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The Ghost Next Door (1993) by R. L. Stine ⭐⭐⭐⭐
I read the ebook of The Ghost Next Door as part of a book club. Spoilers will be in this review.
Hannah is having a boring summer. All her friends are at camp, and (for some reason) she didn’t go this year. The summer seems so long, and she can’t figure out why her best friend isn’t writing her back, even though she said she would write every day.
What’s more, she notices a new boy, Danny, in the house next door. That house has been empty for a while, and it was so strange that neither she or her family had noticed the new family move in. They were just suddenly there! Hannah knows there is something strange going on.
The boy claims that he’s lived there for a while, and Hannah wonders why she hadn’t seen him at school if that was the case. Either way, instead of trying to just be friends with the one kid that’s not at camp this summer, she decides to stalk him. After her stalking sessions, Hannah comes to the conclusion that the family next door are ghosts!
Turns out she’s the ghost, and she has a black shadow that keeps following her everywhere. The black shadow claims to be Danny’s ghost, and says that when Danny dies, which will be soon, he will take his place as Danny. In the end, Danny is trapped in a house fire, and it is up to Hannah to save his life and make the spectre go away.
This is the 10th entry in the Goosebumps line of books, and it shows. It is one of the better books in the series. While not a perfect book, it is one of the more spooky ones. It also has a sad ending rather than the silly twist ending of which Stine became famous for. It is in third person, which is pretty rare for a Goosebumps book, as he eventually made them all first person as time went on.
I watched the Goosebumps episode for The Ghost Next Door, which is a two part episode. It was on ok episode, but it hardly followed any of the events that happened in the book. The ending and the beginning were basically the only things that actually happened, and there is a strange middle part where Hannah (spelled Hanna in this episode, for some reason) converses with the strange spectre, who shows her how to be a ghost. There is also a closeup of Hannah’s hands while she is typing a letter to her friend who is at camp, and she is hunt and pecking with her index fingers. That was so weird and annoying! Hannah also wakes up at what looks to be 5pm from a nightmare of her house on fire. No one is in the house, and there’s a note that says they’re all at a sporting event. Like I said, the episode is way different from the book.
I really liked The Ghost Next Door. I only wish it could have been a bit longer, so that the side story about the spectre being Danny’s ghost could have been fleshed out a little more. That part didn’t really make any sense at all.
Our next book in the book club will be Piano Lessons Can Be Murder. That post will be coming, so stay tuned!
