Halloween Night (Point Horror) vs. Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade (Baby-Sitters Club)

Interesting fact: Halloween Night by R. L. Stine was published in September of 1993 (the same month as The Haunted Mask). In reviewing The Haunted Mask, I noted that R. L. Stine often phones in the writing of his books (likely, in part, due to an untenable potpourri of competing deadlines). I loved The Haunted Mask and believe that R. L. put care into the creation of the book. Do you know where R. L. did not bring the same level of devotion? This godforsaken book. I knew we were on a good path when the tagline was: “Trick or Treat… The trick is not to die.” I’ve long suspected that R. L. doesn’t know what constitutes a good prank/trick, and this tagline lends further credence to this belief. We start with teenager Brenda who has recently been burdened with the arrival of her cousin, Halley, who has moved into Brenda’s family’s home while her parents get their divorce settled. Halley kinda sucks. She pursues Brenda’s boyfriend (in a particularly bold move, she borrows Brenda’s car and pursues Brenda’s boyfriend in Brenda’s car). She also pursues Brenda’s best friend’s boyfriend (but lucky for the BFF, her car is spared). Because Halley is nice to Brenda’s parents, they don’t see how awful she can be. The parents always take Halley’s side in a way that is a bit surreal, but Brenda also sucks, so ::shrug::. One thing I find interesting about this is that Halley sucks in overt and public ways, so pretty much everyone, besides Brenda’s parents and the boys she kisses in their girlfriends’ cars, knows how much she sucks. I feel like the more common trope in teen horror drama is for truly no one but the protagonist to observe the full magnitude of the sucky character’s sucking.

Over the course of the book, we have three primary threads operating: 1. Halley sucking. 2. Harrowing “pranks” played on Brenda, including a decapitated bird in her jack-o’-lantern, messages written on her bedroom wall in blood, and maggot-filled meat in her bed (again, these seem to overshoot my understanding of what constitutes a prank and potentially veer into felony territory). 3. A class assignment requiring the teens (Brenda and her two friends) to write a murder mystery. Naturally, it is assumed that Halley is committing these horrifying “pranks” but I’m not so sure. Halley sucks in really overt ways, publicly pursuing people’s boyfriends, crashing Brenda’s car, etc. That feels like a different type of crappiness than leaving maggot-filled meat in someone’s bed. Plus, Halley is just too hot and having too much fun kissing everyone’s boyfriends to fill her time with such an icky series of tasks. Since our three girls (1. Brenda; 2. Brenda’s cuckolded friend, Tracy who also lost her boyfriend to Halley; and 3. Brenda’s tragically tall and single friend from a broken home Dina (I’m not kidding, Dina is described as being too tall to date); not to mention: she’s so poor due to her broken family that she has to work in a vet’s office!) are plotting a murder for class, and 2/3 of them have lost their boyfriends to Halley’s irresistible wiles, they think: Why not just murder Halley? We can come up with the perfect plot for our class assignment and then just implement it! Two birds; one stone (and it is pretty clear that this book has no trouble mercilessly slaying birds)! I already have a couple of concerns here. One, as an educator, I’m not sure that this is an assignment that I would give a cohort of teens, but at bare minimum, I would recommend, if you are going to encourage a bunch of teens to plot a murder for course credit, that you lay down some parameters, such as prohibiting plots against classmates. Two, I’ve never tried to get away with murder, but if I were trying to pull that off, I would probably not detail my plan and submit it to my teacher. Regardless of my professional reservations, here we are. The plan does not make a ton of sense to me. The girls will throw a Halloween party, and they will all swap costumes during the party so no one knows who is who, and then one of them will stab Halley, who will be wearing a giant gorilla suit… which will make it so that no one will know that she’s dead???? The next iteration of the plan makes slightly more sense to me. In the refinement, Brenda plans to get her crappy, cheating ex to wear the same costume as one of the others in the group, increasing the likelihood of him taking the blame. Based on my understanding, I thiiiiiiink this plan really only makes it such that someone in your friend group takes the fall, with the best case scenario being that the fall guy is your cheating ex (that said, it seems no more likely that he takes the fall than the other member of the friend group wearing the same costume). It just doesn’t seem to be the perfect way for you all to get away with murder, particularly since you documented your plan in meticulous detail and submitted it to a mandated reporter. Relatedly, they are loudly plotting this murder in a room where every word can be overheard via an air vent (Surely, that won’t become relevant, right?). Also- Perhaps the most unrealistic part of the book to me is that someone as hot as Halley would wear a full body gorilla suit on Halloween; surely, she’d at least be a sexy gorilla or something. Tall, homely Dina is getting cold feet (and given her size, I bet her colossal feet could hold enough chill to keep the witch’s brew punch cold all night), expressing concern that maybe murdering Halley is a bit much. Dina can, after all, remember how painful parents’ divorce can be given her own trials. Meh, whatever, the plan is still a go! I really enjoyed the part where the gals set up for the Halloween party. They get really into decorating, carefully placing creepy streamers and pumpkins all over the house. They really take the details of this party seriously for it only being part of a murder setup (I liked the bit where Brenda got so into hanging up crepe paper streamers that she almost forgot that she was about to commit a murder). In addition to the general crappiness of the plan, getting distracted by streamers makes me question her dedication to this plot. Their hard work pays off! The party is a hit. As planned, the gorilla gets stabbed and it takes a while for anyone to notice. BUT WHEN THE GORILLA MASK IS REMOVED, IT IS REVEALED THAT BRENDA IS INSIDE! Nooooooooo! Spoiler: Worry not, crew! Brenda’s eyes pop open, and she’s totally fine. In a classic Stine double switcheroo, the murder plot (the actual murder plot, not the creative writing assignment) was fake all along! Nobody ever thought Halley was pulling the grody pranks! Everyone knew that it was Dina desecrating animal corpses all along! This incredibly convoluted plan (that even has a few more layers that I am glossing over because I don’t quite understand them), was all to get Dina to confess. But why did Dina try to kill Brenda? Because she is tragically tall and felt unsupported by her friends during her parents’ divorce! But how did Brenda not die when she got stabbed? She’s a master seamstress and had added extra padding to the gorilla suit to protect herself! But how did Dina do all of this!? This is kind of glossed over, but the key idea is that she had access to all that gross animal stuff because she was a poor person working for a vet. Brenda and Halley, now BFFs despite the home wrecking and car wrecking, end the night laughing over some hot cocoa.

What the hell? I know this is a work of fiction, but I feel betrayed by R. L. Stine here. This whole thing about the “real” fictional murder plot being a farce is B.S. Far too much of Brenda’s inner dialogue is related to the murder for it to not have been a genuine plot (again, I mean “genuine” and “real” in the context of a fictional book). My other grievance is that everyone in the book is just really crappy to each other the whole time, but not in ways that are particularly interesting or creative. I actually do think the depictions of teen girls as vapid and cruel can be harmful to how girls see themselves and how the world understands and treats them, so I wish these books would do better in this regard. Lastly, no one has sufficient motive to do any of what they do in this book. Halley has no real reason to steal Tracy’s boyfriend. Halley sucks but murdering her seems excessive. Dina has every right to feel hurt that her friends weren’t supportive during her parents’ divorce, but maybe either communicate that pain directly or hell, just cut them off (“ghosting” sounds like a spooky thing to do, so it fits right in here and seems healthier than murder). Murder seems a bit much. We got some indications throughout the book that our gals are creative: They craft diabolical murder plots, brilliantly hang streamers, and hand sew a series of elaborate costumes. Stine did them dirty. We should’ve at least gotten to see their creativity on greater display, both in terms of their artistic endeavors but also in terms of how they engaged with each other. I love a good villain, but alas, their cruelty just lacked the nuance and texture that these characters were capable of.

For a comparison novel, I was looking for something where the main characters prepare for a Halloween party that serves as a site of revenge. That brought me to one of my favorite Baby-Sitters Club Mysteries: Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade “by” Ann M. Martin (ghost written by Ellen Miles). Ellen ghost wrote most of the BSC Mystery books, perhaps making her my favorite author in the world. In this harrowing tale, our protagonist, Stacey, famous for being a pretentious New Yorker whose parents moved to Connecticut, is trying to turn her life around after almost drinking some wine at a concert (I am not sure that I’ve ever read the book where that happens (or almost happens), but the incident clearly weighs heavily on her heart in this book). When an opportunity to decorate for a Halloween dance emerges, she jumps at the chance! Our girl, she’s got a vision, subverting the traditional orange and black color scheme for a red and purple one. Bold! Fearless! Innovative! Stoneybrook Middle School has a new teacher, Mr. Rothman, who has eagerly decided to jump in as the faculty advisor for the decorating committee (I don’t yet know where this is headed, but it does seem convenient/suspicious to me. I’m keeping my eyes on you, Mr. Rothman). Tragically, things are not going smoothly with the dance decorating. There’s some pre-teen drama that does not speak to my horror-focused heart, so I will skip over it. But worse than that, vandalism ensues! Someone smashes all the cool red light bulbs and tears up the posters. As if that is not bad enough, someone graffities the gym with “drippy, red, bloody-looking letters” with the message “Will you still love me tomorrow?” and “$10”. And if that isn’t horrifying enough for you, Stacey and the decorating team find a dummy “dressed in a pink, frothy, fairy, princess costume” hanging from a noose. (I think of rabid mouths as frothy, not dresses, but that is beside the point; that’s some scary shit!). I’ve gotta be honest, as disturbing as all of this is, I was not so shocked that things started going wrong with the dance prep. Very early on in the book, when the principal is announcing the dance over the intercom, he notes that this dance is the first Halloween Masquerade to be held at the school in twenty-eight years (quick note: that might be true, but this school is full of Halloween dances, namely “The Halloween Hop,” which appears in at least three other books. I feel like this factoid diminishes the power of the idea that this other type of Halloween dance hasn’t happened in 28 years). That this dance hasn’t happened in 28 years is suspicious. But much more suspiciously, the principal casually drops the phrase “Let’s erase those unpleasant memories and have a ball!” Ok, what? That’s just a really weird thing to say. What is most surprising to me is that as our intrepid pre-teen detectives are trying to crack this case (What happened 28 years ago? Might it be related to the current vandalism?), none of their parents, who would’ve been in middle school at the time, have a clear recollection of what happened (though a couple of the parents think that somebody died. I’m a little surprised that if someone died at their middle school dance, even if they weren’t in attendance at the dance, that they don’t have a more specific memory of the masquerade-based tragedy).

Meanwhile, this is a very exciting time for me because Cary Retlin, one of my favorite characters, has hit the scene. Cary becomes infamous in the series for his elaborate pranks (Baby-sitters Fright Night was full of them, if you are looking for some more examples). But here we get the Cary origin story (kind of). He has just moved to Connecticut from Illinois, and he quickly gets to work being cool. He’s constantly winking at Stacey, which I think is supposed to be cool but kinda weirds me out. More relevantly, right as Cary shows up, a series of pranks overtake Stoneybrook Middle School, such as everyone’s books getting swapped between lockers, trophies in the locked case getting filled with candy corn, and every clock in the building being set ahead by 15 minutes. There’s a creativity and labor-intensity to the pranks that I admire (these are much better pranks than leaving maggot-filled meat in someone’s bed). I realize that I’ve read enough of these books to know that Cary is behind these, but it also feels pretty obvious given the timing. It’s also pretty clear that this all gets thrown in here to make us think that Cary is behind the dance sabotage, but please, that’s just not Cary’s style! Also, all of these sillier pranks are signed “The Mischief Knights” (that’s cool) and Cary shows up to the dance dressed as a chess piece (try to guess which one…) Very cool!

Meanwhile, back at the baby-sitting ranch: All of the children of Stoneybrook, CT, have become obsessed with the Ghostbusters. We get a series of a million vignettes about baby-sitters going to children’s houses and the kids going wild with ghost hunting. These kids are enterprising, working with fairly sophisticated handmade DIY ghostbusting supplies. It is inspiring. My favorite ghostbusting sequence features frightening noises observed by a pair of twins who are fully ignored by their parents (Note: This is some R. L. Stine garbage. Sure, I get why you might not agree with your kids’ conclusion that there is a ghost infestation in your house, but I would think if your kids express concerns about suspicious rustling sounds in the house, it might be worth your while to at least take a peek around???). Anyway, the baby-sitter also hears the sound and “visions of long, clawlike fingernails” flashed into her mind. It’s funny to read this scene as an adult because I’m like: That is obviously a squirrel. And yep, I was right. As an adult, who has had to deal with squirrels in my house, this was without a doubt one of the most frightening outcomes of this scenario. I feel a bit of anxiety just thinking about it, a rare case where a scene in one of these books has become more harrowing with age. How times have changed.  

To recap where we’ve been so far, similar to Halloween Night, this book features three throughlines: 1). WTF is going on with the dance vandalism and might it relate to the vaguely alluded to tragedy of 28 years ago? 2). The arrival of Cary Retlin and obviously associated onset of elaborate pranks. 3). “Ghostbuster fever” having swept over the children of suburban Connecticut. As you may recall, my primary grievance with Baby-sitters Fright Night was that the main plot never intersected with the baby-sitting subplot. The unexpected ways that the main mystery plot and the baby-sitting subplot typically intersect is one of the more satisfying aspects of the BSC Mysteries, IMO. Welp, our girls have been up to a lot of sleuthing. Because their parents have been surprisingly unhelpful, they’ve resorted to other means. First they looked at old newspaper articles (from 28 years ago… dun… dun… dunnnnnn) on the microfilm reader at the public library. And then they snuck into the creepy old record room in the basement of the school (dun… dun… dunnnnnn) to dig through student records. I was living for both of these scenes. I love a good library scene, especially one with dated technology (I LOVED using the microfilm reader at my hometown’s public library circa 2002, even though every time I would use it the librarian would note that probably whatever I was looking for had already been digitized. I hadn’t wanted to resort to modern technology though. Using that old machine made me feel like a detective. In retrospect, it was probably because of these books that I linked using microfilm readers to look at old newspapers with solving crimes. Also in retrospect, since I hadn’t had a specific crime that I was trying to solve, it seems kind of unlikely that a decades-old newspaper would give me a fresh lead. Oh well, it felt glamorous!). I also love an old record room (I recently received a private tour of a university archive and similarly felt like I was going to stumble upon something that would absolutely blow a cold case wide open. No success, just yet!). Ok, reining in my library-based reveries to focus on this book: This was all really fun to read (for me at least). By the end of the microfilm and basement record room expedition, we had learned the following: Twenty-eight years ago at the Halloween Masquerade, the lights went out, resulting in a stampede, which ultimately led to one of the teachers chaperoning the dance dying of a heart attack (he wasn’t trampled to death, he just died of shock; this makes me wonder if maybe it was just his time to go, but no, I guess it is best to place the burden of the blame of this tragic death on the shoulders of some scared middle schoolers). I enjoyed the discussion where the girls consider if the ghost of the teacher is the one vandalizing the dance; I like really love this idea, but sadly (spoiler) that does not end up being the resolution. We find out via some additional collateral information gathered by one of our girls posing as a reporter to interview a man who loves to write angry letters to the editor about how his tax dollars are going to pay for this dance: The lights going out at the dance was likely part of some sort of prank caused by a “jilted” girl. She took the blame for the incident and left the school (A couple of things about this: 1). I don’t care what a fuddy duddy this guy is for regularly writing insufferable letters to the editor to the newspaper, I’m so grateful that some adult finally remembers something of substance about this public tragedy; 2). As a letter to the editor enthusiast, this annoying man is my favorite unnecessary side character, it’s just such a spot-on portrayal of smalltown newspapers; 3). When the obnoxious regular letter to the editor guy was introduced, I made the ageist assumption that he was probably incredibly old. Joke’s on me, this dude is about my age!). Ultimately, the basement sleuthing gives us some important information: 1). The mysterious dance decoration committee adviser, Mr. Rothman, attended the school the year of the tragic dance, 2). The identity of the jilted gal who left the school in disgrace (Elizabeth Connor) and her former address (which is conveniently the very same house where the next baby-sitting job is scheduled! Access to potential sites of clues seems to be an underappreciated perk of working as both the town’s primary baby-sitting service and detective agency!). Moving on to the baby-sitting job: Since the kids at the house want to go ghost hunting (because of course they do, currently no child in this book has any other interests), the baby-sitters seize the opportunity to also look for clues. You might think that all signs of the jilted gal would have disappeared from the house that she last lived in 28 years ago. While that might be the case for lesser detectives, our gals stumble upon a big, convenient lead. The sleuthing baby-sitters find a heart etched into the wall of the attic that contains the message EC + MR). That must mean Elizabeth Connor + Michael Rothman… right?! The next day we interrogate Mr. Rothman about this discovery, and he provides an inappropriate amount of detail about the tragic event (we seem to have overcorrected from most of the other adults who have like no recall). Blah blah blah, he was so handsome and so popular and so nice and so cool blah blah blah. His friends pressured him into asking a nerdy gal (Elizabeth) to the dance as a joke and offered him $10 if he follows through with it (not cool, bro!). He caves to peer pressure. NO!!! She shows up to the dance in a “frothy pink fairy princess dress” like the dork she is. Ultimately she finds out about the dare –> she flips the circuit breaker –> the lights go out –> the students stampede –> teacher death –> she moves away in disgrace (sure, the dude shouldn’t have taken the dare and the girl shouldn’t have turned out the lights, but the consequences really feel like they outweigh the crime here; Sweet Valley Books are also fond of dances ended in spectacular tragedy that seems disproportionate to the antecedent; See: The Jungle Prom Saga). Based on the vandalism featuring graffiti of the song that was playing  when Elizabeth found out about the dare and the amount of money associated with the dare and the hanging dummy wearing the dress that Elizabeth was wearing that fateful night, I feel fairly confident we have our culprit. But how does this all get resolved? Surely, they might cancel a dance if a deranged, jilted woman is committing such harrowing acts, right? Nope! I guess they’d spent too much money on red lightbulbs and purple streamers (I mean, they did have to replace the first set that was destroyed by this vandal. There’s no way they could afford to refund those tickets. So anyway, the dance is real cool! Stacey did a great job decorating. People are stoked. Nothing could possibly go wrong. Spoiler: Right as the great masquerade unmasking is set to take place, we discover that some mysterious woman has stolen the cloak that Mr. Rothman’s date was wearing. But… But… But… If the now cloakless date is standing over there talking to a baby-sitter… who is the cloaked woman dancing with Mr. Rothman???? The lights are set to flicker off during the unmasking (that feels a little dangerous/insensitive to this great tragedy that everyone but also no one remembers wherein someone died because of the pandemonium caused by the lights going out, right?). When the lights come back on: “I looked over at the spot where I’d seen Mr. Rothman. He was still there, only now he was white as a sheet. Standing in front of him was a woman wearing a tattered and torn pink fairy princess costume. A black cloak at her feet. Michael Rothman stared at Liz Connor, and she stared back at him with a wild gleam in her eyes. She smiled slowly.” Holy shit! That’s terrifying!

Okay, I absolutely loved this one. The microfilm. The dusty basement archive. The posing as a reporter to talk to the fuddy duddy letter to the editor writer about his opinion on tax dollars. The creepy ending. The improbable but entertaining tie-in to the Ghostbusters baby-sitting side plot. The introduction to the Mischief Knights. It was a very fun and spooky read. Ellen Miles knows how to deliver an enjoyable mystery novel.

These two books ended up having even more in common than I’d expected. Both feature a lot of dense description of the minutiae of Halloween party decorating by our main characters. While both books utilize the Halloween party as a site of revenge for wronged teenage girls, in Halloween Night, the characters specifically throw the party to create the setting for the revenge plot, whereas, in Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade, the party inadvertently (though predictably if any adult was paying attention) offers a convenient spot to revisit old grudges. In both cases, the act of revenge feels a bit disproportionate to the original crime (that said, it isn’t exactly clear what Elizabeth’s end game is). Both books leverage parallel sets of pranks/bad behavior as a red herring for the more sinister occurrences. Ultimately, the BSC book delivers a satisfying ending without a series of convoluted, deceptive, and borderline nonsensical quadruple fake-outs. While both books have some drama in them, I appreciate that the BSC book allows the characters to have attributes other than pettiness and vindictiveness (and talents related to Halloween decorating and costume creation, which I think still leaves them with only petty and vindictive traits for the remaining eleven months of the year).

Showdown Winner: Stacey and the Haunted Masquerade (Baby-Sitters Club) by Ann M. Martin/Ellen Miles by a wide margin.