The Haunted Mask is one of the most famous entries in the Goosebumps series. This is one of the books people seem to remember and enjoy the most. For this Halloween review, I’ll see if this holiday entry is haunting.

Synopsis:

Carly Beth Caldwell and Sabrina Mason are discussing their costumes for Halloween. I think Sabrina is pretty set if she goes as a witch, which is one of the costumes their discussing.

Carly Beth is the main character of this story. She’s also a scaredy cat, who gets scared by everything. I’m sure this won’t cause any trends in this story. Carly thinks to herself how she hates her tiny nose, just like Dwight Shrute.

As Carly Beth has lunch, she’s jump scared by Steve, I don’t know how this is possible in a noisy lunchroom. Chuck is also there, the two boys are friends with the girls, but they’re always pranking Carly Beth, so are they really friends?

Steve offers Carly Beth a sandwich, which Carly Beth accepts. She eats the sandwich to discover a worm in it, gross prank. Everyone laughs at Carly Beth, and she runs away. This is how Carly Beth became Carrie.

It sounds like to me she has awful friends. Also, is this a prequel to Go Eat Worms?

Carly Beth gets home and sees her mom. Her mom has made a plaster head of Carly Beth, which is a bit creepy. When Carly Beth sees the head, she thinks it looks creepy. The head smiles at Carly Beth. Okay.

At this point, that plaster head must be the haunted mask, which it kind of is, but we’ll get there.

Her mom has also made Carly Beth a duck costume, wow this lady is pretty crafty. Carly Beth hates the duck costume, since she thinks everyone else will make fun of her. Based upon the book so far, I’d hazard guess they would.

Carly Beth goes to her room and is jump scared by a giant duck. It’s her younger brother, Noah Caldwell. She tells Noah he didn’t scare her, but Noah doesn’t believe her. Also, the costume is already losing it feathers, so the quality is probably Temu levels of bad.

The next day is the science fair. In the book, it seems super serious and competitive, as well as having the best named judges of all time. Mrs. Armbruster and Mr. Smythe. Just from their names, you can tell they’re serious.

During the science fair, a tarantula gets loose. This causes Carly Beth to freak out. When she feels something on the back of her leg, she creates a one person mosh pit and smashes the project she worked on with Sabrina.

Turns out it was another prank by Chuck and Steve. Carly Beth is so upset she leaves.

It’s Halloween and Carly Beth is getting together with Sabrina, Chuck, and Steve for trick or treating. However, Carly Beth has to watch her brother, since her mother is out. This causes Carly Beth to worry she won’t be able to get a new costume in time.

Finally, Carly Beth’s mother gets home. She hurries to the party store to get a costume. Upon arrival, Carly Beth is disappointed to see the store is closed. Instead of breaking and entering, like most Goosebumps characters, she tries to get the attention of someone inside to let her in.

A man wearing a cape eventually answers the door. He tells Carly Beth they’re closed, but he lets her in anyways.

He recommends a gorilla mask or a Spock mask as scary masks to Carly Beth. How is Spock scary?

Carly Beth roams around the store but discovers none of the masks to be scary enough for her. She really wants to get back at her friends for scaring her, but the selection of masks is weak to her.

The man gets a phone call, so Carly Beth sneaks into the back of the store. Carly Beth, that’s where they keep all of the stuff for adults. Instead of finding adult stuff, she finds the really scary masks.

I doubt most of these masks could make it onto the show, since some are relatively gory. The man shows back up and tells Carly Beth the masks aren’t for sale.

He says, how about a gorilla mask instead, Carly Beth replies, how about no. After asking the man a minimum of 15 times, he finally agrees to sell her the scary mask she likes for all of her money. Carly Beth replies, shut up and take my money, before running out of the store with her new mask.

Why does it feel like the man bought too many gorilla masks and is trying to offload them?

Carly Beth gets home with her new mask. It’s pretty spooky with green skin, fangs, glowing eyes, and it’s the one on the book cover.

Carly Beth decides to scare her brother with the new mask. Noah is going as a cockroach, which may be more frightening than Carly Beth’s mask. She puts on the mask and scares her brother, her voice changes as well.

After scaring her brother, Carly Beth realizes her mask is stuck, but she is finally able to get it off after some effort. Yeah, so the mask is haunted, there are so many signs, it’s obvious.

Carly realizes her mask isn’t scary enough, so she grabs the plaster head of herself and puts it on a broomstick, now it’s real scary. Carly prepares to head out.

However, before she can her mom calls for her. Her mom wants to see her in the duck costume. Carly Beth doesn’t want her mom to see her. The phone rings, Carly Beth says she’s saved by the bell. A phone isn’t a bell, it doesn’t sound like a bell, it’s a phone.

Carly Beth goes to Sabrina’s house. Carly sees some children who look like Chuck and Steve, so she scares them. However, it’s two random children.

Their mother yells at Carly Beth and tells her to go away. Carly Beth does the same thing back to the woman, as well as considers ripping her to shreds and eating her. Who would’ve thought cannibalism would be referenced in Goosebumps?

The mom and her children leave, so Carly Beth doesn’t become Hannibal Lector.

Carly Beth sees Sabrina who is dressed as fair use Catwoman, wow, R. L. Stine must have been scared of DC coming after him.

Sabrina doesn’t recognize Carly Beth. However, Sabrina does catch on pretty fast, who else is going to have their fake head on a stick.

Chuck and Steve don’t show up, so Carly Beth will have to find them at some point in the night.

Sabrina starts to ask Carly Beth questions about her mask. Carly Beth doesn’t like questions and responds by choking out Sabrina and telling her to shut up. A completely disproportionate response.

Carly Beth plays this off as a joke, while still having a raspy voice, wow, she’s a character actor. Sabrina, for some reason, still hangs out with Carly Beth.

The two of them continue trick or treating. Carly continues to make children scream and threatens to eat a child. Normal adolescent behavior, right?

Sabrina is confused by this behavior; Carly Beth says the mask is making her do it. Likely story.

At another house Carly Beth gets an apple. As soon as the person closes their door, she throws the apple at their house. Then she takes Sabrina’s apple and throws it at the house as well.

Carly Beth goes off on her own. She finds a dark part of the neighborhood and scares a few children. Then she takes candy from one of them.

Carly Beth finds Chuck and Steve. She jumps out and screams at them. Both of the boys are frightened by this. The boys wise up pretty quickly to who is under the mask.

This is when Carly Beth says she killed Carly Beth and shows them the plaster head. She threatens to add their heads to her stick, which sounds pretty inconvenient to carry around.

This is when the fake head blinks and starts to make noises. It asks the boys to help it. See what I said earlier about it being haunted, anyways, this scares Chuck and Steve into running away.

This also scares Carly Beth, who runs away without the head. After running, Carly Beth is snuck up on by Sabrina.

They go over to Sabrina’s house. Sabrina’s mom makes her throw away any candy or food that isn’t sealed, so I guess she was never going to be able to eat that apple Carly Beth destroyed.

Carly Beth shows off her stolen candy, nice. She throws out a jawbreaker, since they always cut her tongue, which is wild, like is the jawbreaker made out of razorblades?

Carly Beth goes to take off her mask, but it won’t come off. Sabrina tries to help, but the mask has no bottom, it’s now Carly Beth’s face.

Carly Beth runs away. She runs to the party store. On the way, she frightens more children. When she gets to the party store, it’s closed, as to be expected.

The man reveals himself and opens the door for her. He tells her he was expecting her.

He tells Carly Beth he can’t remove the mask. The man then enters exposition mode. He explains they were once faces, that he made them, he calls them the unloved, and they were once beautiful but turned ugly overtime.

The man further states they can be removed, which he is super slow in getting to the point to help fill pages. The masks can be removed with a symbol of love. This can only be done once. He doesn’t elaborate on this, cool.

The other masks begin to move, he tells Carly Beth she awakened them. He tells Carly Beth she needs to run away; this is one way of getting a person out of your store.

The heads fly after Carly Beth. She finds the sculpted plaster head near where she left it. After she finds her head, the other masks disappear.

Carly Beth is finally able to remove her mask.

Carly Beth gets home and drops the mask. Her brother tells her to take off her mask and she’s ugly. She isn’t wearing a mask, this causes her to freak out, but it’s just her brother being mean to her.

Her mother is worried, since Carly Beth was supposed to be home a long time ago. She had also received worried calls from Sabrina. Carly Beth gets ready to explain everything to her mom.

Before she can, her brother Noah jumps out wearing the mask. The book ends.

Review:

This is probably the best Goosebumps book I’ve read yet. However, I do have some issues with this book, and a few things that aren’t the best. There are also a lot of great aspects to this Goosebumps entry.

The main flaws in The Haunted Mask relate to the characterization of Carly Beth. Throughout the first half, she’s quite whiney in the book and I feel is unfairly characterized as a scaredy cat, since some of the pranks are downright meanspirited. Then in the second half, she’s also awful, despite getting revenge, she does go a bit too far and isn’t the most likable protagonist so far. Some of the other characters are a bit better like the mom or Sabrina, but there’s also Chuck, Steve, and Noah who are singularly annoying or mean.

Outside of the characters, this is one of the better and scarier Goosebumps entries. I think just about everything else works really well and is surprisingly dark for a Goosebumps book. This is one of the few that reminds me of the first two to four with a darker and well-crafted story.

Another interesting part, R. L. Stine seems to be scared of getting sued in this book, but also not at the same time, as some famous fictional characters he either goes with a fair use made up version, or only names the title of the show in the book. Kind of interesting.

My rating for this Goosebumps entry is an 8.5. It’s more enjoyable than the other 8s I’ve read and rated, but I don’t think this book quite reaches a 9 for me. Maybe, down the road I’ll revisit this entry, and my mind will change.

Twist ending:

None? It doesn’t have one unless you count Noah putting on the mask. Which Noah will also be fine, as long as he doesn’t put the mask on again, since it seems to come off once.

Memorable line:

“It’s my real head.” No, Carly Beth, that’s a plaster head.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc.

Carly Beth threatens to eat other children.

Bad parenting:

Her mom makes a plaster head of her daughter, this is a new level of creepy.

Random references:

Star Trek, Frankenstein, Freddy Krueger, E. T., Addams Family, Uncle Fester, Saved by the Bell, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Catwoman. Now the real challenge, which of these did R. L. Stine not include the full name of or made slight alterations to their name or description.

Tropes in book:

Pranks, sibling pair, crazy cliffhanger, and duck jump scare.

TV tie-in:

Almost 30 years ago the first episode of the Goosebumps TV series was released, with this story being the first one adapted. As per usual, the Goosebumps episode isn’t quite as good as the book, however this is a relatively faithful adaptation.

The first thing of note is that the episode is toned down from the book. No character is choked out, nobody is threatened to be eaten, and the masks are milder than in the book. Though Carly Beth does destroy the duck costume.

The changes above do take the edge out of the story. In the book, the voice Carly Beth uses is clearly just her own voice while wearing the mask and can use both voices as she wants while wearing the mask. Chuck and Steve for some reason don’t catch onto Carly Beth being the one under the mask, despite a longer and more forced conversation.

Carly Beth steals the mask, does some minor vandalism, and breaks into the party store in the episode, which makes her a slightly less sympathetic character. She’s also more easily scared in the episode. Most aspects outside of these remain the same.

The dialogue is also cheesier and a bit more ham-fisted, which I quite prefer the book’s dialogue, over the episodes. I think the book is much better than the episode.

This is still one of the better episodes I remember seeing as a kid, and revisiting it, it’s still pretty good. Also, this is the first episode of the Goosebumps TV series, so pretty good for helping to launch the TV series.

Overall, I’ll give the episode a 7/10. Maybe this will change in the future and if it does, I’d likely rate it a bit lower.

Memorable episode line:

“You tell your sick little friend I’m going to call the police.” First, why? Second, not an equal response at all. Third, the lady is called an old bag, but is actually really young, which is weird.

Famous cast:

R. L. Stine as R. L. Stine.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-10-the-ghost-next-door/