“I don’t remember how we got to the graveyard…”
Ghost Beach is a spooky atmospheric tale enmeshed in the imagery of old cemeteries, remote lighthouses, moss-covered tombstones, damp gray fog, spooky woods, and a dark mysterious coastal windswept cave that seems to hold long-forgotten secrets. Twelve-year-old Jerry Sadler and his younger sister Terri have been sent away for a month to stay with their distant older cousins, Brad and Agatha, in their coastal New England cottage.
Jerry and Terri spend their days wandering through local cemeteries, tracing gravestones, and hunting for flowers (both of which are Terri’s hobbies). While walking along the cold, windy shoreline they spot a dark, foreboding cave looming over the craggy cliffs. Something about it seems terrifying. Also in the piney woods, they find a large skeleton that appears to have been licked clean. A trio of friendly but frail-looking kids (Sam, Louisa, and Nat) start popping up around town and warning Jerry and Terri about a horrifying three-hundred-year-old ghost who lives inside the dark whistling cave above the beach. They say it hunts down animals and people on the full moon. Later, Brad and Agatha explain that long ago in the 1600s, the Sadler family traveled as pilgrims to New England but, unprepared for the cold they encountered, one by one they all died. Hence why there are so many local gravestones bearing the Sadler name. And when Jerry spots gravestones for three young children named Sam, Louisa, and Nat Sadler, Agatha then further explains they were named after the long-dead ancestors.
One evening, Jerri and Terri head back to the beach to investigate an ominous flickering light emanating from the cave (a light Jerry notices when retrieving a towel from the beach). With Terri being a fan of junior mystery novels, she urges Jerry to join her inside the cave. There they find a hoard of bats and a dark tunnel that leads deep down to a chamber that is surprisingly filled with dozens of candles arranged around the room. Who put the candles here? Then Jerry and Terri notice something terrifying:
“We both saw the man at the same time… An old man with long, stringy, white hair and a beaklike nose. He sat hunched over a crude table made from a log of driftwood… Pale and terribly thin, his worn shirt hung loosely on him. Hs eyes were closed. Shadows played over him. He seemed to flicker in and out with the candlelight… As if he were part of the light… Part of the ghostly light… Terri and I froze, staring at him. Did he see us? Was he alive? Was he a ghost? His eyes opened. Large, dark eyes sunk deep into their sockets… He turned to us, stared back at us with those frightening sunken eyes… Slowly he curled a bony, gnarled finger. ‘Come here.’ His voice was a dry whisper. Dry as death… And before we could move, he rose up from the chair and began to come for us” (63).
In a fit of horror, Jerry and Terri flee the cave and run all the way back to the cottage. They narrowly manage to escape from the ghost. The next day, Sam, Louisa, and Nat explain a plan to trap the ghost inside the cave. Apparently, the ghost can only be trapped by outsiders to the community so they hatch a plot for Jerry and Terri to push giant boulders down from the top of the cave to seal off the entrance. However, when it comes time Jerry and Terri are surprised by the ghostly man as he carries them down into the cave and Sam, Louisa, and Nat flee into the woods.
He sits the two children down and explains: “I’m not a ghost… your three friends are!” He says his name is Harrison Sadler and he is not actually a ghost. After college, he decided to trace his familial lineage here and he has since become interested in ghosts and the occult. This cave serves as a kind of “sanctuary.” As a show of trust, he releases Jerry and Terri, and instructs them to go look in the east corner of the cemetery as proof. Here, beside the gravestones for Sam, Louisa, and Nat are fresh graves newly dug for Jerry and Terri Sadler… their own graves!
When Sam, Louisa, and Nat suddenly emerge out of the woods, Jerry and Terri play it off. They persuade the trio to join them up at the cave to trap the ghost once and for all. Then a face-off occurs between Harrison and the three kids, with Jerry and Terri trying to decide who is the real ghost. Harrison whistles and summons his giant German Shepard dog as he chases down Sam, Louisa, and Nat (since everyone apparently knows dogs can sense ghosts). Sam, Louisa, and Nat then admit they are actually ghosts, children who died in the 1640s when they came to England as pilgrims. They claim they wanted Jerry and Terri to join them and play forever. The three ghostly children then desperately try to reach out to Jerry and Terri as Harrison commands them to finally go to rest in a blinding moment before they all suddenly start crumbling like characters in an Indiana Jones film. So ends the afterlives of Sam, Louisa, and Nat Sadler.
As Ghost Beach concludes, Jerry and Terri manage to escape the cave and rush back to their cousins’ cottage, knowing Harrison sacrificed himself and died in order to put the ghosts to rest. Jerry and Terri finally feel at ease… until Harrison’s dog suddenly shows up at the door and starts barking at Brad and Agatha. Apparently, they are ghosts, too! Now they must decide what to do with Jerry and Terri…
In my view, Ghost Beach is a great little junior horror novel. It is simply drenched in cold, isolating, portentous imagery, from howling echoes in dense woods to flickering lights from night caves. The spooky imagery is well-captured as is the historical context of 17th century pilgrims traveling to New England (in some ways, this historical context links Ghost Beach to a unique Americana tradition of telling Puritan ghost stories). On the flip-side, the conclusion to Ghost Beach is a bit flimsy and predictable, and the idea that a full-grown man like Harrison would live inside a remote candle-lit cave simply in order to capture a trio of ghosts really strains credulity, but all things considered Ghost Beach is another terrific children’s ghost story from R.L. Stine.
Stine, R.L. Ghost Beach. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1994.