The Haunted Mask (Goosebumps) vs. Evil Elizabeth (Sweet Valley Twins)

The Haunted Mask is the 11^th book in the Goosebumps series by R. L. Stine. It was originally published in 1993, and I would argue that it is the quintessential Halloween book of this genre. Carly Beth is a shy, mousy, and easily frightened girl who is often the target of mean-spirited pranks because she is easy to scare and kids can be jerks. Two kids in her class, Chuck and Steve are notoriously unkind to Carly Beth, at one point going so far as to give her a sandwich with a live worm in it (seriously, that’s messed up!). In classic Stine fashion, this prank renders Carly Beth blood thirsty and desperate for revenge. ‘Tis the season after all! I find the next bit to be some of Stine’s best writing: Carly Beth is upset and talks to her mom about it. During this scene, it is revealed that her mother created a model of her face out of plaster of Paris and has found a duck costume for her based on a passing comment that Carly Beth had made about liking ducks. Carly Beth feels disappointed because she wanted to dress as something scary and not baby-ish, which I really get given all of the bullying that she is enduring. Her mom is quite kind, and Carly Beth is a bit snippy and ungrateful, which she then feels guilty about. Honestly, I thought this was a really good depiction of the tensions of adolescence (Note: I feel like Stine phones in a lot of his writing, but over the course of this series, I think that he often does a spectacular job of capturing how hard it can feel to be a kid). Bloodthirsty Carly Beth heads to the new Halloween costume shop (with her “life savings” of $30, which I find to be a really charming detail), intent on finding the perfect mask with which to scare Chuck and Steve. She stumbles upon the secret revolting masks in the backroom and insists on buying one. Originally the shopkeeper is like, “NO! These are far too scary!” Carly Beth insists she must have one, and the shopkeeper ultimately agrees to sell her one (As I recall, in the television episode she quasi-steals the mask, but I think it is important to let the record show that in the book, he willingly sells it to her with nothing but the vaguest of warnings). Long story short, as she wears the mask on Halloween night, she becomes a menace, terrifying children all over town and stealing their candy. A particularly iconic detail is that she takes the plaster of Paris model of her head and places it on a stick, friggin’ waving her piked head all over the place. She successfully scares the pants off of Chuck and Steve (and steals their candy in the process). Honestly, even though she is obviously possessed by the dark powers of the mask at this point, I’m rooting for her hardcore, and I am particularly fond of the moment where she threatens to put their heads on pikes too, just as this unidentifiable, harrowing creature had supposedly done to poor Carly Beth. Total icon. All good things must come to an end, and Carly Beth becomes alarmed when she cannot remove the mask. This goes on for quite a while. She finds the shopkeeper again. He tells her that the mask is actually a real, living face that he had created that became grotesque over time (the science on all of this is a tiny bit unclear). He gives her some vague clues about “symbols of love” and tells her that if she does manage to get the mask off thanks to his cryptic, unhelpful advice, that it’ll permanently adhere to the next face that wears it. All of the other masks in the back room start to chase Carly Beth for reasons that are a wee bit murky to me. Spoiler: She realizes that the model of her face is a “Symbol of Love,” and then in a real, multi-layered Carly Beth face sandwich Russian nesting doll simulation, she puts the replica of her face over her mask (which is already over her face). Good thinking, CB! I’d have been fucked if I was in this situation. Never would’ve thought to do that. It works great. The other masks leave her alone and she successfully removes the mask. She returns home, much to the relief of her anxious mother who has been waiting up for her. Just as things are starting to look up, her younger brother appears from the other room wearing the mask. (Reminder: The shopkeeper had warned CB that the next person who put on the mask was screwed). I get that Carly Beth was flustered after that ordeal, but it may have been wise for her to have more cautiously disposed of such a dangerous facial covering. But alas, she didn’t. Bad news, little guy!

Honestly, I thought this book was fantastic. I’ve read it a few times over the years, at least once as a child and most recently in 2022. I’ve seen the episode more times and have conflated the two in my mind. Honestly, the biggest difference to me with the book was that the shopkeeper willingly (admittedly under a bit of pressure) sold the mask to Carly Beth. Seriously, someone call the Better Business Bureau on this guy. Vague warnings are not sufficient when selling such a dangerous and demonically-possessed product to a young child. Also, if you know you are in possession of a dozen highly cursed artifacts, maybe don’t make them so easily accessible in your horror shop. I will give the guy credit though, he manages a really cool store, and Stine did a good job of world-building here (Things Stine is really good at: Depicting pre-teen feelings and creepy edifices). One other comparison to the episode: Though the science is still vexing, the episode did a better job articulating why the heck the dude made these faces to begin with (That gets real glossed over in the book. Like really, who the hell is this guy? How and why did he make these faces? How did he pivot from mad scientist to shopkeeper? Why does he fail to take even the most basic precautions to keep his community safe?). Ultimately, I refuse to think of Carly Beth as a victim of a curse. Carly Beth is a queen, and I am glad she chose to take control of her own power.

I will be contrasting The Haunted Mask against Evil Elizabeth, a Sweet Valley Twins Super Chiller novel by Francine Pascal published in 1995 (two years after the Haunted mask). Allow me to present to you an excerpt from the back of the book summary: “Everyone thinks of Elizabeth Wakefield as the nice twin. That’s why she loves her Halloween mask—it’s so scary that no one can believe Elizabeth is behind it. But her appearance isn’t the only thing that changes when Elizabeth puts the mask on—little by little it makes Elizabeth act evil.” So okay, this is not so subtly a flagrant Haunted Mask rip-off, right? The question, then, is: Did the SVT series perfect the art form or merely create a pale imitation? We open with Elizabeth rewriting Christmas songs with Halloween lyrics, producing such bangers as “Pumpkin Bells” and “Oh, Pumpkin Vine.” This is a strong opening for me, as someone who remembers redrafting the lyrics to “Silent Night” for Halloween (if I recall correctly it went something like this: “Silent night. Scary night. All is calm. All is fright.” Truly a stroke of brilliance from young Briana.) Anyway, as per usual, the twins are being themselves. Namely, Elizabeth is a slightly patronizing goody two shoes and Jessica is a meanie bo beanie, telling Elizabeth that all of her interests are baby-ish. Early on we get a subplot where Jessica’s rich friend Lila pretends to limp. This is never explained nor is there any payoff of any kind, so I’ll assume that content is in there to get to the inflated Super Chillers minimum word count. As with any good spooky story in one of these expansive series, the main crew stumbles upon a haunted edifice that has never been mentioned before this book or since, “The Old Luna Place.” Despite this never having been mentioned before, everyone in this book knows a ton about it and is very terrified by it. Probably a witch lives there. Probably haunted. Definitely avoid. But wait, maybe they shouldn’t avoid? They contemplate how great it would be to throw a Halloween party there. But wait—remember a few books ago when they threw a Halloween party in another cursed structure in Sweet Valley? The gang does not appear to remember that. If I were them, I would consider the following pieces of information helpful in this moment: 1). Last time they threw a Halloween party in a cursed house, they disrupted the spirits and the house collapsed. 2). While they do not own or have access to this house, Limping Lila’s rich father owns droves of haunted properties that they could use, assuming that they did not learn any obvious lessons about disturbing spirits from their last ill-fated party. I can’t tell if the seeming lack of trauma from last year’s disaster is a sign of very effective or very ineffective mental health care. Back to the present- Did you know that luna means moon? If you didn’t, this is a book that is very committed to teaching you outer space facts with a special emphasis on moon info. Why go to the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum when you’ve got this book at your disposal? A lot of space stuff is going on here. In addition to the Luna Place having some sort of moon connection, twins Elizabeth and Jessica keep seeing (hallucinating?) the moon doing wild things (rapidly shrinking and growing; turning blood red; crying; looking like the face of the dog that spit out the mask, etc.), and their older brother Steven has descended into some sort of astronomy hyperfixation, constantly and condescendingly discussing all of the things he knows about outer space to anyone who will listen. One of my favorite scenes is of the parents trying to be polite as Steven regales them with space facts when they very clearly need to get going to work. Given how important moon stuff ends up being to this plot, it is very convenient that Steven, a character who generally has hardly any personality at all, has become so knowledgeable on this matter (seriously, this is like a totally different dude than we’ve previously met through the last 100 books). As with any good Halloween book, the twins host a slumber party featuring a séance. One of the girls, possessed by some sort of ancient spirit, warns the other slumber partiers to beware of sisters. As you might imagine, this is concerning to our protagonist twin sisters (Chekhov’s Sisters). Unfortunately, the warning lacks the necessary specificity to be helpful. Well, Elizabeth needs to run some sort of errand and runs into a dog in front of the Old Luna Place. The dog spits out a horrifying mask before running back to the Luna property, and Elizabeth is all like, yeah, shrug, I’ll put this regurgitated mask onto my face, no worries. But actually- there is a lot to worry about. Elizabeth, not surprisingly based on the title, becomes Evil Elizabeth, when she wears the mask, insulting her friends and family, and even going so far as to trip her sister when she is carrying a tray of lasagna. Gasp! Very bad! Very non-Elizabeth. She starts wearing the mask all the time (like, it does get a little bit weird how much she is wearing it. Not to mention, I’m really hoping she sanitized it before wearing it became her entire personality). You know things are bad when Jessica (who had been rejecting all of pre-mask Elizabeth’s suggestions for Halloween as baby-ish) suggests that they carve pumpkins together and Masked Elizabeth mocks her, storming out of the room. Poor Jessica sadly carves a pumpkin all by herself. You can tell she is sad because she carves a Jack-O’-Lantern with a frown and tears streaming down its lil pumpkin face. Unmasked Elizabeth returns later with no memory of any of this, sad that Jessica carved a pumperz without her (Uh oh!). Jessica becomes more and more concerned and seeks wisdom from the Old Luna Place (because why not?). While wandering around the grounds, someone places their hand over her mouth and pulls her inside (double Uh oh!). This is really scary! Oh good news, it is just the witch (probably?) who lives in the Old Luna Place. The witch says lots of cryptic and ominous things about the mask (honestly, everybody is probably pretty doomed, it seems). Despite the kidnappy energy of this scene, I think we are getting some lesson here about not judging the residents of spooky Sweet Valley houses before we really get to know them (Note: This is not the first SVT book with precisely this lesson; See: SVT #3, The Haunted House). I really don’t know why the witch had to behave so kidnappishly; she probably could’ve just invited Elizabeth inside for a chat. There’s also some business about the witch looking sadly at family portraits that also feels simultaneously ominous, important, and vague. Gotta be honest- So far, our witch seems remorseful, kind-hearted, and not super helpful. Meanwhile Masked Elizabeth is still on her bender of chaos, mocking her friends as they try to come up with fun Halloween costume ideas for a group of three (Note: These costume ideas are brilliant and include such innovative options as a three way mirror and a tricycle). A subplot that I find funny in all of this is that Elizabeth is all evil and shit, and every time she does something bad, someone, including Jessica, thinks: “Elizabeth sounds just like Jessica right now.” This is not the first time in SVT that super natural forces try to demonstrate for Jessica how evil she can be using some variation of twin swap technology, but alas, it doesn’t seem to work based on some of her later antics in Sweet Valley High (such as when she breaks up the engagement of a terminally ill woman at her wedding and when she drugs her sister’s drink and allows her to face DUI charges for the subsequent fatal car accident she caused by being unknowingly intoxicated behind the wheel). Anyway, Halloween rolls around and Elizabeth is pulling all sorts of evil business, running around town in her mask, menacing children by scaring them and stealing their candy (some of these scenes are straight out of The Haunted Mask). To her credit, Jessica is doing the Lord’s work trying to save Elizabeth from the malevolent mask overlord. She is zipping all over town on her bike trying to crack the case. Subsequent visits to the witch highlight that the full moon will be crucial to this curse in some vaguely defined way (basically, if Elizabeth is wearing the mask during a full moon, it’ll be real bad. How do we stop this? ::Shrug::). I start to worry that Elizabeth might murder her whole family based on how the witch keeps sadly gazing over at her family portraits as she talks about the curse. Indeed, the witch reveals that her entire family perished in a mask-related fire. Despite this first-hand traumatic experience, the witch has only vague recommendations for what Jessica might be able to do. I guess, only Elizabeth can save herself? The mask does some real Night of the Living Dummy shit, reappearing no matter how hard Jessica tries to hide it, bury it, destroy it, etc. Jessica even considers eating the mask, which I really appreciate. Halloween night will feature a full moon, because of course it will (Note: Full moons fall on Halloween every 18-19 years in real life, but approximately 100% of book Halloweens take place during full moons), and Jessica devises a plot to get Elizabeth to destroy the mask beneath the full moon on Halloween night (the plan is murky to me, but honestly, our girl is doing the best she can with the paltry information she’s got). BUT WILL JESSICA BE ABLE TO EXECUTE THE PLAN ON TIME? Spoiler: Masked Elizabeth, tired of terrorizing young children, decides to chuck Jessica’s sad, weeping pumpkin onto a pile of leaves. The pumpkin has a lit candle in it, so immediately things start to become ablaze. It’s looking like the family home may burn down, killing everyone Elizabeth loves, but WAIT! A tiny bit of Elizabeth’s pure soul begins to re-emerge. Meanwhile, Jessica arrives just in the nick of time, putting out the fire with a garden hose. Phew! But before the flames fully die out, Elizabeth throws the mask into the fire, dramatically destroying it. Such a relief! That could have been real bad! The book ends with the twins thinking about how they can repay the witch for her fairly unhelpful advice.

I actually really enjoyed both of these books. They really are the platonic ideal of the middle grade Halloween genre. Maybe haunted masks that possess their wearer on Halloween are my thing. These books have quite a bit in common, most obviously, nice girls whose names end in Beth becoming possessed by masks at Halloween and transforming into candy-stealing menaces. I do appreciate that The Haunted Mask makes some effort to explain where the heck the mask came from, whereas that is really overlooked in Evil Elizabeth. Notably, R. L. Stine famously writes spectacularly absent and incompetent parental figures, but Carly Beth’s parents actually seem quite caring and attentive. Elizabeth’s parents, on the other hand, are wildly dismissive of their other two kids’ concerns about Elizabeth’s behavior, and can’t be bothered to even check on her (both of Elizabeth’s siblings generally suck, but they are uncharacteristically delightful in this book, which is a good thing because their parents are useless.) The Haunted Mask stands out to me as having incredibly well-written adolescent feelings. Evil Elizabeth makes some effort to depict Jessica’s concern and grief over her sister’s transformation and does an okay job of this (the sad pumpkin carving gave me life). Both books also feature unhelpful adults dispensing of vague guidance (I really only blame the shopkeeper for this though; he was an agent of the problem, whereas the witch was a victim of circumstance). Perhaps the most interesting contrast is in the books’ differing lessons about what can overpower the masks’ evil nature: In The Haunted Mask, the answer is love, and in Evil Elizabeth, one can only save oneself (I’m not so sure about this boot-strappy, libertarian moral. I think the moral undersells all of the work that Jessica did to save the day. I shouldn’t be surprised by this though: De-emphasizing the role of the support of others is a common aspect of boot-strappy, libertarian propaganda). To that end, silly and sappy as it may be, I prefer the Goosebumps takeaway about the power of love.

Showdown Winner: The Haunted Mask (Goosebumps) by R. L. Stine