Crystal
Crystal
She and her brother, Cole, live in the farming town of Goshen Falls. Their lives become an unending nightmare when they catch the ire of Vanessa, the local witch. As revenge for knocking into her and making her drop her groceries (without apologizing) she curses her and her brother by uttering the phrase Chicken Chicken.
- Adaptational Jerkass: In Goosebumps HorrorTown, she is portrayed as a Rich Bitch.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: In the book, she is clearly a redhead. In Horrortown, she is a blonde.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Crystal hopes to be the running player on the basketball team, but her coach won’t let her. When the running player eventually gets sick and Crystal needs to fill in for her, however, her chicken transformation is starting to become very noticeable. She is forced to play, and she ends up waking stiff-legged, bobbing her head up and down while running, and has her arms bent too much to dribble. She is humiliated, and runs home in tears.
- Body Horror: She and Cole both grow feathers which are painful to remove, Crystal's lips become hard and bumpy like a beak, and they can feel their eyes move to the sides of their heads while their hands become claws and their teeth slide back into their gums. The book goes into perfect detail about how long and excruciating this process is.
- Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Chicken Chicken ends with Crystal and Cole being cursed again by Vanessa simply because Cole let out a loud burp without saying "excuse me" and Crystal laughed at it.
- City Mouse: She and her brother were born in New York, where their parents grew up in, and moved to the small town of Goshen Falls at a very young age.
- Crying Wolf: Cole starts out as an obnoxious brat who pulled off a number of pranks on Crystal claiming it was Vanessa's fault. After Cole humiliates himself at choir practice by clucking like a chicken, he tries to tell Crystal he really couldn't stop but at that point Crystal's sick of listening to him. It's not until her lips become a beak and Cole grows feathers does she believe him. And when Crystal tries telling her parents, she becomes a Crying Wolf herself.
- Farmer's Daughter: Crystal lives on a farm, and is a Nice Girl for the most part, unlike her brother, who is kind of a jerk.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Crystal is the responsible to Cole's foolish, disapproving of her brother's pranking of Vanessa.
- Forced Transformation: The curse Vanessa put Cole and her through is slow and agonizing, and also makes them act like chickens against their wills.
- Named by the Adaptation: The book has her as No Full Name Given. Horrortown gives her the surname "Mikkelsen".
- Nice Girl: Part of what makes Crystal's suffering so hard to read is, unlike her brother, she's not a jerk and she's one of the few kids in Goshen Falls who doesn't think pranking Vanessa is funny.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Crystal walked into Vanessa because she was too busy trying to stop Cole and Anthony from killing each other over a bad joke.
- Not Now, Kiddo: Her parents fail to notice that their children have suddenly grown feathers, and that their daughter's lips have turned into a beak. In fact, her mother just assumes Crystal needs chapstick.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Crystal delivers one to Cole after the choir practice fiasco, mistakenly thinking he messed up on purpose and declaring how sick she is of his awful sense of humor. If only Cole actually had been joking...
- Slow Transformation: Into chickens.
- Sudden Eye Colour: The book never reveals what her eye colour is. However, the cover shows her eyes to be blue.
- You Are What You Hate: Cole and her absolutely can't stand chickens and hate that their parents moved to Goshen Falls just so they could farm them, which makes their transformations all the more horrible.
- Youthful Freckles: Crystal has these, as seen on the cover art.
Vanessa
A witch who was the main villain of Chicken Chicken. She curses two children into slowly, and painfully, transform into actual chickens because they made her drop her groceries by accident.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Has black hair in the book, but light blonde or white hair in the game.
- Adaptational Nice Guy: In Horrortown, she is a nice farm girl who is just pushed too far by Crystal.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: She seems like a nice enough (if a bit weird) woman at first, but in reality is a sadistic tyrant with no qualms about doing horrible things to anyone who offends her, even unintentionally.
- Blatant Lies: Towards the end of the story, as Crystal and Cole — both fully transformed into chickens — sheepishly typed out an apology to her on a typewriter, Vanessa instead replies the transformation is irreversible and there's nothing she can do to change it. It takes an extra note of "Thanks anyway" from Chicken!Crystal to convince Vanessa to reverse the transformation.
- Death Glare: Crystal describes feeling like she's been stabbed by an icicle with the way Vanessa looks at her after they knock over her groceries.
- Disproportionate Retribution:
- She puts them through all this because they bumped into her on the street, as she saw it as them being rude.
- Etiquette Nazi: She's so obsessed with manners that she puts Crystal and Cole through an excruciating transformation into chickens for the crime of knocking her over without apologizing. And then again at the very end for burping without saying "excuse me".
- Evil Wears Black: She dresses entirely in black, and it doesn't get much more evil than torturing children.
- Faux Affably Evil: She laughs at Crystal and Cole's predicament as they try to get her attention only after they've fully turned into chickens. And then she "sadly" states she can't do anything now, even if they apologize. This turns out to be a complete lie, as it takes Crystal writing a thank you note for trying to teach her and her brother manners for Vanessa to undo the spell in a few seconds. She then curses them again when they belch without saying "Excuse me."
- Harmful to Minors: Crystal and Cole are implied to not be her only victims.
- Here We Go Again!: When Crystal and Cole burp loudly without saying "Excuse me," Vanessa says "Pig, Pig."
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: Despite being a normal (if spellcasting) human she is considered one of the most vile and detestable villains in the series.
- Hypocrite: For all her obsession with manners, it was very rude of her to laugh at and mock Crystal and Cole when they came to her begging for help.
- Insane Troll Logic: When the kids finally confront Vanessa she expects them to thank her for "teaching them a lesson" by horribly torturing them mentally and physically. What?
- Karma Houdini: She gets away with cursing Crystal and Cole twice.
- Knight of Cerebus: So Chicken Chicken is a book about a couple of kids who're slowly turning into chickens. Sounds like another goofy entry in the Goosebumps franchise. That is until we see just how horribly slow and painful Crystal and Cole's transformations are, how their lives are ruined, and how Vanessa takes so much pleasure in seeing them suffer there's no longer anything funny about this book. And all because they made her drop her groceries and didn't apologize.
- Knight Templar: Again, she thinks she was completely justified in putting a horrible curse on some kinds just for bumping into her. One can only wonder if anyone who cuts her off in traffic gets turned into a frog or something..
- Misplaced Retribution: She honestly had more of a right to be mad at Cole and Anthony than Crystal, since the two boys had pranked her a few days before and the reason the three bumped into Vanessa was because Cole and Anthony were fighting. Crystal was trying to pull the boys apart and bumped into Vanessa by accident.
- Never My Fault: Vanessa says she had to teach Crystal and Cole a lesson because they made her drop her groceries, didn't help and didn't apologize to her. She doesn't get the reason the siblings didn't help is because the Death Glare she gave them was so terrifying they were afraid to go near her, and they ran away without apologizing because she cursed them before they had a chance to. While she did have some right to be mad, if she had controlled her temper the kids might've offered to help her.
- Obliviously Evil: Perhaps the most horrifying thing about Vanessa is the fact that she sees nothing wrong with her monstrous methods. Compared to the likes of Slappy or the Masked Mutant, she isn't the least bit self aware of her evil, acting like she has the moral high ground the entire time. Another instance where this actually makes a villain ten times more despicable.
- Pet the Dog: Transforming Crystal and Cole back into humans and giving them soda.
- Apparently, there was another kid who ran into her in the same way as the main characters did, but she didn't curse him because he stammered out a quick apology.
- Related in the Adaptation: In Horrortown, she is the niece of Clarrisa from Be Careful What You Wish For.
- Wicked Witch: One obsessed with good manners.
- Would Hurt a Child: She subjects them to horrific torture for the slightest trouble.
Lucy-Ann
A friend of Crystal's who is hosting her 13th birthday.
- Everybody Loves Blondes: She has curly blonde hair, and she is said to be very popular, inviting many of her friends to her party, even though most of them live miles away. She is also stated to be very pretty, with Crystal even saying so, and that is probably why she has an Abhorrent Admirer.
- I Have Brothers: When she and Crystal are discussing Cole’s weird behavior at the choir practice, in which Cole started clucking instead of singing, Crystal replies that she sometimes think he’s from Mars. Lucy-Ann replies that she understands how that feels, because she has FOUR brothers.
- Massive Numbered Siblings: She has seven brothers and sisters, and that just might be the reason why they hold such big parties on birthdays.
- Only Friend: Even though she has many friends at school, Crystal doesn’t get to see many of them outside of school because Goshen Falls is so small. Most of them are from all over the county, and Lucy-Ann is the closest friend to her.
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: The Girly Girl to Crystal’s Tomboy. Crystal likes to play basketball, while Lucy Anne likes to sing choir and has a soprano voice.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: She is last seen telling Crystal to look for chapstick in her bathroom because of Crystal’s hardened beak. Crystal abandons the party not long after, and we never see or hear from Lucy-Ann again.
