THE HAUNTED SCHOOL

Nov 20, 2024 | Goosebumps

Goosebumps #59:
The Haunted School

© 1997 by Parachute Press. Cover Art by Tim Jacobus.

 

Spoiler-Free Review

It was a major relief to get a good Goosebumps book after the last two. The Haunted School is easily in my top 3 for the entire series. This book had some of the most genuinely creepy moments of anything I have read by RL Stine, and I’ve read enough of him to have some authority with that proclamation. Sometimes these books feel rushed to meet a deadline, but every aspect of The Haunted School felt intentional. This is the first perfect score I have given to a Goosebumps book since One Day at Horrorland (the other was Welcome to Camp Nightmare before that). Which is to say: it has been an entire pandemic since I have given one of these books a 5 out of 5 stars (unless you count The Beast). The characters, the pacing, the concept, and even the twist ending were all some of the best in the series. I had so much fun reading this one that I wasn’t even mad that I predicted one of the major plot reveals. I can’t stay mad when it was so well written and the rest of the plot kept me guessing. The Haunted School delivered some of the creepiest moments of any Goosebumps book, and is an absolute standout of the series.

Score: 5

 

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ERMAHGERD #59: The Haunted School.
© 2024 by Daniel Stalter. All rights reserved.
Photo and editing by Daniel Stalter.
Stock photo by Rawf8; Standard Adobe Stock License.

 

Observations & Spoilers

If there was ever a Goosebumps book to skip my review of and just read it yourself, this is one of them. Seriously, I didn’t even want to write this review. This is the one to skip if you were ever thinking of reading (or re-reading) one of these on your own.

 

The Haunted School opens with Tommy, who is a mid-year new kid at school. He doesn’t know his way around yet, but he’s trying his best at making friends. He joins the committee to decorate for the school dance. There he works with Thalia and Ben. Thalia is a strange girl who wears a tone of makeup, so much so that the other kids make fun of her for it. Tommy finds this weird but he still likes Thalia. Ben is a big prankster. Thalia is adamant about using the school colors in their decorations, so Tommy offers to run up to the art room and grab the red paint. He keeps hearing voices asking for help while he’s up there, and then he gets lost on the way back to the gym. He ends up in an abandoned part of the school.

 

It turns out that their school had an entire class of students disappear back in the forties. The town built a new school around the old one, and closed the old school off. Tommy tries to ask Thalia and Ben about it but they don’t have time or seem all that interested in talking about it. The next day in class, the school’s mean girl Greta steals Thalia’s lipstick. Tommy defends her and gets it back, but he’s surprised by how important the lipstick seems to be for Thalia. That night at the big school Dance, Greta rips their banner thar he and Thalia had worked so hard to paint. Tommy offers to run to the art room for tape. Ben goes with him so he doesn’t get lost. Unfortunately, Tommy suggests a faster way and they do get lost.

 

The two boys tumble into another part of the abandoned school and find an elevator. It lights up when Tommy pushes the button. He peer pressures Ben into trying the elevator with him, and I’ve gotta say I’m with Ben on this one. You will never talk me into entering an old abandoned elevator, but Ben apparently has less willpower/claustrophobic anxiety than I do. The two boys step into the elevator, but instead of going up, it moves sideways. They step out into a world devoid of color. They quickly meet some kids who turn out to be part of the class that disappeared back in the forties. Seth and the kids marvel at Tommy and Ben’s color. That’s because all of them are trapped in black and white. What had happened was: it was class picture day and the only photographer they could hire was a weirdo named Mr. Chameleon. He took the photo and trapped the kids in a black and white world. Much to Tommy’s dismay, he and Ben begin to quickly lose their color. 

 

Instead of listening to the well meaning kids trying to help them, Tommy and Ben panic. They run from the school into the strange black and white suburbs. It doesn’t take long before they realize the made a mistake. They soon come across the rest of the class that disappeared. This whole premise felt like a mashup of the movie Pleasantville and one of my all-time favorite books The Giver. Tommy and Ben are quickly taken by a mob of feral children who surround them. The kids do strange dances and chant “change” over and over again. There is allusion to make her to Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, but I don’t think any of Stine’s intentions were that profound.

 

Seth and the other kids save Tommy and Ben. They go back to the school, where the elevator suddenly becomes active again. The door opens and Thalia steps out. It turns out that she was one of the kids trapped in the black and white world, but one day she noticed her lipstick still had color. It allowed her to draw a door. She walked through and it closed behind her. It turners out she hated her life at the new school. Times were so different, and she had to wear so much makeup just to have color and fit in. She realized that she belonged with her friends. She uses the lipstick to draw an exit door for Tommy and Ben. They step through before anything has a chance to fade to black and white.

 

Tommy and Ben make their way back to the school dance. When they get there, they are quickly pushed into the school photograph that;s about to be taken. The photographer is named Mr. Chameleon. The boys have no chance to protest before the flash goes off.

 

Now there are things about this story that are not perfect, but so much of it worked so well that I can’t call out any specific failure. It also kept me guessing until the final act, which feels like a rarity. I suspected Thalia was of the black and white world once I connected the colorless aspect to her obsession with makeup. I’m not mad about the reveal, though. It was neatly written and made sense in the greater context of the story. The twist ending was also dark without being cruel; this is not always the dynamic Stine strikes. 

 

All in all, The Haunted School can easily be held up as the idea of what a Goosebumps can and should be. It’s a shame the show was made on such a budget, it would have made for a great special edition. I guess I’ll have to settle for the mediocre adaptation of The Giver.

 

Score Card

For the scoring of each book, I decided to rate them based on five criteria worth 1 point each.
I then add that up to give it a rating out of 5 stars. Those criteria are:
Concept: the strength of the overall idea
Execution: the mechanics of storytelling
Character: the protagonists, antagonists, and villains
Intent: does it succeed in being the kind of book it wants to be?
Originality: subversion and reliance on genre tropes

 

Concept: 1
Rock solid, no complaints. The elements worked and complimented each other, and it never lost the through line.

Execution: 1
It did a great job of slowly building tension and upping the ante on the weird and scary elements. It used the characters well and I never felt like my time was being wasted (which is probably my most common complaint with these books.

Character: 1
Greta was great, and the details down to her obsessive application of makeup were as well. Tommy made some dumb decisions but they felt forgivable. And I loved the kids who had lost their minds. 

Intent: 1
This book was legitimately scary and weird as fuck in all of the right ways.

Originality: 1
Easily one of the most unique concepts in the entire Goosebumps catalog, and it managed to stay and grow more compelling as the story went on.

 

Based on GoodReads aggregate ratings, The Haunted School is:
Ranked 3rd of 62 books in the original Goosebumps series.

 

TV Adaptation – Bullet Review

For every book that was adapted for the Goosebumps TV series, I will watch and do a bullet review.

“There is no TV Episode for this book.

 

Don’t miss the next post in my Goosebumps blog series:
Goosebumps #60: Werewolf Skin

Also, be sure to check out the latest from my Fear Street blog series:
Fear Street Super Chiller #10: Goodnight Kiss 2

 

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