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Are You Afraid of the Dark? #15
The Tale of the Bad-Tempered Ghost
Inadvertently releasing a poltergeist every time he gets mad, Danny fears his life is falling apart and turns for help to his new friend, Abby, in order to put the ghost to rest. Original.
- GenresHorror
128 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1997
About the author
V.E. Mitchell
13 books12 followersVictoria "Vicki" Estelle Mitchell Gustafson is a science fiction author specializing in Star Trek novels.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 16, 2021
Here's something different yet again. So Season 2 of the Are you Afraid of the Dark Reboot miniseries...thing, wraps up this Friday so I figured I'd visit one of these. See, in 1995 Pocket Books launched this book series based on the TV show. I get the slight feeling it may have been jumping on the Goosebumps bandwagon, not helped by this being the same publisher as Ghosts of Fear Street/Spooksville. Hell, there are some ads for this in some of the latter's entries, which is how I was reminded this was a thing. To push it further, the cover for this one did some Ghosts, and the main Ghosts artist did a few covers, as did the main cover artist for Spooksville.
But anyway, there was about 20-ush, each from a different author. I don't know much about these so I didn't really know what to expect. I just picked this one at random as the back blurb sounded interesting. And if nothing else, this one was interest. I liked it, but I am mixed on it to some extent.
First ff, our protagonist is named Danny Fenton. Yes, really. The fact that this is a ghost story makes that even more hilarious in hindsight. Anyway, he used to have it good with his parents but the recurrently got a baby sister who is now hogging up the attention. It's made worse when she gets sicked and the parents start getting really on edge having to worry about that.
Danny starts getting a bunch of chores and his dad is especially prone to yelling at Danny for the smallest mistakes. This leads to Danny getting angry over it and suddenly stuff starts flying all over the place when he gets angry. Soon it becomes clear there might be other forces at work besides his temper.
S0 yeah, this is more about the story than the scares. Those are minimal, unless you find thins getting messy to be horrifying. These bursts get more violent over time but not much more dangerous. It's more about Danny's feelings about this and how his parents are kind of the worst. I mean, it's totally understandable that they are on edge but I swear Dad is like only a step away from hitting Danny at any point.
After a certain point, that isn't too fun. At first Danny whined too much about things unfair just because he focused on small things but eventually he got less annoying and his situation got easier to understand. I liked his friendship with a girl named Abby, who has her own family situation due to divorce. Thankfully her mom is actually good, and gets a rather nice scene later on.
The whole thing with the sister being sick added an unexpected element of drama that I honestly thought was more interesting at times. As a whole, there is interesting thematic stuff here that sort of fits in with the series in that way.
My man problem is that it gets very repetitive. There's only so many scenes of Danny being given chores, dad yelling at him, mom not being a ton better, and and bad things happening due to anger that I could handle. The mystery of who the ghost is adds something but only so much. Then there's the ending which felt too clean/rushed.
The story does at least have a real ending where a lesson is learned and all that, which is nice. It's just that the way they took care of the ghosts was too easy and I don't think quine fit what we knew of the ghost before then. Danny's situation getting fixed is a nice moment but happens a bit too fixed. Spoilers, the parents get better, just wish it was drawn out a bit much. This is short but surly you could have cut some of the filler to make room for this.
So in the end, this was at least decent. It was an interesting read with some aspects that made it an alright story with some nice moments and a fine theme. It just gets too repetitive and could have been wrapped up in a more fitting.
Still, it did make me want to read more of these to see if they are interesting as this was. Hopefully they will have more scares and a tighter story. As for this, it was fairly decent and again, interesting, just could have been better.
Oh and if you're wondering, there are Midnight Society wraparounds, although with just one member talking to us. The member for this one being Kiki.
Also, I got two a Deadtime Stories review coming tomorrow along with the usual Animorphs after that, so yeah, busy week. I don't know when I could fit this in so I figured I'd take advantage of it this week.
But anyway, there was about 20-ush, each from a different author. I don't know much about these so I didn't really know what to expect. I just picked this one at random as the back blurb sounded interesting. And if nothing else, this one was interest. I liked it, but I am mixed on it to some extent.
First ff, our protagonist is named Danny Fenton. Yes, really. The fact that this is a ghost story makes that even more hilarious in hindsight. Anyway, he used to have it good with his parents but the recurrently got a baby sister who is now hogging up the attention. It's made worse when she gets sicked and the parents start getting really on edge having to worry about that.
Danny starts getting a bunch of chores and his dad is especially prone to yelling at Danny for the smallest mistakes. This leads to Danny getting angry over it and suddenly stuff starts flying all over the place when he gets angry. Soon it becomes clear there might be other forces at work besides his temper.
S0 yeah, this is more about the story than the scares. Those are minimal, unless you find thins getting messy to be horrifying. These bursts get more violent over time but not much more dangerous. It's more about Danny's feelings about this and how his parents are kind of the worst. I mean, it's totally understandable that they are on edge but I swear Dad is like only a step away from hitting Danny at any point.
After a certain point, that isn't too fun. At first Danny whined too much about things unfair just because he focused on small things but eventually he got less annoying and his situation got easier to understand. I liked his friendship with a girl named Abby, who has her own family situation due to divorce. Thankfully her mom is actually good, and gets a rather nice scene later on.
The whole thing with the sister being sick added an unexpected element of drama that I honestly thought was more interesting at times. As a whole, there is interesting thematic stuff here that sort of fits in with the series in that way.
My man problem is that it gets very repetitive. There's only so many scenes of Danny being given chores, dad yelling at him, mom not being a ton better, and and bad things happening due to anger that I could handle. The mystery of who the ghost is adds something but only so much. Then there's the ending which felt too clean/rushed.
The story does at least have a real ending where a lesson is learned and all that, which is nice. It's just that the way they took care of the ghosts was too easy and I don't think quine fit what we knew of the ghost before then. Danny's situation getting fixed is a nice moment but happens a bit too fixed. Spoilers, the parents get better, just wish it was drawn out a bit much. This is short but surly you could have cut some of the filler to make room for this.
So in the end, this was at least decent. It was an interesting read with some aspects that made it an alright story with some nice moments and a fine theme. It just gets too repetitive and could have been wrapped up in a more fitting.
Still, it did make me want to read more of these to see if they are interesting as this was. Hopefully they will have more scares and a tighter story. As for this, it was fairly decent and again, interesting, just could have been better.
Oh and if you're wondering, there are Midnight Society wraparounds, although with just one member talking to us. The member for this one being Kiki.
Also, I got two a Deadtime Stories review coming tomorrow along with the usual Animorphs after that, so yeah, busy week. I don't know when I could fit this in so I figured I'd take advantage of it this week.
June 17, 2019
I hated this book! I felt bad for Danny because his parents were horrible to him! His baby sister had been sick with pneumonia but she wasn’t getting better. I’m no doctor but I could have told them that she was suffering with asthma!! They took out all of their fear and frustration on him and made him a real life Cinderella.
Instead of letting him be a kid and enjoy his Summer, they made him slave away doing work that they couldn’t get to since they were always running up to the hospital. I’m all about kids doing chores but cleaning up a basement....c’mon! That’s a parent’s job. A kid would have no idea what to throw away and what to keep. Not to mention the fact that there was mildew (possibly mold) down there and they were allowing him to be exposed to that! They never let him explain and blamed everything on him.
The dad was awful! I fully supported Danny in finally mouthing off to him. I mean that would be horrible to feel like you’re always walking on egg shells. He exploded on him every chance he could get. Most kids would have truly blown him off and rebelled by not doing what he asked. Danny actually cleaned up and did the chores to the best of his ability.
The whole premise of a ghost needing closure by being buried was way too far fetched to me. I think it was a classic poltergeist situation where the negative energy of Danny was causing things to happen.
Then, in the ending, they tried to wrap it up all in a little neat bow like the parents didn’t go total neglect on their kid. They were happy that they had finally gotten a diagnosis so they bought him a bike, talked about baking him his favorite cake, apologized to him, etc. I do think the neighbor (Mrs. Lewis) had a long, hard talk with them.
Instead of letting him be a kid and enjoy his Summer, they made him slave away doing work that they couldn’t get to since they were always running up to the hospital. I’m all about kids doing chores but cleaning up a basement....c’mon! That’s a parent’s job. A kid would have no idea what to throw away and what to keep. Not to mention the fact that there was mildew (possibly mold) down there and they were allowing him to be exposed to that! They never let him explain and blamed everything on him.
The dad was awful! I fully supported Danny in finally mouthing off to him. I mean that would be horrible to feel like you’re always walking on egg shells. He exploded on him every chance he could get. Most kids would have truly blown him off and rebelled by not doing what he asked. Danny actually cleaned up and did the chores to the best of his ability.
The whole premise of a ghost needing closure by being buried was way too far fetched to me. I think it was a classic poltergeist situation where the negative energy of Danny was causing things to happen.
Then, in the ending, they tried to wrap it up all in a little neat bow like the parents didn’t go total neglect on their kid. They were happy that they had finally gotten a diagnosis so they bought him a bike, talked about baking him his favorite cake, apologized to him, etc. I do think the neighbor (Mrs. Lewis) had a long, hard talk with them.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews