Zombie Halloween

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Zombie Halloween
Author(s)	R.L. Stine
Cover artist	Brandon Dorman
Publisher	Scholastic
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Release date	June 24, 2014
Pages	174
Series	Goosebumps Most Wanted: Special Edition
Series number	Special Edition 1
Next book	The 12 Screams of Christmas

Zombie Halloween is the first book in the Goosebumps Most Wanted: Special Edition sub-series. It was published in 2014.

The cover illustration depicts two zombies leaving an abandoned house.

Blurb

What Happens to This House on Halloween?

Kenny Manzetti was the new kid in town. His family moved back in to an old house to help take care of his grandfather. Everyone in his new neighborhood is obsessed with zombies--even Grandpa Mo. But then a new family moves in next door and their choice in furniture is...interesting.

Kenny is convinced that there is something strange about the new neighbors, but his parents won't listen to him. So Kenny and his friends go in for a closer look. A bad idea on any day, but definitely the wrong choice around Halloween. Will Kenny survive long enough to go trick or treating?

Plot

Part 1: 1944

Mario Manzetti Jr. has just moved to Franklin Village, and he hates his new home, an old building that's across the street from a graveyard. However, Mario commits to being more positive for his mother's sake; life hasn't been easy for her since Mario's father left to fight in World War II.

Mario and his new friend, Ivy, go exploring the cemetery, and they're scared by Anthony, Mario's younger brother. In the graveyard, Mario feels a unknown force push him into a open grave. After Anthony and Ivy fall in the grave when the dirt gave way, the kids collaborated to get out. When leaving the graveyard, they hears hoarse, raspy whispers while Mario feels something like a bony hand squeeze his shoulder. The kids reunited at Mario's house after changing clothes for lunch. Evidently, Mrs. Manzetti has left for work. The kids explore the building and find a trapdoor in the basement floor. They open it and climb down a rope ladder to find a tunnel that leads to the graveyard. To their horror, the kids see a group of zombies inside the tunnel. Mario, Anthony & Ivy ran back to the ladder, but as Mario starts climbing, the ladder fall out of place causing Mario to fall down. Suddenly, Mario hears his mother come home just after the zombies put the rope ladder back up. He and his brother rush back upstairs as quickly as possible to warn her. She says that — while she had heard rumors about the undead — she didn't believe there were zombies. The trio rushes down to the trapdoor and reopen it. A haggard, noseless, and undead Ivy jumps out at them. Ivy swears that Mario will never escape her.

Part 2: Today

Kenny Manzetti doesn't like his new home in Franklin Village. It's across the street from a graveyard, which he hates. Kenny and his twin sister, Tricia, were forced to move in with their Grandpa Mo by their parents. Grandpa Mo, a frail old man who loves to tell zombie stories, is too sickly to live alone. Kenny was trying to pass level 1 of a video game based on the tv show "The Walking Zombies" with his friend, Alec Schwartzman, when Grandpa Mo interrupts them to tell a supposedly true story about lightning striking the graveyard across the street many years ago, causing the dead to rise from their graves. As a new family moves into the house next door, Kenny and Tricia begin planning their Halloween party with the help of Alec. The kids discuss the possibility of a zombie party, but they're distracted when the movers next door remove three coffins from a van and bring them inside the house next door.

The kids tell Grandpa Mo, and he suggests that the new family is a group of zombies who are hiding inside the coffins. The kids go and knock on their neighbors' door, hoping to get a peak inside. However, the pale boy who greets them, Trevor, doesn't let them in. Kenny manages to look over Trevor and see the coffins lined up in the living room. After that, Trevor heads back inside and locks the door. Afterwards, Kenny, Tricia and Alec overhear a woman's voice telling Trevor to keep unpacking and that they'll find food soon. The kids return home. They were discussing about what was seen at the house with Grandpa Mo, when Kenny and Tricia's mom, Mrs. Manzetti walks in on them. When Kenny brings up the discussion to her, Grandpa Mo interrupts by saying zombies moved in next door. Mrs. Manzetti isn't pleased with Grandpa Mo telling the kids zombie stories. After Grandpa Mo leaves the living room, the kids tried to tell Mrs. Manzetti about the coffins in the neighboring house's living room but she doesn't believe them so they take her to the house's living room window to see for herself. After looking through the window, she jokes about seeing a human skull on one and a creature crawling out of another. When Alec asked her about the coffins, she tells them to look to themselves. The kids then see that the coffins are gone. Without nothing in the living room, everyone heads back to the Manzetti house for dinner.

After Dinner, they starting talking about the Halloween party again. Before they could agree on Tricia having it be a zombie party if Kenny and Alec invite everyone in their class and the other 7th grade class from Middle School, they see a news report in which several teenagers report seeing zombies. Kenny decides that he should start a team dedicated to hunting zombies. He doesn't really expect to find any zombies, but he thinks it'd be a good way to get attention.

Part 3: Five Days Till Halloween

One night, while having dinner, Grandpa Mo tell the Manzetti family and Alec about another dream. When the adults leave the dining room, Alec asks Kenny if tell Grandpa Mo about the zombie patrol, but Kenny tells him to keep it secret for him and Tricia and his parents. Later that night, Kenny is in his room. He looks outside and sees a pale figure moving through the cemetery. Suddenly, Kenny recognizes the figure as Grandpa Mo. Kenny gets his father, and the duo rushes outside to retrieve the old man. When Grandpa Mo reenters the house, he said he dreamed that zombies dragged him outside. The following night, Kenny's zombie patrol meets up for the first time, and they venture into the graveyard near Kenny's house. Kenny and Alec quickly become separated from the other boys in their group. The duo finds Trevor wandering about the graves, but he says he's simply out for a walk. After he leaves, Kenny and Alec are attacked by a dog, but they use Zombie Goop Loops distract it for enough time to escape. Once home, Kenny receives a message saying that the other members of the club got scared and went home.

Late at night, Kenny decides to sneak into his neighbors' house so he can find out if Grandpa Mo's theory is correct. Kenny enters through an unlocked door. He search most of the house before finding the basement. He goes to the basement and spots the three coffins he saw earlier, but Trevor walks in and is confused. Trevor allows Kenny to see what's in two of the coffins, revealing that they are just filled with books and clothes. Trevor says his parents had been the owners of a failed funeral parlor, and they were left with several unused coffins. Embarrassed, Kenny leaves.

The next day, Kenny told Grandpa Mo and Alec about sneaking into Trevor's basement. That night, Kenny's zombie patrol consists of only himself and Alec. The boys see five zombies surrounding Grandpa Mo in the cemetery. Kenny rushes into the graveyard and sees a tombstone with the name Mario Manzetti on it, and he tells Alec that the name belongs to his grandfather. Kenny assumes that his grandfather must secretly be a zombie. Kenny and Alec both go to their respective home. Kenny tells his parents that Grandpa Mo is out in the graveyard, but they won't listen to him about the zombies. Kenny goes to his room and some time passes. Suddenly, Grandpa Mo returns and says he can explain what Kenny saw earlier. Grandpa Mo reveals that he shared a name with his father, Mario Manzetti, Sr., who died during World War II. Following his father's death, Grandpa Mo was haunted by dreams of zombies and for years he live in Alaska before moving back. Grandpa Mo reveals that the zombies in the graveyard let him go because he was so scrawny. Kenny's parents return home, and they're glad to see that Grandpa Mo is alright. The next day, Kenny was watching a TV news report about a cop's encounter with zombies before Tricia turn off the TV. Kenny asked her to the Halloween party's theme, but she says with only too days till Halloween, that it's too late.

Two days later, Halloween night had come, and Kenny can't even enjoy the party that's in his basement because he's frightened that real zombies might sneak in. Kenny moves a couch so Grandpa Mo will have a place to sit, but this reveals a trapdoor. The door springs open, and a zombie girl pops out and drags Kenny into the tunnel below. The undead girl, Ivy, insists that Kenny is Mario. Grandpa Mo enters the tunnel and explains that he is the real Mario. Ivy becomes distraught at seeing how old Mario is and figures he can't be the true Mario. Defeated, she stumbles away into the darkness, and the duo exits the tunnel.

Kenny forgets to cover the trapdoor, which let zombies flood out. Remembering how they used Zombie Goop Loops to distract an attacking dog, Kenny and Alec use the candy to coax the zombies back into the tunnel below, and the boys slide the couch back over the trapdoor. The partygoers look horrified, but Kenny plays off the whole ordeal as a prank done with the help of high school kids. Kids cheer and the party continues. Unexpectedly, Trevor and his parents appear at the entrance of the basement. Trevor states that he and his parents aren't zombies; they're vampires. The trio bear their fangs, and partygoers begin to panic.

International releases

No.	Book	Country/Language	Translated title	Release date	Publisher
1	좀비 핼러윈 파티	South Korea Korean	Zombie Halloween Party	October 29, 2015	Gorilla Box
6	حفلة الزومبي	Egypt Arabic	The Zombie Party	January 2017	Nahdet Misr Publishing
1	Les zombies d'Halloween	France French	The Halloween Zombies	October 6, 2021	Bayard Poche

Pre-release

Pre-release cover

The pre-release cover.

The earliest pre-release version of this book's cover featured the text, "SPECIAL EDITION" underneath the Goosebumps Most Wanted logo. Additionally, the artwork appears slightly zoomed-in, and R.L. Stine's name was colored red instead of orange.

Uncorrected proof

Prior to this book's official release, Scholastic distributed several uncorrected proof copies of the book. The proof's overall appearance is slightly different than the final version's in the following ways:

• The cover is slightly thicker.
• The cover uses less saturated colors.
• The cover's purple splat is in the top right (instead of the bottom right).
• There is a banner at the top of the cover stating that the book is a proof copy.
• The pages are whiter.
• The second title page (the one with the name of the series) says "Special Edition #1" (instead of just "Special Edition").
• There is no preview of The 12 Screams of Christmas, making the book thinner.
• The back cover describes the next book as a "Special Christmas Edition" (instead of a "Christmas Special Edition").
• The information at the bottom of the back cover is arranged in a slightly different way, as it doesn't yet have a bar-code, pricing, or leveling information.

While the overall story remains largely unchanged, there are a few small wording changes throughout the book:

• On page 12, Ivy's eyes are described as blue — even though they are said to be green a few pages earlier. This is fixed in the final version.
• Page 52 uses the phrase "grunt again", but the final version simply uses "grunt". (This adjustment fixes an issue of repetition, as the phrase "grunted again" appears a few lines later.)
• Page 110 uses the word "stammered", but this is replaced by "said" in the final version. (This adjustment fixes a spacing issue; the word "stammered" was too long, resulting in it being forced onto the next line. Since the text is justified, this caused unusually large spacing between some words.)
• Page 152 uses the phrase "half-moon", but this is replaced by "moon" in the final version. (There isn't a discernible reason for this change, but it is possible the story was adjusted to match the cover, as the artwork displays a full moon.)

Artwork

Cover artwork by Brandon Dorman.

Trivia

• This and The 12 Screams of Christmas are the only books in the Goosebumps Most Wanted series with unique back cover taglines.
• This book references Superman, Captain Marvel, American Girl dolls, the Navy SEALs, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harrison Ford, the Detroit Lions, and Star Trek. Additionally, The Walking Zombies is a parody of The Walking Dead.
• The first line of chapter 38 mistakenly refers to Alec as Alex.
• Kenny and Tricia's father was mentioned by name in the book: Sal Manzetti.
• This is the second zombie themed Goosebumps book to feature a twist ending involving vampires, the first being Why I Quit Zombie School
• This and The Haunter are the only Goosebumps Most Wanted: Special Edition books to feature the "Welcome. You Are Most Wanted" section.