Goosebumps: The Haunted Mask was originally published on September, 1993 (Spine #11). The series adaptation later aired on Friday October 27, 1995 (runtime: 44 minutes).
The hands on the clock were turning progressively slower, I was sure of it. They had to be. How else could that particular Friday afternoon be lasting so incredibly long? In defiance, I eyed the thing incessantly, glaring at the numbers on its face as though they were an affront to my very existence. They may as well have been, after all, it was those handful of roman numerals that were responsible for keeping me in school, holding me back from the television event that I had been looking forward to since the moment the thirty second commercial spot had first clued me in to the upcoming series’ existence during one fateful X-Men the Animated Series ad break.
Somehow, to my surprise, the bell did eventually ring and, like magic, time seemed to shift from the pace of a snail to that of a rocket, propelling me home and landing me squarely in front of the television. A bevy of snacks lay across the coffee table and quickly my friends filtered in. This was not something I wanted to watch alone, after all. This was an event of epic proportions. The very thing that had ignited our imaginations, consumed much of our conversations and, truly, sent no small degree of shivers down our collective spines was about to manifest in the real world, regardless of how many times the commercials had warned, “Viewer beware…”
Indeed, they had turned Goosebumps into a TV show.
In the thirty years that have transpired since the first Goosebumps book creeped its way onto unsuspecting shelves in 1992, there was rarely a moment where the franchise’s popularity and impact had been so acutely felt than when it first appeared onscreen. From the series’ playfully unique rating system (i.e. GB-7: Goosebumps fans years 7 or older) to its R.L. Stine led intros and outros, it felt as much an extension of the books as it did the next step forward in their impressionable young readers’ journey into horror fandom.
And there was no better way to kick off the series than with an extended, late-October Halloween special, bringing to life one of Goosebumps’ most iconic tomes: The Haunted Mask. With the orange glow of dusk on the horizon and the streets painted with the reds, oranges and yellows of fallen leaves, my friends and I settled in with bowls of Goldfish, Cheez-its and enough Mountain Dew to power an epic middle school all-nighter. It was time to see Goosebumps leap off the page and I don’t think there was a fan out there that wasn’t waiting with bated breath to see just how they were going to do it.
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The Story
Carly Beth is a “scaredy cat”. Everyone thinks so: her best friend Sabrina, her little brother Noah, and especially Steve and Chuck, the two boys at school who spend their time trying to torment her. And when those two boys put a worm in her sandwich and the whole school cafeteria laughs her out of the room, she decides it’s time for revenge.
Once home, Carly Beth discovers her mother has created a plaster cast of her own face, painted with lifelike detail. And yet there’s something about the delicate nature of her features and the fragility of the piece that further sparks Carly Beth’s desire to be the opposite of how she’s perceived. She wants to be scary. Terrifying even. Carly Beth wants to inflict fear onto the world that’s always been so keen on frightening her.
Carly Beth finds herself in the new costume shop in town as Halloween night falls, desperate for a mask as scary as her imagination can fathom. It’s in the back room of the shop that she finally sees it. A hideous mask, housed with several others, all demented in their own grotesque ways. Despite the protests from the owner of the shop, he finally concedes and lets her take the mask. When she wears it she feels powerful, her physical form seems to adjust to meet the mask’s odd shape and all who encounter her are petrified.
It’s everything Carly Beth wanted. But it changes her. She steadily grows as cruel as the fear she’s eliciting and as the night draws on she might lose more than her friends. All too quickly, Carly Beth comes to realize that this particular mask doesn’t come off when you pull at its seams. That is, if there are any seams at all.
The Haunted Mask came early in the Goosebumps run, offering up a truly terrifying thought: what if a mask could do more than conceal your identity… What if it could become your identity? Taking place almost entirely on Halloween night, it’s a quick, breezy read full of Halloween iconography and moody sentiment that pervades all 121 pages and 29 chapters of this R.L. Stine classic.
The Adaptation
Jack Lenz’s eerie, playful theme greets wary viewers as a man garbed all in black steps briskly into frame. In his hand is a briefcase, marked with the letters R.L. Stine stamped in gold, which promptly bursts open, releasing its mysterious pages into an otherworldly wind as the man stops and surveys a small town in the near distance. The elongated shadow of the letter G emerges into the sky, passing over buildings and one unsuspecting family dog, until it arrives at the front door of what could be any house (your house, perhaps), wherein images from upcoming episodes flash quickly by accompanied by the whispered threat of what is to come: “Goosebumps… Viewer beware, you’re in for a scare.”
It’s then that R.L. Stine— the real R.L. Stine— introduces himself and the story that’s about to be told. His presence and words of fatherly caution regarding one of his favorite stories sets the stage and imbues the proceedings with a sense of pomp and circumstance only the creator himself could author.
Separated into two regular length episodes, The Haunted Mask Part I opens as the book does, in the middle of a conversation between Carly Beth and her best friend Sabrina. Although here, instead of the school cafeteria, the girls’ conversation is occurring while they take a late night stroll to the pumpkin patch. Not only does the change allow for an infusion of dark, misty, October atmosphere, it allows them to pass the mysterious new novelty shop, introducing the source of the titular mask physically onscreen as opposed to its passing mention in conversation in the book. Plus, the eerie shopkeeper, in the book with a strange growth on his face, makes an appearance here, unbeknownst to the two girls, providing a more malevolent overseer to the proceedings than what the page has to offer.
Carly Beth, as she is in the book, is jumpy and constantly looking over her shoulder, but under the night sky in a pumpkin patch comprised of the season’s rejected, misshapen leftovers, her trepidation and sense of whimsical terror is all the more relatable. Chuck and Steve turn up here as well, two boys from school that make it their mission to relentlessly terrify Carly Beth, leaping from the brush in pumpkin masks and scaring Carly Beth out of her wits. All in all, the sequence is a quick, effective introduction to the story’s major players and renders the opening scene in the school cafeteria somewhat moot. Still, almost the entire cafeteria sequence ends up included in the episode, transposed to the next day, so, at the very least, completists need not worry.
Carly Beth returns home that night in a sequence that mirrors the text as well. While in the book she has just returned home from a day of embarrassment at school, here she’s home from the pumpkin patch and her scare at the hands of Chuck and Steve. Once home, she’s quickly intercepted by her mother who shows Carly Beth a plaster sculpture she’s made of her daughter’s likeness, a thing Carly Beth doesn’t hesitate to call creepy, before placating her mother and heading to her room. She opens the door and is accosted by her brother Noah who, as in the book, runs toward her in a duck costume of their mother’s own design quacking incessantly. Carly Beth screams, in what was a chapter break on the page, and Noah laughs, reprising the familiar refrain that Carly Beth is a “scaredy cat”.
While the show does excise a subplot regarding a science fair, wherein we might’ve seen a functional robot arm, toxic waste and watched as Carly Beth was tricked into thinking an escaped tarantula was gnawing on her leg, the episode does circle back to the opening of the book. On the page, the boys offer her a sandwich that they claim is “too dry” which Carly Beth takes in earnest. The show handles this exchange more realistically, with the boys sneaking the worm into Carly Beth’s existing sandwich, choosing not to ask the viewer to believe that Carly Beth would take anything from the two boys and actually eat it with trust in her eyes.
Instead of an inciting event, the worm takes the place of the tarantula at the science fair as being the last straw. Back in her room, Carly Beth gathers her life savings of thirty dollars and decides to head to the new novelty shop, intent on purchasing the most frightening mask she can find. In the show, she also destroys the duck costume, tapping into her repressed rage in a way the book only hints at. In the book, the shop is closed when she arrives, leaving her to gaze in longingly through the darkened windows, ultimately being surprised by a shadow which turns out to be a soft spoken man in a cape with a pencil thin black mustache and tiny black eyes. In the show, forgoing meekness for intimidation, the shop owner is more brusque, speaking in a thick accent, raised tones and garbed in a black shirt with a red tie. He has no mustache but instead sports an odd disfigurement on his cheek.
The book describes the masks of Freddy Krueger, E.T., Uncle Fester and Frankenstein on the shelf, but the show opts out of the licensing complications and goes for a more homegrown route. Designed by Ron Stefaniuk and a team of special effects designers, the masks are all original and have an organic, regional feel that adds to the spooky magic of the small shop. And yet, just as she does on the page, Carly Beth finds her way to a back room where the true terrors are housed. The book describes two dozen masks kept under the haze of a pale orange light. Two shelves of incredibly realistic grotesquery that offered a nail through an eye, chunks of rotting skin, insects burrowing through teeth and more. The show offers one row of six masks, all frightening in their own way, but less because of their more disgusting elements and more because of the odd sense of life the flabby, snarling things seemed to embody.
In both the book and the show, the mask seems to react to Carly Beth, but is interrupted by the shop owner. In the book he apologizes for startling her and calmly tells her the masks are not for sale. Carly Beth is defiant and demanding, but the shop owner holds his ground, noting that the mask is too scary and he could not take on the “responsibility” of selling it. He debates with himself and seems to lose a battle waging in his mind before finally handing the mask to Carly Beth with a warning that she will be sorry. There’s a strong sense of the mask’s influence both on the shop owner’s inability to hold his ground and Carly Beth’s selfish arrogance present in the scene, alluding to the terrors to shortly follow.
In the show, the shopkeeper shouts, “I SAID NO!” He communicates much of the same information, but he is visibly upset. Carly Beth stammers in his presence but refuses to take no for an answer, less out of arrogance it seems than the belief that this mask is the only way to frighten Chuck and Steve. Finally, Carly Beth grabs the mask and throws her money at the shop owner, eloping with the mask and into the night. Strikingly out of character, again, the act shows the mask’s growing influence on Carly Beth whether she’s wearing it or not.
The book and the show match up fairly closely after this, with Carly Beth heading home, intent to try the mask out on her brother Noah. Excised is the unnamed “old heavy metal song” that Noah was listening to on the page, but included is the gruff, loud and evil voice that issues from Carly Beth when the mask is on her head. She scares him and quickly discovers that the mask won’t come off. While she does manage to remove the mask a moment later, the experience disturbs her brother Noah further still. Rather than see this as a potential omen, Carly Beth takes stock of her brother’s fear, which only strengthens her resolve to petrify Chuck and Steve.
The book and the show play out in tandem for a time, following Carly Beth as she evades her mother and affixes the plaster copy of her head to a broom pole so that she can parade as the creature that decapitated that “scaredy cat” Carly Beth. The mask, described in the book as having a broad flat nose and forehead with jagged animal fangs, looks sufficiently creepy and even seems to form fit to her face when she puts it on in a lifelike way (four different masks were created for the episode, each progressively a tighter fit than the last). While Carly Beth is depicted as running through the night’s festivities, the book calls out decorations and costumes in detail, mentioning Freddy Krueger for a second time here, suggesting that R.L. Stine wanted his spooky world to exist in a place where all of horror’s greatest icons could be well represented.
While the show does depict her accosting two kids on the way to Sabrina’s, it removes the presence of their mother, who demanded to know Carly Beth’s name and address. The book provides Carly Beth’s internal thoughts, namely her desire to “chew her to bits” and devour “the skin off her bones” all while the mask grew tighter around her skin. In the show, it feels more like a moment of Carly Beth getting a taste of the thrill she was so sure Chuck and Steve got from frightening her, but on the page it suggests far deeper reaching consequences. This is something that continues when Sabrina joins her shortly thereafter, inquiring about the mask leading to Carly Beth’s aggressive reaction of “Shut up!” and wrapping her hands around Sabrina’s throat.
In the book this moment concludes Chapter 15 and in the show it marks the conclusion of the episode. The Haunted Mask Part II picks up with Carly Beth playing the act off as if it were a joke, as she does in the book, and Sabrina, though angry, assumes positive intent. The book offers more holiday dressing than the show, depicting Carly Beth and Sabrina’s trick or treating shenanigans, including throwing apples at a house that didn’t give out candy and frightening yet more young children while angering their mothers. Carly Beth is more apologetic in the show, repeatedly telling Sabrina it’s the mask that’s forcing her to act out as she is. Such remorse is nowhere to be found in the book as Carly Beth is so mean spirited that she even begins to use her frightening prowess to steal other kids’ candy, causing her to feel “good and strong”.
In the book Carly Beth finally finds Chuck and Steve walking down the road. The show transports them, most fittingly, to a foggy cemetery, bathed in bluish light. Dressed as pirates, they dance around the graves and spill out their candy upon a headstone to have a look at the night’s winnings. The book has Carly Beth crouch behind a hedge, her raspy breathing loud in anticipation as her anger mounts before she finally steps out and shrieks at them, a monstrous roar that echoes through the night, stopping the boys dead in their tracks. In the show, Carly Beth moves through the cemetery unnoticed, steadily creeping toward her prey.
Director Timothy Bond employs a POV shot through the eye holes in her mask, effectively evoking Halloween (1978) and any number of subsequent slashers that have adopted the technique. She emerges from the shadows and the boys are caught completely off guard. In the book, Carly Beth brandishes the head and dismisses their assumption that it is she who lies behind the mask, informing them that the girl at the end of the stick is Carly Beth. Then she demands that they hand over their candy, or it is their heads which will end up at the end of a sharp stick.
The show, once more abandoning the conceit that Carly Beth altogether transforms into the worst kind of bully beneath the mask, depicts her scolding the two boys for their cruelty and demanding that they apologize to the decapitated head of the girl they were so callous toward. It’s then, in both the show and the book, that the plaster head comes to life and utters the words, “Help me.” In the book, the boys run away and Carly Beth drops the pole in horror causing the head to roll under the hedge and out of sight. In the show, Carly Beth’s resolve only strengthens. She howls at the moon and then buries the head beneath a large gravestone, with the farewell, “Buh-bye scaredy cat!”
Still, in the book Carly Beth assumes that she was just taken in by her own palpable ability to frighten while in the mask and continues forward into the night, as written, “blowing through the wind like a helpless leaf.” It’s here that, in both iterations, Carly Beth once again meets up with Sabrina. In the book, the two girls chat and Sabrina talks animatedly about her own night, ultimately following them both back to Sabrina’s house where they take inventory on their respective candy hauls. In the show, Sabrina is more concerned, asking first if Carly Beth found Chuck and Steve and immediately after inquiring disconcertingly, “you didn’t hurt them, did you?”
The book and the screen mirror one another closely as Carly Beth moves to finally take off her mask at Sabrina’s house. Starting with a simple tug, it isn’t long before Sabrina attempts to find the mask line in an effort to pull the rubbery thing off of her friend. No bottom, no line, no separation of rubber and skin. Carly Beth’s emotion is pitched high in both versions, shouting the same horrified reactions. Her eyes are not her own. The puckered skin looked alien to her. She runs from Sabrina’s, back into the night and to the only place that she can think to go for answers: the novelty shop.
In the book, Carly Beth has to deal with the initial disappointment of finding a dark and empty store before slamming her fist on the window and stirring the figure who loomed inside. In the show she walks right in, finding the man whom she stole from waiting patiently: “I was expecting you.” In both versions, the shop owner explains that he knows she can’t take it off, although in the book, the man is far more forlorn and empathetic. It’s explained that the faces were created in the man’s lab and were once beautiful. In the book, the man says that it was being taken out of the lab that changed them. In the show, he suggests that they were always going to decay, that nothing could stop that and his experiment was ultimately a failure.
In both versions, the shop owner labels these masks as “the Unloved Ones”. The show takes it further, providing the insight that the masks were created for the man to wear, he acknowledges the strange growth on his cheek and says that even now the mask he wears is turning and will soon end up on the shelf— a backstory that the book does not delve into. Still, both versions tell her that an act of love is what can remove the mask, with the added warning that should it ever attach itself again, it will be forever.
In the book, Carly Beth loses her temper, screams and shouts and pounds on the man’s chest. As a result, the remaining masks awaken, licking their lips, moving their eyes, bobbing and breathing heavily as they slowly rise into the air. In the show, Carly Beth’s reaction comes after the shop owner threatens to show her his true face so that she might appreciate what she once had. The heads come after her, described in the book as a “chorus of frogs”, chasing her through town and, in the show, even calling after her “Join us Carly Beth…”
Both versions feature her realization that the plaster head is a symbol of love, following her back to the hedge and cemetery respectively. While the book adds an extra degree of tension when Carly Beth finds the head missing from below the hedge, it quickly resolves with the plaster piece turning up nearby nestled under a tree. In the show Carly Beth knows exactly where it is buried, leading to her unearthing it and brandishing it before the disembodied masks floating after her while she shouts, “Go away!” In the book the heads swarm her, far more in number than in the show, and, without thinking, she lowers the plaster head atop her own, inexplicably donning it as a mask.
While she could not see beneath the plaster, the Carly Beth of the book wondered if she was destined to become what the shop keeper had so unceremoniously dubbed one of “the Unloved Ones”. After a moment, she found the plaster head in her lap. The heads had all dispersed and suddenly she felt a flapping against her throat in the cool night air. It was the mask, rubbery and limp, and she was able to pull it off without struggle. The show offers a more streamlined approach as after dispelling the floating heads, with the plaster replica of her face still in her hands, she said forcefully, “just a mask… it’s just a mask.” After that, the face peels off of her own without issue.
Both versions follow her home afterward and arrive at the same conclusion. Upon arrival, Noah shouts for Carly Beth to take off her mask, causing a brief scare which quickly reveals itself to be yet another of his childish pranks. Worried, Carly Beth’s mom asks her to the kitchen to explain where she’s been and why she seems so upset, but not before Noah enters the room now wearing the mask and calling in a raspy voice, “Look at me! How do I look in your mask?” in the book and “Trick or treat” on the screen.
R.L. Stine appears once more to give final word on the story, on what he’s dubbed as his favorite book and, over the years since, his favorite episode of the TV show as well. He informs the viewer that he’s going to ask his family if what was just shown was too scary. The camera pans and reveals an older couple, their expressions silently aghast and their hair white, standing comically on end. Stine appears once more and closes the affair with macabre sincerity, “have a scary day, everyone.”
Final Thoughts
As the credits rolled and the conversation started, I couldn’t help but feel elated at the thought of so many future possibilities. Carly Beth’s story had been brought to life, the living mask realized before our very eyes, and it seemed only a matter of time before some of our other favorites might show up to haunt us through the television’s glowing glass lens. My friends and I spent the next few hours pitching which books the show should adapt next, offering ideas at how to approach them, what to leave in or cut out and even suggesting prequel or sequel stories that had never shown up in print, like one of my buddy’s ideas for a Night of the Living Dummy Mr. Wood prequel that would rival even Slappy’s penchant for nastiness.
Like Are You Afraid of the Dark? before it, Goosebumps offered digestible scares for an audience old enough to be drawn toward such things but young enough to be kept at arm’s length from them. Goosebumps carried its self-aware attitudes, goofball sensibilities and over-the-top monstrous set pieces from the page to the screen in a manner that felt as natural as the words on the page, and it became an instant favorite the moment I saw the mysterious papers leap from R.L. Stine’s briefcase in an effort to inject fear into the unsuspecting inhabitants of the world in their wake.
The adaptation adheres closely to the book, while still putting its own distinct mark on the story. Small alterations, such as Carly Beth’s mean-streak turning to one more built upon targeted revenge and adjusting power dynamics, leads to a more engaging experience overall. While the book has the time to help the reader adjust to Carly Beth’s antics, explaining in great detail why she thinks and does what it is that she does, the show plays to its strengths and provides a more immediately involving path toward empathizing with Carly Beth that better serves her journey through that particularly dark and scary Halloween night.
It’s the kind of episode that serves as a thesis statement to what the series would become. An entity that loves and trusts the source material it’s pulling from, but one unafraid to forge its own, unique path through the text it’s beholden to. Smart, subversive and both playing to and against expectations, Goosebumps immediately set a new standard in spooky children’s programming.
And I could think of no better way to kick off such a series than with a simple, atmospheric story that not only embodied the holiday most associated with horror but with a young character struggling to find her identity, her voice and her strength in a world so intent on denying her such agency. With a kid every adolescent could relate to, iconic effects imagery and one of the fan’s most beloved books at the forefront, Goosebumps hit the ground running and not only proved its viability as a series but ensured that Stine fans would see it as an essential component of the Goosebumps universe.
Watching the clock at school almost never yielded the desired result, but still, every Friday from then on out, I couldn’t help but follow the small ticking hands with anxious eyes. Sure, the weekend was always something to look forward to, but it wasn’t the prospect of two school-less days that had my pupils glued to time’s slowly marching tines. Rather, it was the thought that, in only a handful of hours, there I’d be once more, sitting on the floor in front of my television and waiting for the start of those quirky notes that ushered in a man in black along with his not-so-tightly sealed briefcase.
There was a Goosebumps TV show after all and, after seeing The Haunted Mask, I was never going to miss a second of it, beware or not.
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