At the time I'm writing this blog up, it is January of 2020. Twenty years since 2000. Twenty years since Goosebumps Series 2000. Almost eight years prior in the summer of 1992, R.L. Stine skewed towards kids with the Goosebumps book series. Nobody expected the monolithic success it would attain, and how it became a staple of 90s kids culture. But those eight years behind the scenes would begin to fill with turmoil, particularly between the Stine family and Scholastic. Accusations, legal battles over ownership of the series and many other headaches were beginning to form. And the breaking point was approaching as R.L. Stine began to consider a life without Goosebumps. If you go back to my review of Earth Geeks Must Go!, the book prior to this one, I stated there that the book felt like a weak attempt even for Goosebumps standards. Was that a fluke, or a sign of the future? Let's get reflective on the final book of Goosebumps Series 2000: Ghost in the Mirror.
COVER STORY
And with it comes the final Tim Jacobus Goosebumps cover. At least officially, we'll get into that later. And it's an okay cover. Just feels like a lot of the staples. That's not to say those staples aren't neat as the clutter is interesting to look at, the green and blues are a nice color scheme and the skeletal monster hand sticking out of the mirror as if it were a dimensional portal is also nice and creepy. For the unintended last hurrah, it's decent, but still good regardless.
STORY
Jason Sloves is a wuss. He doesn't deny it either, he knows he's scared of everything. It's not helped by the fact that his older sister Claudia always tries to scare him. He constantly refers to her as demented. In the case of the book's opening, it has to do with her scaring him as he's looking in a mirror, because he has a thing about always looking in mirrors to fix himself up. He also unfortunately has the "baby room" as his bedroom still has baby furniture. But at least he has his WWF posters. I mean, he was a fan of the Monday Night Wars. Kid can't be all bad.
Cut to a couple weeks later. After playing with his friend Fred, Jason's parents have something to show them. They bring him to his room where the baby furniture is gone and is now replaced with a new dresser with a stuck bottom drawer and a large mirror that Jason is intrigued by. Almost to the point he feels like he's being sucked in. Fred shows up later and the two discuss the wrestling show the previous night. Of course there's no mention of actual wrestler's names, which makes my heart sink as the thought of Jovial Bob: Wrestling Mark would have made my day.
They play a nondescript NBA video game when Fred begins to notice something moving in the mirror. Jason doesn't notice anything yet. After Fred leaves, Jason gets a snack then sees a note stuck on the mirror warning that "bringing this into your house means death". He assumes it's Claudia who wrote it, but she claims to have nothing to do with it, before scaring him again by saying there's a *Insert Book Title Here*. He then shows it to their dad who believes it to be Claudia. Though Jason begins to suspect it might not have been Claudia since even though she trolls him, she usually does cop to her pranks.
The next day, Jason comes home to see the family dog Buzzy barking at the mirror. He's concerned, but nobody else thinks much of it. But you know, that could be a callback to how Dogs have acted around ghosts before in these books, but I doubt Stine thought of something like that like six years after last implementing it. Claudia does get in a good chance to scare Jason some more with a story she wrote about the mirror and how the reflection of a dead girl lived in the mirror, until she decided to get out and haunt the boy who lived in the house. This is interrupted when they hear Buzzy growling strangely. When Jason goes to check, the dog acts aggressive and his eyes are now black and almost demonic. Thankfully not hyper realistic.
Buzzy then attacks Jason, biting his throat and clawing him up. He's saved just in time by his dad who takes the dog away while Jason cleans up. The next day, while Jason and Fred are playing a nondescript hockey video game, they notice what appears to be Buzzy in the mirror. They try to get Claudia to look, but she doesn't see anything in the mirror. Jason leaves the room to get a snack, but returns to see Fred has now vanished as well. After looking some more, Jason gets attacked by a monster, who is of course Claudia. After that incident, Jason looks at the mirror some more, then hears a whimper that sounds like Buzzy.
The next day, Jason runs into Fred, who tries to make up an excuse as to why he left without telling him. In gym however, Jason is shocked to see that Fred, who once was terrible at sports, is now a living Mr. Perfect vignette. When Jason makes a comment that it was like he was possessed, Fred reacts in a concerned manner. And then he beats the hell out of Jason. So, this is two occasions where our protagonist is beaten to a bloody pulp. If this was Stine's swan song, he's going out in brutal fashion.
Jason heads home after the altercation and goes to bed to rest, only to see what appears to be something moving inside the mirror. He then sees a pair of shadowy figures that look like Buzzy and Fred. He doesn't think to tell anyone since he knows they'll think he's just being scared, since that has been well established at this point. Later that night, he hears what sounds like strange breathing noises coming from inside the mirror. When he checks the mirror, there's no reflection. Only darkness. Suddenly, Fred is seen in the mirror, cold and gray. He then grabs at Jason, who struggles to get free. Jason blacks out, then wakes up in his room.
Suddenly he sees his reflection in the mirror, gray like Fred's, telling him that he is Jason's ghost and that Jason is dead. He had died of fright. Well, at least this time it wasn't camera related. The ghost tells Jason to come into the mirror, but Fred and Buzzy warn him to stop just in time. And then Jason's ghost, in a fit or rage... bulges his eyes out into giant fly-like eyes, grows a three nostril bulb nose, a giant red tongue, a purple shell, and a pair of crab claws. Well, I'll give you credit Bob. I didn't see that coming.
The creature grabs Jason with one of its claws and pulls him into the mirror. Jason grabs a small hand mirror and tries to smash the monster with it, but there's no damage. The creature intends to take Jason's place on the outside, like what's happened with Fred and Buzzy. Jason's mirror reflects off the monster, and somehow it creates like, a dozen smaller crab monsters and like, I have no idea what's going on. He manages to escape in time, returning to the outside world. Jason then tries to convince his family about all this, but when he jumps at the mirror, he just bangs his arm.
However, it turns out things aren't going so well in the outside world. Mirror Buzzy escaped and is tearing through everything. Oh, and Mirror Fred is also causing mayhem, literally chucking cars over his head. Jason realizes that this isn't going to be fixed until he finds the real Fred and Buzzy, so he jumps into the mirror one more time. Jason falls into a strange room of mirrors. It's there where he finds Fred and Buzzy. And just to make sure it's the real Fred, he tries to punch him, only for Fred to cower. They eventually find their way to what looks like the way back to Jason's room, only for the entrance to be solid glass that they can't go through. Also they see Claudia stealing Jason's Game Boy, which got a chuckle out of me.
Jason uses his pocket mirror, which is strong enough to create a hole through the glass and the three finally escape. Buzzy and Fred take their leave. However, Jason is visited in his room by... Jason, who turns into the creature again. Jason uses the pocket mirror, only for it to get swiped from his hands. Jason then just leaps on the monster and rips its eyes out, which does the trick I guess. He shoves the monster into the mirror, then hurls a lamp at the mirror, which smashes to bits.
TWIST ENDING
In hindsight, Goosebumps ending when it did was for the best.
CONCLUSION
Although it was never intended to be the final book. Stine had planned on other books, including what would have been the 26th Series 2000 book, The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader, which was far enough in the works that Tim Jacobus had finished cover art for it, but the issues with Scholastic and Stine led to the inevitable. R.L. Stine left Scholastic, with this book and the final Give Yourself Goosebumps book All Day Nightmare being his last remnants for the majority of the first decade of the 2000s. Stine would attempt to bring Goosebumps back with Goosebumps Gold, but that ultimately didn't happen.
He would continue with horror books, including some standalone works, some other series like Mostly Ghostly and Rotten School, among other things. Ultimately, the Stines would give the rights to Goosebumps over to Scholastic and in 2003 both sides were amicable again. Then, in 2008, Stine would revive Goosebumps, and now in 2020, the franchise is still running. Honestly, the split was the best thing for Stine, as he would eventually limit his work from monthly to four books a year. And while my experience in the newer stuff has been mixed so far, it at least feels like a healthier and much more Jovial Bob Stine.
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