by Nelson
As much as I wanted this book to include a scene where a hooded ghost emerged from a grave, Ghost Beach is another example of a Goosebumps cover not quite matching the story within. At least a hammerhead shark makes a cameo appearance in Deep Trouble. There are ghosts in Ghost Beach, quite a lot of them actually, but, dammit, not a single one of them is wearing a cool cloak with a hood. But, cover nitpicks aside, Ghost Beach isn’t bad. There’s something about it that reminds me of an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark. That’s true of a few Goosebumps books, but it really hit me with this one. It’s another “pair of siblings go off to visit a relative” saga that also happens to feel a whole lot like Welcome to Dead House at the beach.
Jerry Sadler and his slightly younger sister Terri are spending part of their summer with their “distant cousins” Brad and Agatha. This isn’t an annual visit, the kids just don’t want to spend their whole summer in their parents’ apartment. As a matter of fact, they’re meeting their elderly cousins for the very first time, so you know what that means. There’s something unspeakable waiting for the brother and sister with names that rhyme to stumble upon. Almost immediately, they meet a trio of siblings – Sam, Louisa, and their younger brother Nat. Right after the introductions, we get the tale of the haunted beach. There’s a ghost who lives in a cave overlooking the area who makes a regular business of killing dogs and leaving their bones behind. Brad and Agatha change the subject whenever it comes up, but it seems to be the only subject Terri and Jerry’s new friends want to talk about. In addition to hearing about how you can see the evil spirit’s mysterious glowing lights of doom shining from his cave lair every night, the kids discover that every single person in the area shares their last name – including the ghost-obsessed trio they’ve been hanging out with. After they discover a cemetery full of nothing but Sadlers, Brad and Agatha tell the story of the Sadler Clan sailing to the area back in the 1600s and dying during the winter. Everyone around the place is a “distant cousin.” At this point, it’s a little obvious where this is all going.
But, of course, there’s also the matter of the cave ghost that the kids are obsessed with and the adults don’t want to talk about. Sam presents Jerry and Terri with a plan to seal the mean ol’ specter up forever and ever; of course, this plan relies entirely on Jerry and Terri lugging a bunch of rocks around to seal up the cave and requires absolutely nothing from the three kids who came up with the idea. Not only are this brother sister duo eager to learn the truth about the haunted beach, but they’re also really big fans of physical labor, so they’re down for the plan. But, when they get up to the cave, they meet an old guy who introduces himself as Harrison, and guess what? His last name is Sadler, too. He gives the would-be Ghostbusters the score: their new friends are the real ghosts, and he’s been living in a cave with his specter-sniffing dog because he figures that, if he lives in the cave long enough, he’ll get a chance to seal the evil spirits inside. So he’s a good guy – just a really, really passive one. Anyway, he proves that he’s telling the truth by directing the kids back to the cemetery where they discover that their three new pals have a pair of freshly dug graves just for them. We get a “who’s the real ghost?” confrontation in the cave that gets resolved by Harrison’s dog, and then Ghostly Sadlers pull out the tried and true flesh melting to reveal gruesome skulls routine and let their distant cousins know how much they want them to stay at the beach and hang out. Harrison triggers a cave-in and sacrifices himself to save the Living Sadlers and seal the Terrible Triad up forever and ever. Terri and Jerry head back home and tell their cousins the whole story. Then, Harrison’s dog shows back up and the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad truth is revealed: Brad and Agatha are ghosts too!! What’ll happen to our heroic duo next? No. One. Knows.
I guess it’s the old guy in the cave that makes me think of The Midnight Society. It’s just so easy to imagine him being Dr. Vink with a va-va-va, but, then again, Vink would’ve probably been a little more proactive than Harrison Sadler. All in all, I like the story even if it becomes glaringly obvious that Sam, Louisa, and Nat are the real ghosts by the time we hit the Cemetery of Sadlers. It brings back some of the more gruesome elements of the earlier books, so, in a lot of ways, it’s a breath of fresh air after mermaids and giant worms.
And as I stared at the three kids in the wavering light, they began to change.
Their hair dropped off first. It fell in clumps to the cave floor.
And then their skin peeled away, curling up and falling off—until three grinning skulls stared at Terri and me through empty eye sockets.
“Come stay with us, cousins!” Louisa’s skull whispered. Her bony fingers reached out toward us.
“Join usssss!” Sam hissed. His fleshless jaw slid up and down. “We dug such nice graves for you. So close to ours.”
“Play with me,” Nat’s skull pleaded. “Stay and play with me. I don’t want you to go. Ever!”
Doubtfire 