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The Phantom

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When Reggie Westlake turns up at the school rally marking the start of the football season, the crowd goes wild. He's the greatest player Stony Bay High School ever had. Quarterback and Captain, Reggie led the winning team for two years running, raising the school spirit higher than ever before. No one could forget his black and gold jersey bearing the number nine. He'll always be the school hero, the one everyone loves. There's just one thing...Reggie's dead.

198 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1993

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532 people want to read

About the author

Barbara Steiner

98 books33 followers
Also writes under the name Barbara A. Steiner.

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5 stars
83 (19%)
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86 (20%)
3 stars
158 (37%)
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74 (17%)
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19 (4%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews
Profile Image for Ken.
2,562 reviews1,375 followers
September 8, 2021
People start spotting star quarterback Reggie Westerman around the school a year after he’s death. Reggie was killed accidentally during a match the previous year. Is he’s spirt out to seek revenge and is that spot on the team now cursed?
After a promising start this story was slightly underwhelming.

I liked how it tackled Jilly’s grief as she was dating Reggie at the time and how it impacted the whole school.
I liked the image of the American Footballer stalking the school, but the story felt poorly expected.
Probably the weakest Point Horror I’ve read to date.
Profile Image for Armand.
184 reviews33 followers
May 19, 2019
In their first pre-game rally of the season, the studentry of Stony Bay High were shocked by an unexpected apparition - that of their beloved former quarterback who died due to injuries he sustained in his final game. That's only the start of what's turning out to be another bedeviled season, as a budding star player got into a serious "accident", another poisoned, their coach's house vandalized, and more hauntings plagued the school. What (or who?) is the source of all these troubles, and will these all end before death claims another member of the team?

It is a pretty suspenseful and competently-paced book, at least until just before the end. I really can't care less about the lead though because she's close to being insufferable. Also, the perpetrator becomes rather evident near the denoument.

Some of the maneuvers seem rather unbelievable too. The ending was also anti-climactic and felt rushed.

I'm rating this 5/10 or 2 stars out of 5.
Profile Image for Erica Leigh.
692 reviews46 followers
May 14, 2022
“Sometimes grief makes people do strange things.”

Amelia’s best friend Jilly has been such a Debbie Downer ever since her boyfriend, you know, DIED unexpectedly, and Amelia will not let it go. She’s all like, “jeez, can’t she just get over it already” 💀

And now his ghost may or may not be trying to kill his replacement on the football team.

Sigh. High school probs.
Profile Image for Tammy.
371 reviews6 followers
June 23, 2022
3.5 stars…..I enjoyed this book, though it was very repetitive in places. The chapters didn’t finish on many cliffhangers, and it wasn’t very scary. I enjoyed reading about the cheerleaders. This wasn’t my favourite point horror.
Profile Image for Courtney Gruenholz.
Author 13 books23 followers
October 15, 2022
Barbara Steiner was a really good writer...I have been enjoying reading her books.

The only thing that kept it from being amazing for me was that it was a slow burn when trying to get through all of the football stuff. Not a big sports fan and I already have to put up with football in my own home until February so...

Amelia "Mel" Seibert is trying to get her friend Jillian "Jilly" Hoff to participate in the first pep rally of the year. Best friends and cheerleaders, it isn't that Jilly is afraid to perform...she just can't stand what it really means.

It's the first time she'll have to cheer after the death of her boyfriend, Reggie Westerman. Reggie use to be the team captain and star quarterback of the Stony Bay Bombers football team. The last game of the season almost a year before, Reggie got hurt...bad.

A spinal cord injury left him paralyzed and after two weeks, he died.

The pep rally starts and then ends just as suddenly when Reggie appears in his black and gold football jersey with his famous number nine.

It couldn't have been real it had to be a prank...someone's idea of a sick joke. Mr. Paladino, the football coach, uses the appearance of Reggie to rev up his team. They'll dedicate the season to him and win for Westerman.

Amelia can't believe it...she's not happy that someone would do this to her best friend after Jilly has suffered enough. Then the coach uses it hype up the season...what is wrong with people?

Her boyfriend Garth Dreyer (nicknamed Vader...get it?) is the new captain of the team and Buddy Nichols the new quarterback so both young men know how their coach can be and try to ignore the chills they got from seeing Reggie come back from the grave...after all it wasn't really him...

The season starts off with a win for the team but when everyone gathers at a beach party to celebrate...that's when their streak of good fortune turns bad.

Reggie Westmore emerges from the lake and then the players on the team start suffering bad accidents. Reggie's brother Travis, an older graduate and sports writer, has a new story believing the team has now been cursed by the ghost of his brother.

Is this phantom of the former team captain haunting his team, payback for the incident that ended his career and his life? Or could it be a real, live person behind the terror?

Is the coach desperate to win? Is Travis Westerman using his brother's death to his advantage? Could it be the other teams trying to scare the competition? Could it be someone who hates the jocks?

Amelia is ready to find out...

There's a handful of suspects to be red herrings and it takes awhile to get to the reveal of what we are actually dealing with. I could figure out who was behind it after a few more incidents left the pool getting smaller and smaller.

The twist, the climax and the ending were actually very sad. Not bittersweet...depressingly sad.

You actually felt bad for most of the characters because none of them were that awful but they weren't perfect. For what it's worth most jocks I went to school with turned out to be pretty decent people. These days in the real world of the NFL and CTEs, football should be fun to play.

This book did not put it in a very good light how in high school sports winning is everything. I don't really think it's worth losing your life or whittling down your spirit or putting it before loved ones.

If you are a fan of football, you probably won't enjoy this book. It's a good read and a recommendation if you want a good story.
184 reviews9 followers
May 9, 2024
This was fine. I set off hoping for a little supernatural (a ghost jock) but we're not quite at that era of point horror yet, it seems!
Profile Image for Nattie.
1,118 reviews24 followers
August 17, 2015
What a waste of paper. Barbara Steiner has written some quality books, and some not so quality books, The Phantom is one of the poorly written ones. It was bad from the first word to the last.

Amelia spends much of the story either trying to console her friend Jilly, or getting mad at Jilly for being unable to move past her former boyfriend's death.

Things kick off in September, Reggie Westlake died 10 months prior. Jilly HAD apparently managed to move past his death until the first day of school, then she was back to not being past it. I was a little confused as to why school starting triggered a setback for Jilly, Reggie died the past November, meaning Jilly had attended school for 7 months after his death before summer
break.

At any rate, Jilly spends much of her time crying and carrying on about Reggie, she can't live without Reggie. Somehow she had managed to live for nearly a year, but suddenly, just in time for the book, she couldn't.

The remainder of the story focused on people thinking they are seeing Reggie's ghost all over town. There was also a bit about one character's name. His name was Garth, so the kids at school nicknamed him Vader. I would have gotten the joke if Garth's last name had been Vader, you know, Garth Vader...but I don't recall that being Garth's last name. The kids were just calling him Vader because Garth rhymed with Darth...the whole thing didn't make a drop of sense.



Profile Image for Rachael Hewison.
568 reviews37 followers
February 18, 2018
This has to be one of the worst Point Horror books I've read. Most Point Horrors leave a cliffhanger at the end of the chapter to get you to keep reading. This barely had any so I had no incentive to keep reading. I'm also not very good at spotting who is going to be the bad guy in these books but within the first few chapters I knew exactly who it was so most of the book was just spent waiting for the inevitable.
Profile Image for Bex.
592 reviews13 followers
December 4, 2016
After a first chapter where the dead quarter back mysteriously appears at a pep rally this goes from teen drama to horror movie and back again. All the while it fails to build the suspense and tension needed for this to be scary.

I seem to remember hating this in the 90's and age hasn't improved it.
Profile Image for Liam Underwood.
328 reviews10 followers
December 31, 2021
The Phantom is the first Barbara Steiner penned Point Horror book that I've read so far, and unfortunately it's not a promising start. The set-up is fine but squandered as there is very little tension throughout the book. Attempts at any mystery are filtered through protagonist Amelia, who is written quite inconsistently and is hard to really root for. Throw in your classic Point Horror elements of pranks and accidents and threatening notes and it all adds up to a very underwhelming book, with a very predictable ending.

I did like the high school setting and the peek at the ruthlessness of high school American football, but these were ultimately fairly minor elements. It's somewhat telling that the most compelling part of this book actually happens off-page before the plot kicks in and is only referenced.

2/5

Point Horror Ranked
1) The Girlfriend - 4/5
2) The Dead Game - 4/5
3) Trick or Treat - 3.5/5
4) Nightmare Hall - The Silent Scream - 3.5/5
5) Fatal Secrets - 3.5/5
6) Teacher's Pet - 3.5/5
7) The Baby-Sitter II - 3.5/5
8) The Cheerleader - 3.5/5
9) The Hitchhiker - 3.5/5
10) April Fools - 3.5/5
11) My Secret Admirer - 3.5/5
12) The Lifeguard - 3.5/5
13) Freeze Tag - 3/5
14) Thirteen Tales of Horror - 3/5
15) The Accident - 3/5
16) The Vampire's Promise - 3/5
17) Funhouse - 3/5
18) Nightmare Hall - Deadly Attraction - 3/5
19) The Window - 3/5
20) The Invitation - 2.5/5
21) The Perfume - 2.5/5
22) The Train - 2.5/5
23) The Waitress - 2.5/5
24) The Snowman - 2.5/5
25) Nightmare Hall - The Roommate - 2.5/5
26) Beach House - 2.5/5
27) The Mall - 2.5/5
28) The Boyfriend - 2/5
29) The Fever - 2/5
30) The Cemetery - 2/5
31) Mother's Helper - 2/5
32) The Baby-Sitter III - 2/5
33) The Phantom - 2/5
34) The Dead Girlfriend - 2/5
35) The Baby-Sitter - 1.5/5
36) Hit and Run - 1.5/5
37) The Return of the Vampire - 1/5
38) Beach Party - 1/5
Profile Image for Jamie.
Author 2 books4 followers
June 26, 2022
Listen, just because Reggie's dead doesn't mean he can't still participate in pep rallies, beach parties, and running his friends' cars off the road, okay?

It's hilarious how scared all these teens are at the sight of someone wearing Dead Reggie's football uniform. And how quickly they all jump to "g-g-g-g-ghost!" In my old high school, someone would have run up and ripped the helmet off of "Reggie" the first time he appeared to find out who it really was. Boom, book over!

Overall, I don't think Steiner is a very good writer. This was full of characters acting stupid to keep the plot rolling, and some really odd phrasing sprinkled throughout. This one is a lot more fun to talk about than it is to read.

Also, at one point our protagonist, Amelia (nicknamed Mel, which . . . what?), leaves a party while she's "it" during a "reverse hide and seek" game, leaving everyone else hiding and no one seeking. Some say those kids are still hiding in the fog around the coach's house to this very day . . . .
108 reviews4 followers
January 30, 2021
Full review at: https://www.jackreacts.com.au/post/th...
Snippet: I’m surprised by how much I enjoyed this considering how much football was involved. The plot wasn’t super interesting, but I really liked Amelia so I was invested in her journey. She’s probably one of the best heroines in these books, based on likeability and the fact that I wasn’t screaming at the decisions she made, although she was pretty dumb sometimes. I only wish there was a bigger sense of danger throughout the book, but I guess that’s more because I’m used to the main character being the bad guy’s target whereas here, Amelia’s more of an innocent bystander trying to help her boyfriend.

Check out my full review linked up top for an in-depth recap :)

Profile Image for Stephanie.
943 reviews12 followers
June 16, 2022
The Phantom is about a group of teens. Their friend, the star quarterback died the year before, but as the new football season starts Reggie reappears at the school rally.
Everyone saw him die so who is the mysterious phantom quarterback that keeps appearing, and why does he seem to want to hurt them all?

Despite being British and not having that much knowledge of American football I actually really enjoyed this one. I found it quite dark and creepy.
I liked main character Amelia and the ending, although not unexpected, was still enjoyable.

It does contain a lot of talk of football as the players and the cheerleaders are the main characters of this story, but overall its been a good one to read.
Profile Image for Kath.
340 reviews3 followers
July 3, 2022
This was another one where I remembered the culprit from reading it as a teen, but I loved the revisit. There's a scene at the end that particularly stuck in my mind and I remembered if from just the cover. There aren't that many sports themed horrors as far as I know, and this was a pretty good one. Lots of characters too so the the ending is not immediately obvious. As usual its peppered with your acceptable in the 90s things that make you go 'mmmm' , this time with a questionable treatment of mental health. My favourite 90s scene has to be the main character needing to leave a note on her boyfriend's windscreen just to get him to call her! The efforts we had to go to!
Profile Image for Kerri.
1,101 reviews462 followers
February 13, 2021
🏈
This had a reasonably promising start, but things tapered off quickly. This is the first Point Horror that I've found to be this lackluster. The ending was OK, but predictable and a good example of too little too late. I wasn't invested in any of characters enough to care about the conclusion. Any impact it might have had was dampened by this.

There were a few plausibility issues as well, particularly one involving a car and fog. The logistics of that just didn't make sense to me.

This is one I doubt I will ever revisit.
Profile Image for Niamh Andrews.
Author 4 books3 followers
August 25, 2020
I've been re reading some of the Point Horror books and came across this one. Christopher Pike, Diana Hoh and RL Stines books in this series can still be a bit creepy but this was just a drag. Boring, predictable and not in the least horror like. Such a shame as many of the Point Horrors series still stand the test of time.
Profile Image for Melanie Scalera.
67 reviews
October 5, 2019
I did like it. I can’t say too much without spoiling it. One thing that bugged me, and needed to say; the character in the back cover description’s last name is wrong! How did this get past publishing 😂
Profile Image for Louise.
866 reviews27 followers
September 2, 2024
A weaker Point Horror plot. Very heavy on the football, which doesn't interest me, so it didn't exactly have a head start. Rather predictable (I guessed who the culprit was before the reveal) and the ending was very rushed.
Profile Image for Amanda Reads.
177 reviews3 followers
June 4, 2025
3.5 stars. Fun little read but I found myself not really invested in the characters. Reggie died in a tragic football accident and now the team and cheerleaders are seeing his ghost. The story/plot was solid but it could’ve used more scares.
Profile Image for Betsy Seip-Price.
39 reviews11 followers
Read
February 22, 2022
It was okay. The ending was pretty decent. I found it a little tough to read at points.
Profile Image for Chelley Toy.
201 reviews69 followers
July 6, 2024
I read this with my book club that I run on Instagram where we revisit Point Horror and other books from our childhood - @talespointhorrorbookclub

Tagline - He’s got the killer instinct

Memorable For - Football focused, Poisonous Pins and dodgy nicknames!

Blurb -

When Reggie Westlake (*coughs* … Westerman) shows up at the pep rally starting off the football season, the crowd goes wild. He's the greatest player Stony Bay High School ever had. Quarterback and captain, he led the team to the championship two years in a row. He'll always be a school hero, but there's just one thing: Reggie's dead. . . .

Some Thoughts -

Well what a hoo- rah rah this was! Welcome to Stoney Bay High School where everyone knows everyone, they travel in boats to beach parties, appear to have access to poisons, scuba equipment and lots of gasoline and have a football team called the Stoney Bay Bombers who wear lots of black and gold. We join our gang one year after superstar quarterback Reggie Westlake died in a tragic accident! And although His number 9 was retired after his death, someone wants to make sure he is remembered. Reggie appears through a curtain of mist at a pep ralley, but how is this possible if Amelia saw him die!? And then strange apparitions keep occurring. Are the Stoney Bay Bombers jinxed? Are the rivals playing a really mean practical joke? Are the teachers in on it and just want to scare the kids? Or is someone out for revenge?!

Other highlights include confusing character names/nicknames who were not 100% likeable, creative revenge ideas including some poisonous pins, ghostly apparitions and questionable friendships.
4 reviews
September 29, 2016
Lol wow, so many dislike this book! I do not remember how bad the writing was but i remember the story well. I read this book in elementary. But i gave it a 5 because i remember loving it and thinking of it made me smile. Seeing this is actually making me want to read it again. Maybe like watching a really old movie ill realize how terrible it truly was lol.
Profile Image for Brittany.
54 reviews2 followers
November 24, 2012
Phantom, a book which use to belong to my sister now rests on my bookshelf. I diffidently didn't expect the ending when I read it. It's a good horror book. Not too scary, but not-how do i put this- not something I'd read to a little child.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 34 reviews

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