The Headless Ghost: A Headache of a Read?

The Headless Ghost is certainly one of the most ‘gory’ Goosebumps out there. It depicts a scene where a young boy’s head is ripped off his shoulders, offering more visceral imagery in contrast to the usual Goosebumps trope of not including elements that pertain to gore at all. The story also features references to mental illness, animal abuse and someone being burned alive. Whilst regular tropes of the horror genre, including these in a book aimed at an audience of 8 to 12-year-olds is definitely intriguing.

Curious to know more? Good. Read ahead!

Blurb

In Goosebumps instalment 37, we follow the story of two friends, Duane and Stephanie, whose past-time involves terrorizing their sleepy town’s residents with pranks. However, there is only one more place in Wheeler Falls which has to be classed as interesting – and that is Hill House, Wheeler Fall’s only tourist attraction.

Hill House is a favourite haunt of our two protagonists. They obsessively go on ghost tours there. Their favourite guide is called Otto, an elderly tour guide. He takes them throughout the house, telling the visitors about the various ghost legends associated with the house. The main story of the house is the one that tells the tale of the titular Headless Ghost.

According to folklore, a sea captain constructed the mansion for his wife, Annabel. When it was finally built, the captain was sent to sea, leaving his wife alone in the house as she waited for her husband to return. However, when the captain never returned, the wife deserted the house.

Residents of the town began to describe ghost sightings of a guy carrying a candle and calling for his wife as time passed. The Craw Family moved into the house, regardless of its history. Andrew, their son, was a bad kid who played pranks on others and generally created problems. Andrew discovered a chamber in the home one night. The ghost of the sea captain awaited him inside.

The ghost told Andrew that he couldn’t leave because they’d seen each other. The ghostly captain grabbed Andrew’s head and ripped it off, allegedly hiding it someplace in the house later. The captain left after this ordeal, leaving Andrew as the new ghost of Hill House, forever hunting for his missing head.

The kids, bored with their usual pranking of the town, aim to sneak inside Hill House and find the head of Andrew Craw. What they don’t know is that they may find more than they bargained for!

Themes in The Headless Ghost

A Ghost Story

Well, this is an obvious one. A ghost story is any work of fiction or drama that contains a ghost or merely takes the possibility of ghosts or characters’ belief in them as a premise. The ghost may materialise spontaneously or be summoned by magic. The concept of a “haunting”, in which a supernatural entity is linked to a location, object, or person, is linked to the ghost.

Stine’s take on the ghost story in The Headless Ghost emulates the tropes of the classic story, but may be argued to disregard others. England’s master of the ghost story, M. R. James, claimed there are a few rules by which successful ghost stories tend to follow.

The Headless Ghost offers no explanation as to why, because Andrew had seen the ghost of the old sea captain, he could not leave. This adheres to James’ rule of ‘no explanation of the machinery‘ – claiming that in the midst of terror in such stories, we “do not want to see the bones of [the] theory of the supernatural” at risk of losing the emotion of the scene.

In addition to this, in each of the ‘nested’ legends within this book, there is also the ‘pretence of truth‘. There are no disclaimers indicating that any of these stories are ‘just’ stories or ‘just’ legends. Mostly narrated in the present tense, this book also follows the rule of ‘those of the writer’s (and reader’s) own day’.

Where The Headless Ghost diverges from James’ rules is debatable (‘no gratuitous bloodshed’). Yes, the book tells of decapitation, being burned alive, and literally presents us with organs on a platter. But it is done in such a way that does not use excessive description of viscera and gore.

This is not splatterpunk in the slightest. However, the demise of these people as told in the history of the house does invite the imagination to see what the writing infers. A question to you the reader, when you imagine a head being pulled off does it just pop off cleanly like a bottle cap? Probably not.

A note on how this book reminds me of the Jamesian ghost story. Whilst Duane and Stephanie are not academics searching for forbidden knowledge as such, curiosity does put them in danger. This is a recurrent theme in M. R. James’ works.

Very often ghost stories are told as morality tales – and this is somewhat the case for The Headless Ghost. Without going into too many details – as I promised no spoilers – the kids do not remain unchanged from their spooky encounters.

Anthology or Nested Stories

This novella tells many stories, connected by one over-arching narrative. This is common in ghost stories that feature a house that is haunted, where the reader learns of the tragic events or horror that happened in the same area before their discovery of the place.

This book reminded me somewhat of the League of Gentlemen Christmas Special (2000), the seasonal instalment of the black-comedy series which first aired on the small screen in 1999. When Vicar Bernice is compelled to listen to three spooky Christmas stories recounted by her parishioners, she has an unforgettable and terrifying Christmas Eve.

Albeit, this only reminds me in the sense that the stories are nested. Each story takes up a large portion of the total run-time, whereas, in the traditional haunted house sense, the legends do not usually take up large portions of the narrative. In the case of this Goosebumps book, the stories do not completely dominate the encompassing tale.

Summary

In complete contrast to Go Eat Worms!, the plot feels like it is heading in a defined direction. A little complexity is added to this book through the use of nested stories, however, this does not dilute the main narrative of the book. Like the aforementioned Worms, the imagery conveyed in this book is vivid (within the context of a book for kids!) – however it is more shocking, rather than gross.

I can imagine that this would be a scary read for kids. As an adult who loves scare experiences, Most Haunted and ghostlore in general – I really enjoyed this book.