The year 2000 has finally arrived! I mean... it's 2022 when I repost this blog from 2020, but you get the gist. But regardless, the book series with 2000 in the title finally made it to the big year. The dawn of the new millennium. Unfortunately for Goosebumps, that "New Millennium of Fear" stopped before it started. Several years of lawsuits and infighting between the Stines and Scholastic soured R.L. Stine from wanting to go further with Goosebumps and Scholastic. And thus, when his contract came due, he left, finishing off with book #25 of Series 2000. So does Stine deliver a hit or a miss? A grand finale, or a turd in the punch bowl? It's R.L. Stine and a last book in a Goosebumps series, we know that answer by now. And I did cover this book once before, so let's give one last look at Ghost in the Mirror.
And with it comes the final Tim Jacobus Goosebumps cover. At least officially, we'll get into that later. As for the cover itself, I think it's solid. Some good use of green shadows, giving off a strange otherworldly light. Then the blue reflection from the mirror followed by the monstrous hand sticking out. I even like that there's some transparency to the hand to make sure you know that this is indeed a ghost in the mirror. All great stuff. It really does feel weird to be at the end of the Jacobus era of covers. Such an important staple to the success of the brand. And while Tim dabbles in a couple other things later on with Goosebumps, the torch would be passed on to Brandon Dorman when the series returned, and he has definitely earned the mantle. But still, pour one out for the Jacobus cover era.
Jason Sloves is kind of a wuss. He doesn't really deny it either, he knows he's scared of everything. It's not helped by the fact that his older sister Claudia always tries to scare him. He constantly refers to her as demented. In the case of the book's opening, it has to do with her scaring him as he's looking in a mirror, because he has a thing about always looking in mirrors to fix himself up. He also unfortunately has the "baby room" as his bedroom still has baby furniture. But at least he has his WWF posters. I mean, he was a fan of the Monday Night Wars. Kid can't be all bad. Though good lord the Attitude era does not hold up. Jason likely trolls the internet now, complaining about how modern flippy wrestling is bad. Reader beware, he's probably a Jim Cornette fan.
We flash forward to a couple weeks later. After playing with his friend Fred, Jason's parents have something to show them. They bring him to his room where the baby furniture is gone and is now replaced with a new dresser and a large mirror. The bottom drawer of the dresser is stuck and I'm sure that won't play into a disappointing twist. But Jason is more transfixed on the mirror. Almost to the point he feels like he's being sucked in. Fred shows up later and the two discuss the wrestling show the previous night. Of course there's no mention of actual wrestler's names, which makes my heart sink as the thought of Jovial Bob: Wrestling Mark would have made my day.
They play a nondescript NBA video game (Maybe NBA Live 2000?) when Fred begins to notice something moving in the mirror. Jason doesn't notice anything yet. After Fred leaves, Jason goes to get a snack then sees a note stuck on the mirror warning that "bringing this into your house means death". He assumes it's Claudia who wrote it, but she claims to have nothing to do with it, before scaring him again by saying there's a [[TITLE OF THE BOOK]]. He then shows the note to their dad who believes it to be Claudia. Though Jason begins to suspect it might not have been Claudia since even though she trolls him, she usually does cop to her pranks.
The next day, Jason comes home to see the family dog Buzzy barking at the mirror. He's concerned, but nobody else thinks much of it. But you know, that could be a callback to how Dogs have acted around ghosts before in these books, but, Stine's no doubt just burning through pages at this point ready to hand this in and tell Scholastic to "Get bent", so could all be a coincidence. Claudia does get in a good chance to scare Jason some more with a story she wrote about the mirror and how the reflection of a dead girl lived in the mirror, until she decided to get out and haunt the boy who lived in the house. This is interrupted when they hear Buzzy growling strangely. When Jason goes to check, the dog acts aggressive and his eyes are now black and almost demonic. Thankfully not hyper realistic.
Buzzy then attacks Jason, biting his throat and clawing him up. He's saved just in time by his dad who takes the dog away while Jason cleans up. The next day, while Jason and Fred are playing a nondescript hockey video game (NHL 2000?), they notice what appears to be Buzzy in the mirror. They try to get Claudia to look, but she doesn't see anything in the mirror. Jason leaves the room to get a snack, but returns to see Fred has now vanished as well. After looking some more, Jason gets attacked by a monster, who is of course Claudia because at this point this has been more than well established. After that incident, Jason looks at the mirror some more, then hears a whimper that sounds like Buzzy.
The next day, Jason runs into Fred, who tries to make up an excuse as to why he left without telling him. In gym however, Jason is shocked to see that Fred, who once was terrible at sports, is now a living Mr. Perfect vignette. When Jason makes a comment that it was like he was possessed, Fred reacts in a manner that screams "the boy knows too much". And then he starts beating the hell out of Jason. So, this is two occasions where our protagonist is left bloody after an altercation with an obviously possessed monster. If this was Stine's swan song, he's going out with the closest he can get to murdering a child in Goosebumps.
Jason heads home after the altercation and goes to bed to rest, only to see what appears to be something moving inside the mirror. He then sees a pair of shadowy figures that look like Buzzy and Fred. He doesn't think to tell anyone since he knows they'll think he's just being scared, since that has been well established at this point. So no Because Goosebumps Parents just yet, but patience. Later that night, he hears what sounds like strange breathing noises coming from inside the mirror. When he checks the mirror, there's no reflection. Only darkness. Suddenly, Fred is seen in the mirror, cold and gray. He then grabs at Jason, who struggles to get free. Jason blacks out, then wakes up in his room.
Suddenly he sees his reflection in the mirror, gray like Fred's, telling him that he is Jason's ghost and that Jason is dead. He had died of fright. Well, at least this time it wasn't camera related. The ghost tells Jason to come into the mirror, but Fred and Buzzy warn him to stop just in time. And then Jason's ghost, in a fit or rage... bulges his eyes out into giant fly-like eyes, grows a three nostril bulb nose, a giant red tongue, a purple shell, and a pair of crab claws. Now I can't confirm that R.L. Stine has ever done acid, but sometimes I think I wouldn't be too surprised if he had.
The creature grabs Jason with one of its claws and pulls him into the mirror. Jason grabs a small hand mirror and tries to smash the monster with it, but there's no damage. The creature says that it intends to take Jason's place on the outside, like what's happened with Fred and Buzzy. Jason's hand mirror reflects off the monster, and somehow it creates like, a dozen smaller crab monsters and like, I have no idea what's going on. Like this book escalated like from 0 to 250 in at a record pace. It's as if the author of this book was ready to leave his employers. Jason manages to escape in time, returning to the outside world. Jason then tries to convince his family about all this, but when he jumps at the mirror, he just bangs his arm. The final "Because Goosebumps Parents" of the 2000s. Oh how I wish that was a thing Stine left in that era too.
However, it turns out things aren't going so well in the outside world. Mirror Buzzy escaped and is tearing through everything. Oh, and Mirror Fred is also causing mayhem, literally chucking cars over his head. Jason realizes that this isn't going to be fixed until he finds the real Fred and Buzzy, so he jumps into the mirror one more time. And this time it works. Guess the mirror versions just wanted to make him look like an idiot in front of his family. I mean, that's not exactly tricky to do. Jason falls into a strange room of mirrors. It's there where he finds Fred and Buzzy. And just to make sure it's the real Fred, he tries to punch him, only for Fred to cower. They eventually find their way to what looks like the way back to Jason's room, only for the entrance to be solid glass that they can't go through. Also they see Claudia stealing Jason's Game Boy, which got a chuckle out of me.
Jason uses his pocket mirror, which is strong enough to create a hole through the glass and the three finally escape. Buzzy and Fred take their leave. However, Jason is visited in his room by... Jason, who turns into the creature again. Jason uses the pocket mirror, only for it to get swiped from his hands. Jason then just leaps on the monster and rips its eyes out, which does the trick I guess. He shoves the monster into the mirror, then hurls a lamp at the mirror, which smashes to bits.
Jason cleans up the mess in his room. He ponders if the other Buzzy and Fred are gone, but that's really all the answer to that lingering thread that we're getting. In the midst of this, he sees the note from earlier. Then he sees the stuck drawer on that dresser he got from earlier. The drawer opens, and out pops a brown snake that asks if Jason got his note.
Ghost in the Mirror is strange. Some of its concept is really interesting, albeit we've tread the evil reflections story far better way back with Let's Get Invisible! But at least the monster is actually pretty creepy, described as a literal nightmare, which is also a rarity for Stine to really get at times. For all the really good monsters in Goosebumps there are just as many "oh, is that all?" concepts as well that just feel underwhelming. So at least he saved something truly freakish for the swan song. However that also exemplifies the problem of this book being called Ghost in the Mirror. I'm all but certain Stine wanted to call it Monster in the Mirror but realized that Sesame Street already made a song about that, so no dice.
Jason is just okay a protagonist. Nothing special, though his constant fears and eventual overcoming of the monster is at least something. Claudia is fine for a prankster type, but also just matters less in the overall plot. Fred and Buzzy exist. And while the idea of the mirror versions is interesting, they just really move on from that. For all we know, the Buzzy and Fred reflections are still out there wreaking havoc. But Stine's made page quota, so to hell with cleaning that up. And because of that the story feels rushed in places. The mirror world, while interesting, never gets any time to breathe or to be taken in. It sadly just exists. Same problem with the monsters or their motivations besides just wanting to be on the other side. And then, there's the twist which is a good old R.L. Stine "suck the air right out of the room" twist. One more for the road I suppose.
So by comparison with Monster Blood IV, Ghost in the Mirror is slightly less infuriating as a last book. I mean, it's not good and you can feel the padding of this book. And for the final mainline book for eight years, it is a wet fart of a way to go out on. But, it's not a Monster Blood sequel, so that's a recommend if ever there was one. Reader beware, this is one lame final scare. Ghost in the Mirror gets a C+.
Although it was never intended to be the final book. Stine had planned on other books, including what would have been the 26th Series 2000 book, The Incredible Shrinking Fifth Grader, which was far enough in the works that Tim Jacobus had finished cover art for it, but never finished as a Goosebumps book (It did become The Adventures of Shrinkman though) The internal issues with Scholastic and Stine led to the inevitable. R.L. Stine left Scholastic, with this book and the final Give Yourself Goosebumps book All Day Nightmare being his last remnants for the majority of the first decade of the 2000s. Stine would attempt to bring Goosebumps back with Goosebumps Gold, but that ultimately didn't happen.
He would continue with horror books, including some standalone works, some other series like Mostly Ghostly and Rotten School, among other things. Ultimately, the Stines and Scholastic would patch their relationship up with Scholastic gaining the brand rights. The ball wasn't quite rolling yet for Goosebumps however. That is until, in 2008, Stine would revive Goosebumps once more. And the books are still being released as of the time I post this. Now with a run going on twice as long as the original. Truly an ending fitting for one of the weirdest successes ever.
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