Literature / The Haunted Mask

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The Goosebumps book about a haunted mask... kind of.

Carly Beth is a scaredy cat and is tormented by the bullies Steve and Chuck as a result. One day she gets sick of it and decides to visit a creepy mask shop to find a scary Halloween mask. In a the back room, she finds the perfect fit, but the shopkeeper refuses to sell it to her. However, she eventually convinces him and brings it home. After she puts on, she starts acting a lot more monstrous. Is the mask doing this to her, and will she be able to put it off?

It received two direct sequels. The Haunted Mask II is part of the original series, and follows Steve when he finds a different haunted mask. The Scream of the Haunted Mask, part of the Goosebumps HorrorLand spinoff, continues Carly Beth's story, ignoring the events of The Haunted Mask II.

It was adapted into the very first episode of the 1995 TV series.

It was later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2008 as a companion to The Scream of the Haunted Mask. In 2024 it was adapted into a graphic novel with minor rewrites to bring it up to date with the 21st century.

The book provides examples of:

• Actually Pretty Funny: At the Science Fair, Steve pretends that a spider from his project escaped and puts a pinching hand on Carly-Beth's back, causing her to scream and knock over the model solar system that she and Sabrina made. When talking to Carly-Beth on Halloween morning, Sabrina admits that while it was a dirty trick, it was also kind of funny. This prompts an outraged response from Carly-Beth.
• All There in the Manual: One of the Collector's Caps books reveals the backstory of the Shopkeeper, although a different one is used for the TV episode.
• Animesque: The graphic novelization has a strong anime influence, from the Moe-style faces to the dynamic facial expressions. The shopkeeper in particular looks quite dashing, when the books described him in unnerving tones and the TV show made him look like a grizzled old man. Carly-Beth also removes her shoes when she comes home.
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Carly-Beth's younger brother Noah likes to play pranks on her.
• Artifact of Doom: The Unloved, including the titular mask, latch onto and corrupt whoever decides to wear them.
• Becoming the Costume: The basis for the story, as the Mask basically merges with Carly-Beth's skin and makes her act like a monster.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: There are definite shades of this in Carly-Beth and Steve's relationship, which are made more explicit in the TV adaptation.
• Blunt "Yes": During lunch at school, Carly-Beth tells Sabrina that she might go as a witch for Halloween, but Sabrina replies that she thought Carly-Beth was afraid of witches. When Carly-Beth accuses her of thinking that she's a scaredy-cat, Sabrina replies with this trope.
• Chekhov's Gun: Carly-Beth's mom makes a plaster of Paris mold of Carly-Beth's head, saying she made it because she loves her. Carly-Beth later uses the head as the symbol of love to defeat the Mask.
• Clingy MacGuffin: The titular Haunted Mask doesn't come off without external help.
• Clueless Phlebotinum Exposure: Carly Beth buys a scary mask from the back of the party shop and puts it on for Halloween, only for it to latch onto her face and begin slowly turning her into an aggressive monster.
• Cruel Twist Ending: Carly-Beth finally gets the eponymous mask off... only for her little brother to try it on for himself.
• Deus ex 'Scuse Me: A phone call interrupts a scene and allows Carly-Beth to sneak off somewhere twice, once with her mom when she is trying to sneak out of the house, and again with the shopkeeper so she can find the store's back room.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: This book is written in third-person. Most of the Goosebumps books are in first-person.
• Evil Feels Good: The Haunted Mask makes Carly-Beth feel good about tormenting people at first.
• Evil Mask: The titular mask makes it child's play to frighten people, but alters the wearer's personality and becomes progressively more difficult to remove. The book cover is the current page image.
• Foreshadowing: Early on, Carly-Beth tells Sabrina that maybe she'll scare her someday, to which Sabrina says "No way!". Later on, Carly-Beth does indeed get to scare Sabrina, thanks to the Mask.
• Finger Wag: A neighbor woman angrily does this to Carly-Beth after she scares her son and his friend while wearing the titular mask.
• Gone Horribly Wrong: All poor Carly-Beth wanted to do was to scare her bullies and put them in their places, but the mask she chose turned out to be alive, and it corrupts her into a fiend who enjoys terrorizing others.
• Halloween Episode: The first of, naturally, quite a few in the franchise.
• Here We Go Again!: Carly-Beth gets the mask off... but her little brother Noah puts it on.
• I Ate WHAT?!: In the cafeteria at the beginning of the book, Carly-Beth eats a sandwich and is shocked to find that she bit into a worm. Chuck assures her that it's merely rubber, but she pulls it out to find that it's real, much to her horror. She ends up running out of the lunch room in disgust and humiliation.
• I Got a Rock: While trick-or-treating, Carly-Beth is outraged that she and Sabrina got apples at one house. Because she's under the influence of the Mask, she waits until she's out on the sidewalk to throw the apples back at the house. The owner who gave them out pokes his head out the front door, prompting the two girls to run away until the house is no longer in sight.
• Ironic Name: One of the students attending the science fair is named Mary Sue Chong, whose invention consists on a generic robot hand doing mundanely dexterous tasks.
• Latex Perfection: The Unloved might not be latex, but when they're on someone's face, the wearers are mistaken for real monsters.
• The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday: The party store where Carly-Beth gets the mask.
• Menacing Mask: The titular mask and its fellow Unloved attach themselves to their wearers' faces and change their personality.
• My God, You Are Serious!: When Carly-Beth is at Sabrina's house and tries to get the mask off, Sabrina thinks it's another one of the pranks she's been pulling all night. She stops joking when she hears how desperate Carly-Beth sounds, and when she tries to take the mask off herself, she sees the thing blending in with her real skin.
• Never Trust a Title: The Haunted Mask isn't actually haunted, as far as the reader knows.
• Nightmare Face: The cover of the book depicts the titular mask looking directly at the reader, with a snarl on its face.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: The Haunted Mask and its fellow Unloved are essentially disembodied homunculi; artificially grown living faces that desire human hosts. They're also said to be created from the faults and sins of humanity, similar to the more renowned Homunculi.
• The Power of Love: The Haunted Mask can only be vanquished by a symbol of love. While the sequel proves that it does come back time and again, a symbol of love is enough to keep it at bay for a while.
• The Prankster: Chuck and Steve, who also take advantage of Carly-Beth being easily scared despite supposedly being her friends.
• Puppy Love: Steve and Carly-Beth, though any romantic tension between them is, at best, distantly implied in the book, but made into a major plot point in the TV series.
• Rapid-Fire "Shut Up!": When Sabrina makes an Innocently Insensitive comment about the Mask, saying that Carly-Beth must be sweating like a pig under there, Carly-Beth herself gets angry while under the Mask's influence. She responds with this, then starts to strangle Sabrina. Luckily, she realizes what she's doing and releases Sabrina, claiming that she was just joking.
• Razor Apples: Lampshaded by Sabrina's mom, who instructs her to throw away any candies that are not in their original wrappers for fear of poison and sharp objects.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: The shopkeeper could've revolutionized surgery and ended permanent disfigurement if he improved on his "mask-making" skills.
• Rejected Apology: After the prank he pulled at the science fair, Steve calls Carly-Beth and apologizes to her. She tells Sabrina in a later phone call that she doesn't think an apology is good enough.
• Tempting Fate: After she gets home with the Mask off, Carly-Beth runs into her mother, who asks what happened. Carly-Beth says that she'll explain, but everything is fine now. Cue Noah entering the kitchen wearing the mask.
• With Friends Like These...: Apparently, Steve and Chuck are supposed to be friends to Sabrina and Carly-Beth. Given their cruel pranks towards the latter, it's hard to believe that.
  • Sabrina isn't immune to this trope either, since she laughs at some of the pranks and upsets Carly-Beth.