The Black Ring is a cursed object and is the main antagonist of the eighteenth book in the Goosebumps Series 2000 book series, Horrors of the Black Ring.
History[]
When Beth Welch arrives at her school, she notices her teacher, Miss Gold, is wearing a strange gold ring with what looks to be a face inside of the ring's jewel, which Miss Gold brushes off as a flaw in the ring. She also notes that she hasn't been able to remove the ring since putting it on. Later, after working on the upcoming school carnival art sale, Beth and her classmate Anthony Paul Gonzales soon discovers Miss Gold looking evil, and writing all over the chalkboard proclaiming that the carnival is doomed. Soon most of their art is destroyed, except for Anthony's, which makes Beth suspect him of sabotage. More strange things occur. Their cookies burn in the oven, the brownies are filled with maggots and Beth's friend Danny Jacobs ends up falling into a dunk tank full of boiling water. Miss Gold worries that with all of these incidents happening that the carnival really should be cancelled. However, it goes on as planned with added security. While the school carnival goes on, a hooded figure enters the gym and the dunk tank explodes, wasps attack everyone and the gym goes up in flames. As the hooded figure grabs Amanda and tries to drag her out of the gym, the cops arrive and reveal that the hooded figure was Miss Gold, who has no clue what just happened.
As Miss Gold is arrested, the ring falls off her finger. Beth finds it and picks it up, putting it on her finger without realizing. Beth begins to have strange nightmares and visions. She wakes up to see her room destroyed and she begins to act more mean to Amanda, even destroying her Barbie dolls. She shoves a kid in their locker and puts a mouse in the cafeteria soup. She goes to see Miss Gold, who still has no memory of what happened but believes that she must have done what she was accused of. She then sees the ring on Beth's finger and begins to panic. Beth is then compelled to sabotage Anthony's bike for the upcoming Bike-a-Thon, but before she can do it, she resists and returns home, the ring burning her finger. She sees that Chirpy, the injured bird she found and took home, has died. She tries to pry the ring off, but it's impossible. Suddenly a smoky figure emerges from the ring, taunting Beth and telling her that he was the one who controlled Miss Gold to cause mayhem. When he was done with her, he slipped off her finger and found Beth to be his new pawn. Beth eventually manages to use the corpse of Chirpy to remove the ring and slip it on the bird's claw, which causes the creature to die. Beth buries Chirpy, only to soon see Amanda return home with a similar looking gold ring with an evil face in it.
General information[]
Powers[]
The black ring is a piece of jewelry that is possessed by a powerful creature that controls whoever wears the ring. It latches on to the wearer without them even realizing it, with it then being almost impossible to remove. Attempts to remove the ring can result intense burning pain on the finger of the wearer. It can hypnotize the wearer and cause them to do its evil bidding, which includes harming innocent people. All while the wearer remains unaware of their actions, often left in a hypnotic state while these actions occur. However, the ring can be defeated by placing the ring from one wearer to another, in the case of Beth being the corpse of her bird Chirpy.
Physical appearance[]
The black ring looks like an ordinary gold ring with a cloudy looking reflection in its jewel where the face of the creature inside the ring can be seen.