The Curse of the Creeping Coffin

The Curse of the Creeping Coffin
Tagline	They're real deadheads!
Author(s)	R.L. Stine
Cover artist	Mark Nagata
Publisher	Scholastic
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Release date	August 1996
Pages	132
Number of endings	21
Series	Give Yourself Goosebumps
Series number	8
Previous book	Under the Magician's Spell
Next book	The Knight in Screaming Armor

The Curse of the Creeping Coffin is the eighth book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series. It was published in 1996.

The prismatic hologram cover design consisted of squares and triangles arranged into curved lines and the cover illustration consists of an unearthed coffin being opened by a rotting skeleton. The skeleton's bony fingertips have left marks on the coffin lid.

Plot

You are staying with your grandmother in her spooky old house, which is next to a graveyard. The headstones seem to be rearranging themselves every day and you begin to be creeped out. Your obnoxious grandmother does not notice. So you are forced to face the ghouls in the cemetery, that are beginning to come alive, by yourself. To stop it, you must defeat the most powerful ghost (MPG) in the graveyard. But, if you decide to go home, one of the ghosts follows you back. Can you set things straight, or will you be haunted forever?

List of endings

There are sixteen bad endings and five good endings.

Bad endings

• Being stuck in a coffin, until you die.
• John Luckmeyer tricks you into walking into a closet, which your grandmother turned into a laundry chute. You end up falling two stories down a clothes chute into a washer.
• It is implied that you were destroyed by the MHG - the most horrible ghost.
• You choose the wrong grave and the last tombstone moves into place, completing the message. This ending has a sidenote that says that next time to ask for Elvira's help and don't leave that much to chance.
• You are being chased by a ghost of a soldier from the Civil War and end up falling off a bridge. You survive the fall and groan in pain, but the ghost hears you and floats down and kills you.
• Since you refuse to give Mac MacFarling any money, his box opens up to reveal a plastic hand. The hand grabs you and pulls you into the box.
• You decide to hide out in the barn, but you end up being bitten by a vampire chicken.
• Sparkle wimps out after seeing a ghost with worms crawling on his face. The worms smother you to death after the ghost puts his face up to yours.
• You don't survive a fall off a bridge and become a ghost. You play pranks on people, like crossing out the page numbers of a Give Yourself Goosebumps book with a black felt marker. Only it was this book, the only one you're in.
• You betray a ghost by turning him down. Every time you walk by a cemetery, the ghost and his friends call out, "You lied!"
• A Neanderthal ghost hits you on the head with a club.
• You become a stone statue in the graveyard, still aware of your surroundings. The ghosts of John Luckmeyer and his twin sister, Jane torment you for all eternity.
• A ghost follows you around for the rest of your life and makes everyone think you're stealing things.
• Deciding to ride Glory the ghost horse turns out to be a bad idea, because he charges straight into a solid wall, taking you with him. His grave said that he was too wild for the riders of this world. As a consequence, you're stuck with riding Glory for all time.
• Because of a bet you made with the ghost, you'll have to eat worms.
• You find a Lanx, and the book ends. (This might be a "punishment" for not reading enough Goosebumps books, since this only happens if you say the creature is a Lanx, but a Grool was described earlier.)

Good endings

• You run into your piano teacher, when visiting the afterlife. She gives you a map that leads to gold in her backyard under her apple tree, if you play for her. You then wake up at your house with the map in your hand.
• You defeat Brandon Estep, before he can consummate the curse. However, you're still stuck with the ghost of Elvira Martin - she wasn't outside when you broke the curse, so she didn't return to her grave.
• You use the mute button on the remote control to stop the Neanderthal ghost. Pretty soon, you called the news and become famous along with your grandmother for demonstrating the remote. You sell the house and go to live in the South Pacific Islands with your grandmother.
• You refuse to take more piano lessons, and the piano teacher takes you back outside the graveyard.
• While you don't fully trust the ghost, the ghost gives you a coin for honesty. Before heading to the afterlife, he advises you to keep it with you always and not to sell it, spend it or give it away, even after death.

International releases

Gallery

UK

Spanish

Norwegian

German

French

Artwork

Cover artwork by Mark Nagata.

Trivia

• Despite the cover, the reader's main enemies in this book are ghosts, not skeletons.
• One of the choices has hidden pages and can only be found by adding up dates given to the reader earlier in the story.
• The Goosebumps question in this book about the name of the creature from It Came from Beneath the Sink!.
• In some parts of the story, there are two choices that both lead to bad endings. In one part of the story, there is a choice that leads to two different good endings.
• This is the only Give Yourself Goosebumps book where you can get a bad ending depending on what day of the week it is.