This week we move a little further into the Goosebumps library with “The Ghost Next Door,” the 10th book of the series.
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| I'm pretty sure my love of Converse All-Stars steams from Goosebumps. |
Like “Monster Blood” last week, “The Ghost Next Door” takes place during a bummer of a summer, this time focusing on Hannah who has to spend hers with her terrors of little brothers and her parents while her best friend is away at summer camp.
During her the excruciatingly long and boring summer months, Hannah encounters a wierd happening when Danny and his family move in next door, seemingly under her nose. Her parents don’t know anything about it and Danny claims to go to the same school as she does -- although she has no recollection of him or his family. So, by the power of deduction this can only mean one thing. Danny is a ghost.
Seriously, you don’t believe me? Here’s an excerpt from a letter she writes to her friend at camp that completely proves it:
During her the excruciatingly long and boring summer months, Hannah encounters a wierd happening when Danny and his family move in next door, seemingly under her nose. Her parents don’t know anything about it and Danny claims to go to the same school as she does -- although she has no recollection of him or his family. So, by the power of deduction this can only mean one thing. Danny is a ghost.
Seriously, you don’t believe me? Here’s an excerpt from a letter she writes to her friend at camp that completely proves it:
Dear Janey,
How are you? I seriously hope you’ve fallen in the lake and drowned. That would be the only good excuse for not writing to me in all this time!
How could you ABANDON me here like this? Next summer, one way or the other, I’m going to camp with you.
Things are definitely WEIRD around here. Do you remember I told you about that boy who moved in next door? His name is Danny Anderson, and he’s kind of cute. He has red hair and freckles and SERIOUS brown eyes.
Well, don’t laugh, Janey -- but I think Danny is a GHOST!
I can hear you laughing. But I don’t care. By the time you get back to Greenwood Falls, I’m going to have PROOF.
Because she is determined that Danny is a ghost, Hannah sets out on a mission to prove her neighbor is not of this world, and to do that she goes on one of the weirdest stalking sessions I have ever seen, following him throughout town and attempting to spend as much time with him as possible. She also gets a chance to view his criminal altercations in stealing ice cream and a botched attempt at wrecking the mailbox of the postmaster under the watchful instigation of his two hoodlum best friends.
These scenes also involve a shadowy figure with red, glowing eyes who is chasing Hannah. This does give Hannah some minor justification into her feelings that her Danny situation requires the aid of the Ghostbusters, as the shadow spends most of its appearances scaring Hannah away from the boy and telling her to stay away from him.
So, at this point you’re probably thinking, “Oh, my God, is Danny really a ghost? What’s going on here.” Well, in a surprise twist, it’s really Hannah who is a ghost. (And let’s put this in perspective, R.L. Stine published this book a good four years before M. Night Shyamalan released a movie with an eerily similar revelation.) As it turns out, Hannah died in a fire five years earlier, which was conveniently included for the reader in a dream sequence at the beginning of the book (I wish there was a Pulitzer Prize for best use of dream sequence, because no one can beat Bob at that game).
And that shadowy figure from earlier in the story? Turns out that was Danny’s ghost, a harbinger of death if you will that Danny takes the place of in the Shadowland upon his death (in Goosebumps there is a definite separation of Church and Scare). The ghost has been trying to keep Hannah from interfering the course of events, so that Danny will die, in what turns out to be a freak fire at the end of the book -- a prank on the postmaster which went terribly wrong (nothing like pranking someone by lighting matches around their personal property and dry goods).
Of course all is well in the end, and Hannah saves Danny from the fire and gets to move on to the afterlife as her work is done. The story ends with Danny waking up from injuries sustained in the accident (and surprisingly not in juvie for taking up arson as a hobby), asking about his neighbor whom everyone explains had died years ago WITHOUT QUESTIONING WHY HE WOULD BE ASKING FOR HER, and Hannah asks herself if he’ll remember her as she’s taking the stairway to heaven. It’s basically Romeo and Juliet -- you know, if the star-crossed-lovers had met shortly after Juliet stabbed herself.
So where does "The Ghost Next Door" rank? Well compared to "Monster Blood," the ending -- and to a certain extent the twist, if you could call it that -- are much more clear and the characters a bit more defined. However it too falls into many of the hapless cliches that seem to cannibalize what are essentially decent kid’s novels, but I’m sure it is just right for the target audience, and really, that’s all anyone can ask for.
These scenes also involve a shadowy figure with red, glowing eyes who is chasing Hannah. This does give Hannah some minor justification into her feelings that her Danny situation requires the aid of the Ghostbusters, as the shadow spends most of its appearances scaring Hannah away from the boy and telling her to stay away from him.
So, at this point you’re probably thinking, “Oh, my God, is Danny really a ghost? What’s going on here.” Well, in a surprise twist, it’s really Hannah who is a ghost. (And let’s put this in perspective, R.L. Stine published this book a good four years before M. Night Shyamalan released a movie with an eerily similar revelation.) As it turns out, Hannah died in a fire five years earlier, which was conveniently included for the reader in a dream sequence at the beginning of the book (I wish there was a Pulitzer Prize for best use of dream sequence, because no one can beat Bob at that game).
And that shadowy figure from earlier in the story? Turns out that was Danny’s ghost, a harbinger of death if you will that Danny takes the place of in the Shadowland upon his death (in Goosebumps there is a definite separation of Church and Scare). The ghost has been trying to keep Hannah from interfering the course of events, so that Danny will die, in what turns out to be a freak fire at the end of the book -- a prank on the postmaster which went terribly wrong (nothing like pranking someone by lighting matches around their personal property and dry goods).
Of course all is well in the end, and Hannah saves Danny from the fire and gets to move on to the afterlife as her work is done. The story ends with Danny waking up from injuries sustained in the accident (and surprisingly not in juvie for taking up arson as a hobby), asking about his neighbor whom everyone explains had died years ago WITHOUT QUESTIONING WHY HE WOULD BE ASKING FOR HER, and Hannah asks herself if he’ll remember her as she’s taking the stairway to heaven. It’s basically Romeo and Juliet -- you know, if the star-crossed-lovers had met shortly after Juliet stabbed herself.
So where does "The Ghost Next Door" rank? Well compared to "Monster Blood," the ending -- and to a certain extent the twist, if you could call it that -- are much more clear and the characters a bit more defined. However it too falls into many of the hapless cliches that seem to cannibalize what are essentially decent kid’s novels, but I’m sure it is just right for the target audience, and really, that’s all anyone can ask for.
I do believe that the campaign to have the Goosebumps series removed from school libraries was perpetrated by movie makers so that kids wouldn't recognize that everything good was plagiarized from RL Stine.
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