The Goosebumps book where a Theatre Phantom haunts a school.
Brooke Rogers and her friend Zeke Matthews love horror movies. They also can't wait to perform in the school drama club's play, The Phantom. But then mysterious events start happening — pranks, or worse. A lot of people think Zeke is just messing around. But it's beginning to look more and more like the supposed curse on the play is real, and that the true Phantom is out to stop the show from being performed. Brooke and Zeke thus set out to find out if it's a human saboteur, or a real-live ghost living under the stage...
It was adapted into the seventh episode of the first season of the 1995 TV series, and later reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2011. It was later adapted into
a musical in 2016, with the cast recording being released in 2021, featuring a special appearance by R.L. Stine himself.
The book provides examples of:
- Affectionate Gesture to the Head: One morning while walking to school with her younger brother, Jeremy, Brooke ruffles his hair while having fun.
- All Part of the Show: In the climax, Brooke realizes that the Phantom talking to her on opening night isn't Zeke; she can see the kid is smaller. He goes on, explaining how the trapdoor killed him. The Phantom gets a standing ovation, and their director praises Zeke for the improv since she didn't realize a switch happened. It was actually Brian, who wanted to get a chance to play the Phantom since that was how he died for real.
- Arc Words: Stay away from my home sweet home, a threat from the play which the homeless Emile co-opts.
- Blunt "Yes": When Brooke tries to look at the list that shows what part she got in the play, she is shocked to see a note beside it that tells her to report to the principal's office and she's suspended. But she notices Zeke laughing behind her. When she angrily asks him if he put that sign up, he responds with, "Of course!"
- Brig Ball Bouncing: While stuck in his room framed of being the prankster and grounded by his parents, Zeke tosses a rubber ball across his bedroom, with his pet dog chasing after it each time.
- Covers Always Lie:
- The cover shows the Phantom mask to be white, even though it is blue and green in the book. The UK cover is slightly more accurate.
- Additionally, the blurb in the back of the book states that as part of the mishaps during production of the play, a stage light crashes down. No such event actually happens.
- Crusty Caretaker: Emile, the cranky night janitor at the school. He turns out to be an impostor — he's actually a homeless guy living under the stage, who made up the "night janitor" story to fool Brooke and Zeke.
- Death of a Child: It's revealed that Brian is actually the ghost of the boy who was first supposed to play The Phantom, having died when he fell down the trapdoor of the stage.
- Disappointed in You: When she catches Brooke, Zeke, and Brian sneaking into school and appears to have caused vandalism, Ms. Walker says she's disappointed in all of them, especially with Brian because he's a new student and should be on his best behavior. This causes him to feel especially guilty.
- Disney Villain Death: It is shown that the boy who was originally supposed to play the Phantom died by falling through the trapdoor to his death... a boy named Brian...
- Door Dumb: After the group found themselves trapped in the Phantom actually the homeless man, they start to push to no avail, until Brooke realize that the door need to be pulled to open.
- Dramatic Drop: The stack of scripts that Brooke was just holding falls out when she sees Ms. Walker seemingly vanish from the stage (she actually fell down a trap door).
- Embarrassing Pyjamas: Brooke knows for a fact that Zeke wears Kermit the Frog pajamas. When she tells people this, he reacts by turning red in the face.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: At one point, a dog barks at Brian, who is later revealed to be a ghost, though not evil.
- Eyelid Pull Taunt: Brooke does this at the beginning to Zeke when he gets on her nerves. However, since she's done this to him plenty of times, he isn't insulted by it.
- Facepalm: Brooke does this to herself when she forgets at first about the play cast list, and when Zeke tries to remind her about it yet doesn't understand him for a while.
- Flat Scare: According to Brooke, simply saying "boo" to her younger brother, Jeremy, scares him.
- Fresh Clue: While investigating what turns out to be a hidden room under the stage, Brooke and Zeke realize whomever's living there must be near, because there's a bowl of Corn Flakes cereal on the table that hasn't gotten soggy yet.
- Kids Shouldn't Watch Horror Films: Brooke recalls how she made Jeremy watch Poltergeist with her, and this caused him to wake up screaming for weeks afterward.
- Kill the Lights: This happens in the middle of stage rehearsal, courtesy of the Phantom.
- Noodle Incident: When Brooke sees a note telling her she was suspended, she wonders if that's because the principal found out that she let a gerbil loose in the teacher's lounge. The note turns out to be a prank, but how and why she did the part involving the gerbil is never alluded to.
- Rapid-Fire Nail Biting: When first looking at the cast list to see if she got a part, Brooke was biting her left thumbnail hard. And when she saw a note by it supposedly telling her to report to the principal's office, she nearly bit her thumb off.
- Real After All: The threatening messages left behind by the "phantom" turn out to be the work of a homeless person who didn't want them to find his secret living quarters beneath the school. However, the real phantom eventually does show up and even leaves behind evidence of his real identity for the two protagonists to find.
- Rudely Hanging Up:
- While on the phone with Zeke the night after they meet Emile, he tells Brooke that she hopes that she doesn't have nightmares. She responds with this trope.
- She also does this later when Tina, a girl who dislikes Brooke for some reason, calls her to criticize her stage rehearsal just to be rude.
- School Play: The book as a whole is about the school drama club putting on a play that's supposedly cursed by a phantom that won't let anyone perform it.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax:
- Most of the sabotage gets caused by a homeless man living below the school, who wanted people to stop snooping in his home. Although he wasn't directly pretending to be the Phantom.
- For a while, Brooke considers that Tina Powell, her jealous understudy, might be trying to scare her off performing so Tina can take her place in the play. She turns out to be completely innocent though.
- Significant Green-Eyed Redhead: The class theatre teacher, Ms. Walker.
- Theatre Phantom: Brooke Rogers and Zeke Matthews are chosen to play Esmeralda and The Phantom in their school's version of The Phantom of the Opera, but a chain of accidents impede production and threaten to have Zeke kicked off the cast.
- Throw It In!: In-Universe, at the climax, Ms. Walker thinks this is what Zeke did for his performance, adding new lines about the Phantom's origin.
- Trap Door: There's one in the stage, built specifically for the first performance of The Phantom, and first introduced into the plot when their teacher Ms. Walker forgets she'd opened it earlier and accidentally steps backward and falls down it, fortunately being unhurt. The night that the play actually gets performed, the Phantom reveals that he did the same thing on his opening night, but in his case, he died from the fall.
The Musical provides examples of:
- Adapted Out: The Phantom play removes the theater owner, Carlos.
- Adaptational Backstory Change: A slight example with Emile. In the book, his father worked at the school and showed him the basement. When Emile grew up and lost his job, he hid out in the school's basement. In this version, the stuff with his father is cut and instead Emile was the one who worked at the school and was laid off.
- This also applies to the in-universe play. Unlike the book, here The Phantom is meant to be an adaptation of Gaston Leroux's novel much like Webber's and Yeston and Kopit's takes on the story. In The Phantom, Christine's/Esmeralda's father owns the theater, while in the Webber musical and the original novel she was just a chorus girl who sang there.
- Adaptation Name Change: Two examples of this. Whereas in the original book, The Phantom is just a play on its own that happens to be similar to the real-world The Phantom of the Opera, here The Phantom actually is another musical adaptation of the original Gaston Leroux novel. Christine's name is changed to Esmeralda, where Raoul's is kept the same. However, this is a change from the original Phantom of the Auditorium book, as there Raoul's character was given the name Eric (as a nod to the Phantom's name in the original novel) since in the book's universe Phantom of the Opera doesn't seem to exist and The Phantom is its own separate thing entirely.
- Foreshadowing: During the song "Babbling Brooke", Brian mentions others seeing right through him, and needing to shut his trap. Because he's the ghost of the boy who fell through the trapdoor.
- Book Ends: According to the synopsis, the musical opens with the cast singing "Goosebumps" in an old graveyard. "Goosebumps (Reprise)" is sung in that same graveyard after Brooke lays a rose on Brian's grave.
- Freudian Slip: There's slips aplenty from both Brooke and Brian in "Babbling Brooke".Brooke: You could sit there
Next to me. I'd like that
I mean… if you would like that.Hey, I'm sorry about that. I don't actually know anything about Indiana. I'm sure you're lovely. I mean… I’m sure IT’S lovely! Oh my gosh…Each time I blurt things I don't mean to
I think, "why can't I just stay cute?"
… I mean, "mute"!
… I mean… shoot!…Brian: First day jitters. Happens every time
I mean every time I'm… new, which is pretty hair
I mean pretty rare!When I get nervous, I start rushing
Before I know it, I am gushing
Then I sweat and I start crushing
No! Not crushing, blushing! - Gibberish of Love: "Babbling Brooke" is about all the weird things Brooke and Brian say to each other when they meet due to them talking a lot when they're nervous, made complicated by the crushes they have on each other.
- Leitmotif:
- The music in the opening song "Goosebumps" appears throughout a the other songs, such as Brooke singing to its tune in "A Super Scary Play" or Emile doing so in "Watch Your Step".
- "My Story" uses leitmotifs from both "The Legend" and "Babbling Brooke".
- Meet Cute: "Babbling Brooke", for Brooke and Brian.
- Motor Mouth: "Babbling Brooke" shows that Brooke and Brian tend to talk a lot when they get nervous.
- Mythology Gag: In the opening song, the cast and ensemble mention deadly gnomes, cursed cameras and a "demon-like dummy".
- Shout-Out: When told the play features a girl named Esmeralda, Zeke says "Like in Hunchback?"
- Stock Scream: In the studio album, you can make out the Wilhelm scream if you listen very closely to the lyric "But now his hunters would become the haunted" in "The Story of the Phantom".
- Spared by the Adaptation: Kind of. In the book, The Phantom falls to his "death" after he goes up on the stage, while here he does not and just leaves on his own.
- Truer to the Text: Zeke and Brooke's love of horror movies is mentioned, while it was not brought up in the TV episode.
- To this day, inside that theatre, or near it
If you listen very closely, you can hear it:
The songs of a tortured spirit's final role
The sounds of a tortured soul.
