It's time to play the music. It's time to hit the lights. It's time to raise the curtain on the Gooseblog tonight! In this edition, it's time to solve a ghostly mystery. Don't get stage fright, it's book #24: Phantom Of The Auditorium AKA we'll be seeing you in court Mr. Stine.
COVER STORY
STORY
Our protagonist is Brooke Rodgers. Brooke's best friend is a boy named Zeke, who likes to be a massive prankster. After the fun prank of pretending that Brooke got suspended from school (hilarious), the kids check the cast list for the school production of The Phantom. Not the Phantom of the Opera, you wanna get Jovial Bob sued? It turns out that Brooke and Zeke both landed the leading roles. This delights the two of them, but not a bitchy seventh grader named Tina, who's quite annoyed to be Brooke's understudy. While at rehearsal with their teacher Ms. Walker, Tina tells them about the curse of The Phantom. But before she can elaborate this early in the book, Ms. Walker tells her to be quiet as they begin their rehearsing. But after the kids nag her, Ms. Walker finally gives in and decides to tell them about the supposed curse.
Seventy two years ago, right after the school had been built, there was a boy who had suggested that the school perform a play of The Phantom. But when the play was ready to open, the boy had disappeared. After an hour, they suddenly heard a scream in the auditorium. Since that night, the school has never performed the play until now, feeling that 72 years is enough time that there couldn't possibly be any other incidents. While Ms. Walker tells the students of this, it gives Zeke enough time to pull a stock fake out scare on them. I'm going to dislike Zeke, aren't I? Then Ms. Walker suddenly disappears! Oh wait, she went down the trapdoor on the stage. Okay then.
Still interested in the trapdoor, Zeke gets Brooke to try it out with him. However, when they activate it, they end up falling much further than Ms. Walker did, almost down into some caves under the school. They find their way back up, only to be confronted by a creepy old man with scraggly hair. This is Emile, the janitor. Turns out the kids had been screwing around for so long that the school closed. He warns them about the trapdoor, and Zeke jokes that maybe he's the phantom. More like a red herring really. The next day, Brooke meets a new kid in school named Brian Colson. After that, Brooke sees a monster in her locker! Wait it's just a mask. A mask with a piece of paper underneath warning her to stay away from his home sweet home. She shrugs this all off as probably another crappy Zeke prank.
Zeke says that he didn't do anything, but Brooke doesn't believe him since so far Zeke's entire gimmick is just being an original prankster. The next rehearsal sees someone resembling Zeke in the phantom costume, trying to scare the cast. Everyone again assumes it's Zeke, despite nobody seeing him around that day before this. The assailant jumps down the trapdoor and vanishes just as Zeke conveniently shows up, again claiming he has no idea what's going on. Another phantom attack happens later on, and yet again it happens while Zeke is nowhere to be seen. And to add another layer of confusion, they soon learn from a kid that there is no Emile that works at the school. So either he doesn't exist, or there's a squatter in the school that nobody's seen until now.
Brooke and Zeke believe that maybe it was Emile all along, despite Emile really not having the body type of a 12 year old boy. They try to tell Ms. Walker, but she just chalks it up to the kids being wound up from her phantom story. Regardless, Brooke, Zeke and Brian sneak into the school at night to get their answer. However all they find is the stage being ruined. Splattered with paint with the warning to once again stay away from the phantom's home. They bump into Ms. Walker, who is disappointed in what she sees. They try to tell her about the phantom and their trip into the catacombs, but Ms. Walker doesn't really know what to think of all this. That is until she sees paint footprints that lead to Zeke's locker. With the paint in his locker, Zeke gets blamed once again, and this time he gets kicked off the play.
The rehearsals continue, but conveniently there haven't been any more practical jokes. Zeke is severely grounded, even losing his VCR privileges. I wonder if that was changed to like Netflix or something in the reprints. I dunno why, I'm just giddy at the mention of a VCR. I'm old. But just as things seem fine, Ms. Walker sees her script papers all glued together. She gets so pissed that she cancels the whole show. With proof that Zeke has possibly been framed, Brian and Brooke go visit Zeke later. Zeke's dog starts barking viciously at Brian, and if you've been following these books, you may have already clicked on to what that might mean. Despite being grounded, Zeke begs the three of them to return to the auditorium one more time to clear his name.
They return to the catacombs under the school and begin their search for the phantom. They don't find anything. But before they can return to the trapdoor, it begins to raise. With no way back up for now, they press on through the tunnels in their hunt. They find what appears to be a room where someone has been living in. Brooke sneezes a lot (yeah, didn't bring it up, but that's something she does in the book. A lot), and they end up locked in. These kids are then written to be extremely stupid as they try to push the door open, only to not notice the doorknob needs to be pulled to exit. Well, that was a thing that happened. They then run into Emile once again, only now he's even more angry looking.
He admits to sending the warnings, to trying to scare them off, to framing Zeke, because they were getting to close to his little home under the school. However, he seems confused when he's accused of being the phantom. In fact, he's never even heard of the story about the curse. He's literally just a bum that squatted under a school. He screams how they ruined everything. Now he has to squat under the high school a few miles away, near the really crappy McDonalds. The trapdoor returns and the kids manage to escape him. They run into Zeke's parents who are still pissed, but actually do believe him about Emile. Cops arrive to arrest him, but they find no sign of him. He got the hell out of there tout suite.
With the Emile situation over, The Phantom play is back on. Zeke is even allowed back on as the lead. Everything goes well, until Brooke sees another kid on the stage dressed as the phantom. This time it's not Zeke. He just continues on with the play, which also conveniently sounds like the story of the boy who vanished. Brooke grabs the phantom's mask, and he recoils in horror, falling into the trapdoor below as smoke billows out. The crowd applauds, Ms. Walker is happy, and it seems that it all went off without a hitch.
This book was actually pretty good. It built up a pretty compelling mystery surrounding the mystery phantom and all the strange coincidences. Despite the villain being a ghost, what worked for this book was that it was grounded in reality. No super insane moment that broke from that. It leaves you wondering up until the end what's really going on. Stine makes it too obvious that it isn't Zeke, as his characteristic of being "the prankster" makes it clear that while he's annoying, he doesn't have it in him to go that far. Having Emile be a partial villain works as well, since his motivations make sense, being a strange hobo that lives in the school. Also, the real threat of a crazed homeless man actually works for tension.
And then there's Brian, a kid they add in the middle of the book, but is so unimportant to plot progression that you forget about him until he gets revealed at the end. But like I said earlier. Pay attention to the scene where the dog barks at him. In other books, it's brought up that dogs can detect ghosts and the undead. It's something you'd just breeze by if you're new to these books or you just don't think about these things, but after reading these books for the past month, it's something I immediately caught on to.
As for the story, it's paced quite well and builds up on some decent tension. It's never scary, but in this case, adding super scares would just take away from the progression of the tale. Stine's been pretty decent with ghost stories so far. Ghost Next Door was great and while it was maligned a bit, Ghost Beach still was effective. I'll chalk this one up as a win as well. Offering an engaging story with a lot of restraint in having it get too wacky. A just right kind of Goosebumps book. It's weird that the books that are usually the most liked are the ones I dislike, but I love the ones that get no fanfare. Fancy that. Phantom Of The Auditorium gets an A-.
Seventy two years ago, right after the school had been built, there was a boy who had suggested that the school perform a play of The Phantom. But when the play was ready to open, the boy had disappeared. After an hour, they suddenly heard a scream in the auditorium. Since that night, the school has never performed the play until now, feeling that 72 years is enough time that there couldn't possibly be any other incidents. While Ms. Walker tells the students of this, it gives Zeke enough time to pull a stock fake out scare on them. I'm going to dislike Zeke, aren't I? Then Ms. Walker suddenly disappears! Oh wait, she went down the trapdoor on the stage. Okay then.
Still interested in the trapdoor, Zeke gets Brooke to try it out with him. However, when they activate it, they end up falling much further than Ms. Walker did, almost down into some caves under the school. They find their way back up, only to be confronted by a creepy old man with scraggly hair. This is Emile, the janitor. Turns out the kids had been screwing around for so long that the school closed. He warns them about the trapdoor, and Zeke jokes that maybe he's the phantom. More like a red herring really. The next day, Brooke meets a new kid in school named Brian Colson. After that, Brooke sees a monster in her locker! Wait it's just a mask. A mask with a piece of paper underneath warning her to stay away from his home sweet home. She shrugs this all off as probably another crappy Zeke prank.
Zeke says that he didn't do anything, but Brooke doesn't believe him since so far Zeke's entire gimmick is just being an original prankster. The next rehearsal sees someone resembling Zeke in the phantom costume, trying to scare the cast. Everyone again assumes it's Zeke, despite nobody seeing him around that day before this. The assailant jumps down the trapdoor and vanishes just as Zeke conveniently shows up, again claiming he has no idea what's going on. Another phantom attack happens later on, and yet again it happens while Zeke is nowhere to be seen. And to add another layer of confusion, they soon learn from a kid that there is no Emile that works at the school. So either he doesn't exist, or there's a squatter in the school that nobody's seen until now.
Brooke and Zeke believe that maybe it was Emile all along, despite Emile really not having the body type of a 12 year old boy. They try to tell Ms. Walker, but she just chalks it up to the kids being wound up from her phantom story. Regardless, Brooke, Zeke and Brian sneak into the school at night to get their answer. However all they find is the stage being ruined. Splattered with paint with the warning to once again stay away from the phantom's home. They bump into Ms. Walker, who is disappointed in what she sees. They try to tell her about the phantom and their trip into the catacombs, but Ms. Walker doesn't really know what to think of all this. That is until she sees paint footprints that lead to Zeke's locker. With the paint in his locker, Zeke gets blamed once again, and this time he gets kicked off the play.
The rehearsals continue, but conveniently there haven't been any more practical jokes. Zeke is severely grounded, even losing his VCR privileges. I wonder if that was changed to like Netflix or something in the reprints. I dunno why, I'm just giddy at the mention of a VCR. I'm old. But just as things seem fine, Ms. Walker sees her script papers all glued together. She gets so pissed that she cancels the whole show. With proof that Zeke has possibly been framed, Brian and Brooke go visit Zeke later. Zeke's dog starts barking viciously at Brian, and if you've been following these books, you may have already clicked on to what that might mean. Despite being grounded, Zeke begs the three of them to return to the auditorium one more time to clear his name.
They return to the catacombs under the school and begin their search for the phantom. They don't find anything. But before they can return to the trapdoor, it begins to raise. With no way back up for now, they press on through the tunnels in their hunt. They find what appears to be a room where someone has been living in. Brooke sneezes a lot (yeah, didn't bring it up, but that's something she does in the book. A lot), and they end up locked in. These kids are then written to be extremely stupid as they try to push the door open, only to not notice the doorknob needs to be pulled to exit. Well, that was a thing that happened. They then run into Emile once again, only now he's even more angry looking.
He admits to sending the warnings, to trying to scare them off, to framing Zeke, because they were getting to close to his little home under the school. However, he seems confused when he's accused of being the phantom. In fact, he's never even heard of the story about the curse. He's literally just a bum that squatted under a school. He screams how they ruined everything. Now he has to squat under the high school a few miles away, near the really crappy McDonalds. The trapdoor returns and the kids manage to escape him. They run into Zeke's parents who are still pissed, but actually do believe him about Emile. Cops arrive to arrest him, but they find no sign of him. He got the hell out of there tout suite.
With the Emile situation over, The Phantom play is back on. Zeke is even allowed back on as the lead. Everything goes well, until Brooke sees another kid on the stage dressed as the phantom. This time it's not Zeke. He just continues on with the play, which also conveniently sounds like the story of the boy who vanished. Brooke grabs the phantom's mask, and he recoils in horror, falling into the trapdoor below as smoke billows out. The crowd applauds, Ms. Walker is happy, and it seems that it all went off without a hitch.
TWIST ENDING
Brooke and Zeke later check the trapdoor once again, but see no sign of anyone. After the performance, The two kids head to Brooke's locker to see it's been opened. Inside is a yearbook from 72 years ago. They see a page mentioning the phantom play. And one particular picture on the page catches their eye. It's Brian Colson. The boy who played the phantom. The boy who died.
CONCLUSION
And then there's Brian, a kid they add in the middle of the book, but is so unimportant to plot progression that you forget about him until he gets revealed at the end. But like I said earlier. Pay attention to the scene where the dog barks at him. In other books, it's brought up that dogs can detect ghosts and the undead. It's something you'd just breeze by if you're new to these books or you just don't think about these things, but after reading these books for the past month, it's something I immediately caught on to.
Jinkies! It's as if Stine really thought this one through.
As for the story, it's paced quite well and builds up on some decent tension. It's never scary, but in this case, adding super scares would just take away from the progression of the tale. Stine's been pretty decent with ghost stories so far. Ghost Next Door was great and while it was maligned a bit, Ghost Beach still was effective. I'll chalk this one up as a win as well. Offering an engaging story with a lot of restraint in having it get too wacky. A just right kind of Goosebumps book. It's weird that the books that are usually the most liked are the ones I dislike, but I love the ones that get no fanfare. Fancy that. Phantom Of The Auditorium gets an A-.
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