as a defining haunted-workplace horror novel. Ramsey Campbell is one of the most respected modern British horror writers, often compared to Robert Aickman.
The Overnight is 151 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Overnight takes most readers 2 to 3 hours to finish.
The Overnight is a standalone novel by Robert Lawrence Stine, not part of a series.
The Overnight is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.