Welcome to the Wicked Wax Museum is the twelfth book in the Give Yourself Goosebumps gamebook series. It was published in 1996.
The cover illustration features a melting wax figure in a museum. In the background, there are statues and head busts that are to the right of the window. The wax figure has black hair and a black outfit.
Blurb
Too Hot to Handle!!
Your teacher thinks it'll be good for your class to hang out at the new wax museum in town. Yeah, right! Once you get there your teacher starts blah-blahing about something or other and that’s when you and your friend see the red door.
If you decide to check out what's behind door #1, you'll discover the museum owner’s secret for making lifelike sculptures. And it doesn’t look like fun! If you decide to ditch the red door and go the other way you'll end up meeting scary Sybil Wicked — and wish you hadn't. Will you escape this creepy place before you're turned into a human candle?
The choice is yours in this scary GOOSEBUMPS adventure that's packed with over 20 super-spooky endings!
Plot
A history class is taking a trip to the Wicked Wax Museum the day before it opens. You and your friends, Jake and Liz, misbehave while on the bus. Then you are told by Mr. Dunning, the teacher, that you are not allowed inside. Eventually, Jake decides to go inside and soon starts screaming, providing you with the first choice in the book: whether to go in after him or to go find help. If you and Liz go after Jake, you find out the museum's secret of making their exhibits. Unfortunately, you and your friends may end up as the newest editions. If you go for help, the two of you will run into a mysterious man named Axel. He leads you to Sybil Wicked, since he's apparently working for her, and she is looking for a new face to replace her disfigured one, and she might get yours!
List of endings
There are twenty bad endings and two good endings.
Bad endings
- Sybil ends up stealing your face with the Face Lifter. Where your face has been, there is now only blank, smooth wax.
- Deciding to ditch Axel and leave him to his fate, he manages to escape the "Deboner" and puts you and Liz into it. Liz and you get all of your bones removed, and you end up as envelopes of skin.
- Both yours and Liz's bodies are destroyed, including pieces of them still hanging around the room. But, for some reason, you are still alive.
- After pulling a lever marked "Power Less", you're rendered powerless and put in the Skin Scraper.
- You push the clock button on the limo's telephone. You and Liz are stuck in the limo and Axel drives the vehicle off the edge of a cliff.
- Falling into bubbling wax and melting away. You're eventually used to make a wax figure of Frankenstein's monster.
- Dumped in the back of a trash truck.
- While trying to escape from Sybil and Axel on an escalator, you decide to go down. But the escalator is moving towards them. No matter how fast or slow you go, the escalator moves at the very same speed. In the opposite direction.
- Getting covered in wax remains of the Strangler, which harden on you.
- You enter a closet, and Liz turns on the light to discover that the closet is full of mirrors. The mirrors redirect the light all over the place, and the closet gets so hot, the both of you actually start to melt.
- Being a wax exhibit in the museum, with the Lord High Executioner. Dr. Izzy Wicked, the museum owner, laughs evilly.
- You decide to show Sybil's patchwork face to Liz, but Liz screams and alerts Sybil to your presence. You're both wounded and have black eyes, so Sybil decides your faces are "ruined" and not worth stealing. She makes you run on a giant exercise wheel instead.
- Liz and you are locked in a closet with a tape of your teacher's voice playing over and over again. You probably end up being bored to death.
- You slide on a rope over vats of hot wax, but Dr. Wicked's workers cut the ropes loose, so you fall in. Your class watches in awe from above.
- The tornado turns you and Liz into a pair of candles. The both of you are placed on top of a huge cake in honor of the museum's grand opening.
- A group of workers decide to test you in a steaming chamber. Because you panic and try to get out, you're shrunk to the size of a Barbie doll - and then to nothing.
- Trying to call for help on a telephone in a limo, you push the button with the laughing jester (thinking that it looks friendly), only to get to Axel, the limo driver in front. Only then do you notice that the jester's face is a skull.
- Posing in front of the Strangler, you query who would want to strangle someone like you. Then your question is answered when the Strangler comes alive and strangles you to death.
- You and Liz hide under Sybil's bed, but then you hear Liz making unusual sounds. When you turn toward the sounds, you are swallowed whole by a goo monster lurking under the bed.
- Liz and Jake get into a limousine, but you decide not to go with them. They ditch you and ride off on their own. You're then caught by your teacher, Mr. Dunning, who calls your parents.
Good endings
- Sybil melts after seeing her own reflection in a mirror. The puddle she melts into gets sucked up by the creepy crawlers living within her. Her press conference shows up at this moment to catch Sybil's final moments.
- You and Liz grab onto the thicker fraying ropes and swoop in to the rescue. In the process, the two of you end up knocking Dr. Wicked and his workers into the vats of hot wax. You rescue Jake and go back to the lobby. You tell Mr. Dunning you've learned a lesson after he turns up.
International releases
Gallery
Artwork
Trivia
- In an interview, Mark Nagata stated that this book's cover was one of his favorite covers in the series alongside Night in Werewolf Woods.[1]
- The phrase "No bones about it" in one of the endings was used in the previous book, Deep in the Jungle of Doom.
- It is not clear if the young black-haired woman (or girl) on the cover is supposed to be Sybil Wicked. In the book, Sybil is suggested to be in her late teens and is described as having a patchwork face.
- The two main storylines of the book do not seem to be within continuity; Jake is serious in Izzy's story, but is joking in Sybil's story. Hence, it is difficult to tell if Izzy and Sybil are aware of each other's plans, or if the plans are even occurring simultaneously.
- This book involves a maze to decipher a message at one point and at another point you may even get a second chance at completing the book from the beginning.
- Although a hidden message exists within the maze, it is never called upon for you to prove you have deciphered it, or even mentioned again.
- This is the second book in the series where you are given the chance to leave another character to their fate, but this is the first time where you can be punished for doing so.
References in other Goosebumps Media
- Sybil Wicked appears in the second arc of the Goosebumps comic series.