The Ghost Next Door
| File:Goosebumps The Ghost Next Door.jpg | |
| Author | R.L. Stine |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Series | Goosebumps |
| Genre | Horror fiction, Children's literature |
| Publisher | Scholastic |
Publication date | August 1993 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 124 p. |
| ISBN | 0-590-49445-7 |
| OCLC | 28483802 |
| LC Class | MLC R CP01281 |
| Preceded by | Welcome To Camp Nightmare |
| Followed by | The Haunted Mask |
The Ghost Next Door is the tenth book in R. L. Stine's Goosebumps series.
Plot
Hannah Fairchild is having a boring summer at home after all her friends leave town for the break. She tries writing to them but they don't ever seem to write back. She spends some time with her little brothers, even making a campfire in the backyard and telling ghost stories one night, but it doesn't really seem like enough. However, the day after having a horrifying dream about her room being on fire, she meets her new next door neighbor, Danny. She doesn't remember Danny moving in and he claims he goes to her school and though they are supposedly in the same grade they don't know any of the same people. Hannah begins to suspect that Danny is not all he seems, as he keeps disappearing into thin air every time she turns around. It is then that she suspects that this boy is a ghost.
After she spies Danny downtown with a pair of trouble-making kids, Alan and Fred, she is pursued by a shadowy figure. All the while Danny is getting into worse and worse trouble with his excursions with Alan and Fred. The two dare him to steal ice cream cones and destroy mailboxes. After they are caught trying to break the Postmaster's mailbox and Danny gets treated in a less than fragile manner by the man, Alan and Fred tell Danny that they have to get back at the Postmaster. Naturally, Hannah has been following the three around town the entire time and has spied the whole ordeal. She tries to warn Danny but he is less than responsive to her pleas, especially when she accuses him of being a ghost. This is immediately followed by Danny accidentally putting his entire hand through Hannah's chest and running off in hysterics.
It turns out that Hannah is the ghost. Approximately two minutes after she figures this out, a realtor shows up at her house and explains Hannah's entire family died five years ago when their house caught fire. It turns out the fire was started when Hannah didn't extinguish the campfire in the backyard. Hannah experiences weird black outs of time and when she wakes up she attempts to stop Danny from getting into perilous danger but only succeeds in scaring Danny. Hannah gets on her bike and rides to catch up with him. Hannah catches up with the three as they break into the Postmaster's house and set it on fire while still inside. Alan and Fred manage to escape but they leave Danny in the burning house. Then the shadowy figure who has been scaring Hannah suddenly appears. Hannah pulls down the shadowy figure's hood to reveal Danny's face. The Shadow-Danny tells Hannah that Danny must die in the fire so that he, the Shadow Danny, can live and the real Danny can take his place in Shadow World. Hannah escapes Shadow-Danny's grasp and rescues the real Danny, leaving Shadow-Danny to burn in the flames. In the ambulance Danny tells his mother that Hannah rescued him but Danny's mother doesn't believe him as Hannah is revealed to have died five years ago. As Danny is carried off to the hospital, Hannah fades away from the real world and reunites with her family in the spirit world.
TV Adaptation
The television version of this story has the following changes to it:
- When Hannah's hand goes through the teddy bear she realizes she died in the house fire and became a ghost. In the novel she overhears an old women telling someone that she died in the house fire (the old women, Molly and Beth, are not in the TV version at all).
- Danny doesn't end up in the hospital after Hannah saves him from the fire in the T.V. version.
- Her family wasn't seen until the end. There was a note from her parents telling her they've gone to a baseball game, explaining their absence. Hannah stayed home because of her allergies.
- Danny is able to hear Hannah as she fades away, he was able to say goodbye.
- Hannah wrote to her friend named Janey in the novel. But in the T.V. show, she wrote to her friend named Katie.
- In the novel, Hannah saved Danny from dying in the house fire at Mr. Chesney house by pushing him out the window. But in the T.V. show, Hannah played the piano so Mr. Chesney could save Danny from dying in the burning house.
- In the T.V. show, Danny says he just moved in. In the novel, Danny says he lived next door for a while.