This entry of Goosebumps offers another ghost story. So far, every entry with ghosts have been solid, which makes me hopeful for another strong entry in the series. I’ve never heard of ghosts having their own beach, but if they do, I wonder if their summer activities are truly haunting.

Synopsis:

The book immediately opens with a dream sequence fake out. Wow, Stine really wants to get the tropes as fast as possible with this one.

Jerry and Terri Sadler are visiting relatives in New England for the first time. It’s clear their parents didn’t take much time coming up with names for them. Their staying with their cousins Agatha and Brad, who are both in their 90s. I’ve heard of age gaps before with cousins or amongst distant relatives, but this is a crazy gap.

Even odder, their dad says that Agatha and Brad were really old when he was a kid. I’m sure this is unrelated to the plot.

Jerry and Terri are visiting the graveyard. Terri is enjoying one of her hobbies, taking rubbings from gravestones. They notice that the headstones have the same last names as them. Jerry wants to leave.

So, they head to the beach. They notice a cave on a mountain next to the beach. Then a giant bat comes out of the cave, right at them.

Turns out, it’s a kite, and it didn’t come from the cave, great, things already don’t make sense. A boy flying the kite shows up with two other kids. It’s their distant relatives, Sam, Louisa, and Nat Sadler.

Terri asks them about the cave. The other kids respond by saying they never go to the cave, since it’s haunted. Wow, it feels like the plot is actually moving at a nice pace this time.

The other kids then leave without elaborating, however they notice Sam is mad at his siblings for talking about the ghost.

They head back to the cottage. Jerry asks their elderly cousins about the cave, which Brad and Agatha ignore. Not strange at all.

That evening, they play games and have dinner.

The next morning, Terri and Jerry go flower searching in the cemetery. Jerry pulls at some roots on the ground and discovers the skeleton of an animal. This is not weird, but the book makes a big deal about it.

Then they start to hear animal calls. It’s Sam, Louisa, and Nat trying to prank them. Nat says the ghost killed the dog, which is the skeleton they found. This feels like a call back to Welcome to Dead House. Not the dog!

Sam, Nat, and Louisa mention the ghost again, and then leave. My favorite part of any Goosebumps book is the repetition, I need to read something at least four times before I remember it for the future.

Jerry and Terri go home, where they ask their cousins about the skeleton. Their cousins say they don’t know anything about the animal skeleton.

The rest of the day, Jerry and Terri are put to work. Later, they have dinner and dessert.

The next day, Jerri and Terri go out swimming and collect objects on the beach. This is when the other kids show up. Jerry and Terri ask about the ghost again. Sam and the others don’t want to talk about the ghost.

However, Louisa eventually reveals the ghost lives in the cave, a light can be seen from the cave, and the ghost never leaves the cave. So, all she’s saying is there’s nothing to worry about, unless they go to the cave? Cool.

After dinner that night, Jerry realizes he forgot his towel at the beach, so he goes searching for it at night. He sees a light coming from the cave. So, like any Goosebumps protagonist, he goes to investigate the cave.

Terri sneaks up on Jerry and jump scares him. The light in the cave goes out, so they head home to go to bed. In the middle of the night, Jerry wakes up because he hears a dog, but when he looks outside, he doesn’t see one. Spooky.

The next morning, Terri and Jerry go bird watching. After that, they go fishing with the other kids. Then later, at dinner, their older cousins warn them not to go to the cave. Seems like the cave is the place not to be.

Agatha and Brad also say the light is from the Aurora Borealis. Yeah, sure, the light that’s been on every night, that’s clearly coming from inside the cave, and that turns off, sure, that excuse is really believable.

After dinner, Terri and Jerry go walking on the beach. They decide to go check out the cave. As they enter the cave, bats fly over their heads.

They go deeper into the cave and find candles, and an old man. The old man turns to come towards them, they run away. Jerry trips on his way out, but he’s able to recover and escape.

Agatha asks them about the towel when they return home. The towel thing was literally over a day ago, clearly the towel will never be found.

In the middle of the night, Nat, Sam, and Louisa show up outside Jerry’s window. Jerry lets them in. The other kids say they know how to get rid of the ghost and they need Jerry and Terri’s help to get rid of the ghost.

The next day, Jerry tells Terri about getting rid of the ghost. After the rain stops that morning, they go find the other kids.

They don’t see the other kids at the beach, so they go to the cemetery. There, Terri finds the graves of Sam, Louisa, and Nat. So, their distant cousins are ghosts, this seems pretty straightforward.

Terri and Jerry go home and tell Agatha and Brad about the graves. They then get a bunch of exposition about the winter of 1641, how almost everyone died, and now, everyone names their kids after people who died in that winter. Even Brad and Agatha are named after people who died during the winter.

This exposition is great and all, but completely unbelievable and gives away the entire remainder of the plot, cool. Just about anybody could now figure out, everyone is a ghost, except Terri, Jerry, and maybe the old man in the cave.

Terri and Jerry go back outside and find the other kids. Terri and Jerry then hear the plan to get rid of the ghost. All they need to do is push rocks in front of the entrance to the cave and seal the ghost inside, since the cave is a sanctuary. This sounds more like murder.

However, Terri and Jerry agree to this plan. Looks like they’ll be spending life in prison if this plan works out.

That night, Deep Trouble gets named dropped as Terri and Jerry head to the cave. The other kids are too scared to climb the mountain, so they’ll stay down at the bottom. If it’s not obvious enough, Sam, Louisa, and Nat continue to prove they’re ghosts, since the cave would trap them, if they are, in fact, ghosts.

Terri and Jerry reach the top of the mountain to push rocks over and seal the cave. Then they notice that Sam, Louisa, and Nat are running into the woods. They turn around and see the old man behind them.

The old man grabs them and drags them into the cave. Not really helping to disprove he’s a ghost. Once inside the cave, he tells Terri and Jerry his name’s Harrison Sadler.

Harrison says he majored in ghosts at college. That’s not a real thing; there’s no such thing as a ghost major in college. The closest things I’ve ever seen to this when I was in college was classes about witchcraft, or about spirituality, but if I remember correctly, these were anthropology courses, and not something you can major in.

Harrison tells them the other kids are ghosts, and he plans to trap them in the cave, that’s why they never come up here. Jerry and Terri don’t believe he’s alive or his story. He tells them to go to the east corner of the cemetery if they don’t believe him.

Terri and Jerry go to the east corner, which is where the graves of Sam, Louisa, and Nat are at. To their surprise, they find their own graves there as well. Freshly dug and over the grave’s headstones with their names on them.

Sam, Louisa, and Nat show up. They ask if they were able to trap the old man. Terri and Jerry tell them they ran away and failed. I think that should be pretty clear.

The other kids say Terri and Jerry have to go back and finish the job. Also, is the book seriously glossing over the new graves?

Terri agrees to go back and finish the job and Jerry comes along. Suddenly poor weather starts with rain and lightning. Which are super safe conditions for climbing a mountain.

However, Terri makes the other kids agree to come along this time.

They all get to the cave entrance. Terry says her clothes are too wet, and they should all go into the cave to dry off before finishing the climb. She forces Sam, Louisa, and Nat into the cave.

Harrison shows up from within the cave. The other kids freak out. Harrison calls for his dog. His dog starts barking at Sam, Louisa, and Nat, forcing them deeper into the cave. For some reason, the dog is described as having red eyes, odd.

Sam, Louisa, and Nat admit to being ghosts, then turn into skeletons, I mean, Skeletor. They tell Terri and Jerry they plan to put them into the new graves, so they can be together forever. That’s a big nope.

Then the light in the cave from the torch and candles blow out. Terri and Jerry run away. As they head down the mountain, rocks topple over the entrance to the cave. They don’t see Harrison, so he must have got stuck in the cave with the ghost kids. This is theoretical, since I have a sneaking suspicion, he made it out.

Jerry and Terri get home to the cottage. Harrison’s dog has followed them back to the cottage. The dog then starts to bark at them. Except the dog isn’t barking at them, as Terri and Jerry turn around, Agatha and Brad are behind them. Agatha kicks the dog out of the cottage. She then considers what to do with the kids now, since her and Brad’s secret has been found out.

The book ends. However, if the dog made it out, wouldn’t Harrison also likely have made it out, since he was closer to the exit.

Review:

This book wasn’t too bad. Much better than the last book, and Stine can still write a solid ghost story.

There are a few things that aren’t that great in this book, though. The first half of the book does drag a bit, but it does help to set up the story. I feel like the ghosts were very obvious in this book, and by the halfway point there wasn’t much of a mystery or anything surprising left in this book. Finally, I think outside of the obviousness of the story, the book didn’t explain the rules for ghosts in this story super well, and there were multiple moments where details were lacking.

Also, the opening dream sequence was one of the weakest ways to open this story. However, it’s not the worst beginning to a Goosebumps book.

However, the good aspects far outweigh the weaker aspects of the story. First, a solid plot, which remains interesting. An excellent ending, that has a good cliffhanger, and a fair bit of spookiness. I think Harrison works as a solid red herring. The ghost kids are creepy enough at the end. I also think the story plays well with classic tropes, such as the red herring, and the who to trust trope. Not too bad.

I’ll give this entry of Goosebumps a 7/10. While there are a lot of good aspects, I wanted a bit more out of the story, which wasn’t present in the book. The first half was just a bit too slow. At least the story did answer the spooky activities ghosts get up to during summer.

Twist ending:

Everyone’s a ghost, except Terri and Jerry, and this was obvious from much earlier in the book.

Memorable line:

“We have to kill the ghost.” I don’t think ghosts can die.

Memorable moment, cliffhanger, etc:

An absolutely amazing ending with the book ending on a cliffhanger after the cousins are revealed to be ghosts.

Bad parenting:

Either sending your kids to relatives you haven’t seen since you were a kid. However, if I’m keeping it to Brad and Agatha, theoretically the ending is some pretty bad parenting.

Random references:

Deep Trouble, Boy Scouts, and Whist. You’re in deep trouble if you’re playing Whist against a ghost that has over 300 years of experience playing the game.

Tropes in book:

A character is 12, sibling pair, pranks, staying with relatives, crazy cliffhangers, kite jump scare, ridiculous dream sequence, dark ending, and twist ending.

TV tie-in:

The episode is bad, really bad. The Goosebumps episode adaptation condenses the story but makes it worse.

The biggest change is Nat is cut from the story. The next big change is they try to make Harrison more suspicious. Finally, Agatha and Brad are more involved in the story, but it doesn’t improve anything.

The story feels much slower in the episode. Also, this is some of the worst acting I’ve seen yet in a Goosebumps episode. Not to mention the horrible green screen. This is especially apparent when Sam and Louise turn into skeletons, and it looks awful.

Otherwise, the story is pretty much the same without any improvements.

I’ll give this Goosebumps episode a 4/10. Not good.

Memorable episode line:

Brad: “I’ve got some reading to do.”

Agatha: “I’ll help.”

What?

Famous cast:

Bill Turnbull, Dorothy Gordon, and Hardee Lineham.

Come back soon for more Goosebumps fun and reviews.

To read the last Goosebumps review: https://goosebumpsblogger.com/goosebumps-21-go-eat-worms/

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