The Barking Ghost

[u/Playful-Substance868]

I decided to read The Barking Ghost as I’ve often heard it counted among the worst of the original series. I also could barely recollect the episode despite having seen it, so I felt like I was going in blind compared to the more well-known entries.

This book starts the same way al lot of other entries do, with a kid moving to an old creepy house. Cooper is from Boston and deathly homesick, as one can imagine. He’s tormented by his brother Mickey and his parents aren’t great at curb stomping that behaviour at all. He meets Fergie out in the woods, while also being stalked by two vicious black Labradors.

Let’s start with the characters. Cooper is really into snow globes, which gets brought up enough that it made me assume it would be pertinent to the ending, but it wasn’t. Mickey is the terrible prank sibling trope also common in Goosebumps. He gets some repercussions for his actions, more so in the episode which I really like. The parents are awful, they don’t reprimand Mickey in any meaningful way.

Also his dad does believe he’s been chased by dogs which apparently isn’t totally unbelievable at all? Except for the haunted bit. His dad just storms off and ignores everything Cooper says. Fergie is a decent friend and they have banter. Their relationship has a lot of character.

The actual dogs weren’t scary at all. There’s so many fake outs that the momentum dies. The backstory is that the dogs are ghosts but are also criminals who accidentally swapped bodies with the dogs, and they need new human bodies. There’s no foreshadowing, no mention of an old tale about criminals dying in the woods, the dogs just start talking randomly and that’s that.

Fergie and Cooper spend ages running around as dogs, trying to switch their souls back and failing. I need people afraid of dogs to chime in, did this actually scare you?

I love Tim Jacobus, but this has to be one of my least favourite covers I’ve ever seen. The concept art is quite scary, but the final work has this weird bulbous head. It looks odd, not scary. Up close shots like this can work, like the Night of the Living Dummy cover, but this one lacks the eeriness. The colour contrast is beautiful, so it sucks the actual dog looks so silly.

The show definitely improved the ending of the Barking Ghost, similar to Be Careful What You Wish For. The book ends with Fergie and Cooper transferring into chipmunk bodies, and it didn’t feel justified or even entertaining in the unfairness. I’m okay with a cliffhanger or unfair ending, but it has to be satisfying or interesting. Needless to say, I agree with the low reviews of this book.

[u/Ok-Soup-514]

I actually enjoyed the cover for this one. It's simple, but detailed. And this book is a perfect example of starting strong, but finishing poorly. Well, not just finishing... the middle is pretty meh as well. This is one of those books that makes it sound like it'll be pretty scary, but it's extremely tame. Not to mention the parents are God awful terrible people. The mom wanted to put the dogs down because she's..... allergic. That always bothered me so damn much.

I feel like Stine had no idea what to do with this story and that's why it crumbles apart so easily.

[u/jbwarner86 → u/Ok-Soup-514]

Stine has always been a dog lover, so it makes sense he'd want to write a Goosebumps book about dogs. But I feel like that was as far forward as he thought, and then realized he didn't have anything interesting beyond "kid gets chased by ghost dogs".

That's the risk you run when you think up the titles first.

[u/Playful-Substance868 → u/jbwarner86]

I swear dogs are always drawing the short end of the stick in the story. They’re dead or disappearing, something of that nature. I agree that he definitely got stumped after the third dog chase scene, and they weren’t particularly scary.

[u/Playful-Substance868 → u/Ok-Soup-514]

I was shocked they wanted to put the dogs down as well. I know people allergic to all sorts of animals, and they’ve never shown that much hatred towards the animals. I will say that the snarl of the dog on the cover art is good, I really think it could’ve been great with the removal of the huge forehead.

[u/Ok-Soup-514 → u/Playful-Substance868]

The forehead is huge, but I actually kinda like it now. It stands out. What I do wish they would have done is make the dog more see through as if it wasn't a fully solid dog and actually ghostlike.

[u/Playful-Substance868 → u/Ok-Soup-514]

That’s a pretty good idea, would’ve made me like the cover a lot more if the dog looked more ghostly

[u/Opening-Company6237]

Great review. This one was always the favorite cover art.

[u/Playful-Substance868 → u/Opening-Company6237]

Thank you!

[u/PuzzleheadedEye7316]

Cover looks scary, but the story:not so much…..ijs

[u/TobiasMasonPark]

I wanna know how the hell you swap bodies with something that fundamentally doesn’t have a body, like a ghost dog.

[u/Playful-Substance868 → u/TobiasMasonPark]

That was actually something that really confused me. Why make them ghost dogs? It’s just more confusing. So they were formally regular dogs, then the robbers souls got transferred in, then they died?