In this book, "you" are visiting your grandmother, who lives next to a cemetery. You start to notice that the gravestones are moving around, rearranging themselves. What do you do? If you stay and face the coming ghosts, you discover that the stones are spelling out a terrible curse, and it's up to you to find the most powerful ghost of the graveyard and stop him. Or if you go home, a ghost hitches a ride back home, and you need to get him out of your life.
The Curse of the Creeping Coffin provides examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: Done twice.
- A bad ending tells you at the end that if you had asked the ghost of Elvira for help before making this choice, she would have told you not to make that choice and to ask her next time. This is the same Elvira who performed a hostile takeover of your bedroom and demanded not to be disturbed if you know what's good for you.
- You have two choices for Keeper of the Sword. If you choose the wrong name, you should get a bad ending. However, the book points out that the ghost you saw was too young to be the character you chose. Then it straight out tells you you'll get a break and to go back and choose the other character.
- Blessed with Suck: Most people can't see ghosts, but you can. You think you'd like a special ability, but not one that scares you so much.
- Covers Always Lie: At no point do you encounter any living skeletons trying to escape their coffin; it's all ghosts, all the time.
- Creepy Twins: John and Jane Luckmeyer, the two ghostly kids who haunt and stalk you the entirety of the story.
- Dream Reality Check: At one point, you hope this is all a dream, and pinch yourself to check. If you tell the book you don't feel it, it will tell you that you must be asleep in that case and to wait until you wake up to face the ghosts.
- Exact Words: There is a page where you have to throw the book in the air to determine if you survive a fall. If you do, you are killed by the ghost who you were trying to escape from when you fell, with the ending pointing out that the previous page only said you'd survive the fall, not the whole story.
- Failure Is the Only Option: At one point, you can choose between fighting a Civil War soldier and a fencer. If you choose the Civil War soldier, you can get one of three endings. If you hide from him in the barn, you get bitten by a vampire chicken, and if you run to the bridge, you fall off. You have a fifty-fifty percent chance of surviving the fall. If you don't, you become a ghost and play pranks, including crossing out the page numbers of this very book. If you do, the ghost hears you groaning from your injuries and kills you. The book then clarifies that you had a chance of surviving the fall, not the book.
- Fold-Spindle Mutilation: One ending has you getting pulled into Mac MacFarling's spirit detecting box by a hand inside it if you don't fork over one dollar when asked.
- Foreshadowing: Look at the graveyard illustration on page 97 and you'll see that the grave belonging to Elvira Martin, the mean-tempered ghost who has taken over your bedroom, isn't among them. It's a subtle clue that, should you successfully exorcise the ghosts, she's still not going to go anywhere.
- Friendly Ghost:
- Your dead piano teacher, Mrs Hatfield, not only doesn't seem to mind whether you play the piano for her or not, but if you do, she'll not only still be nice to you, but give you a map to find gold she hid before she died.
- Also the ghost boy in the second storyline in some versions. One ending has him giving you a gold coin that he says will give you good luck as long as you live because you proved to be trustworthy by refusing to make a promise you knew you might not keep.
- Indian Burial Ground: The graveyard isn't one, but that's the way it appears to function.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Mean ghost Elvira helps you out with information a couple of times, provided you let her sleep first.
- Karmic Jackpot: Allowing your ghost piano teacher to give you one last lesson gives you a particularly good ending, where she gives you a map to find her gold. If you refuse, you still survive the adventure, but you don't get the gold.
- Last Chance Hit Point:
- You're looking for the Keeper Of The Sword's graveyard. All you know is that her first name is Sarah, and there's two Sarahs in the graveyard. You need the numbers in the date of her death added up to get out of the Most Powerful Ghost's grip. However, if you choose the wrong Sarah, the book doesn't give you a bad ending, but straight out tells you you're getting a lucky break and to choose the other Sarah. If you do choose the correct one, you are congratulated for knowing she was correct because you saw her as a young woman, and the other Sarah was seventy when she died.
- Similarly, if you think John Luckmeyer is the Keeper Of The Sword, the book gives you a quiz, and then explains if you answered TRUE to any of them, you should wait for the men in white coats to take you away. If you didn't, the book says there is hope for you, but that the Keeper of The Sword is nothing like John Luckmeyer.
- Roommate Drama: An ornery female ghost named Elvira takes over your bedroom early in the story, threatens harm to you if you disturb her rest for any reason, and one ending implies you will spend the rest of your summer, if not your life, with her as a bunkmate. And this is one of the good endings, mind you.
- Taken for Granite: In one ending you are turned into a statue and ghosts 'tease you and pinch your stone nose' until the end of time.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: A foul-mannered ghost named Elvira Martin takes over your bedroom early in the story and lets you know from the start that annoying her or disturbing her rest for any reason will end badly for you. If you complete the storyline where you manage to exorcise the ghosts from your grandmother's house, you settle down for some well-deserved rest only to find her still warming your bed. And hogging your covers. And the book explains that you'll have to learn to live with having her for a roommate, possibly forever.
- Theme Twin Naming: John and Jane Luckmeyer, whose names both start with one letter and have another one as the only other hard sound in them.
- Trickster Twins: John and Jane Luckmeyer. The trickier thing is that they sometimes do warn you about legitimate things (such as Jane warning you not to walk into the graveyard with a ghost), but they are still not to be trusted.
- Who You Gonna Call?: Mac MacFarling, the ghost hunter. He refuses to take the case because the ghosts are way over his limit, but he does help you make a map of the graveyard (which helps you find the curse message) and tells you to find the Keeper of the Sword and to stay away from the Luckmeyer twins.
- You Bastard!: If you promise to help the ghost boy with his ritual but renge at the last second, you get rid of him and you get to live a normal life... except that, whenever you enter a cemetery, all the ghosts immediately start yelling at you "YOU LIED!"
