“A mysterious phantom haunted our school…”
Woods Mill Middle School sixth graders, Brooke Rodgers and her best friend Zeke Matthews, are horror movie fanatics. Brooke wears glasses and has an allergic problem that causes her to sneeze at inopportune moments. Their moms initially met at a bowling league one day and then became friends. One day, Brooke and Zeke are cast in the lead roles for a new school play entitled “Phantom.” The play is about an old man named Carlo who owns a theater that becomes haunted by shadowy Phantom, a terrifying figure with a scarred face who wears a mask. Carlo has a daughter named Esmerelda who gets kidnapped and falls in love with the Phantom, but her handsome boyfriend Eric finds out and kills the Phantom, so Esmerelda runs away and the ghost of the Phantom remains to haunt the theater forever. Zeke has been cast in the role of the Phantom and Brooke has been cast as Esmerelda.
But things start to go awry when Brooke and Zeke learn that the play is cursed! Seventy-two years ago, when Woods Mill Middle School was first built (and there were a mere twenty-five kids in the whole school), a boy found a script for the play “The Phantom” hidden in the basement. He realized it was a scary play about a girl who gets kidnapped by a mysterious Phantom, so the students decide to perform it. But during the performance, the boy who starred in the lead role disappeared and he was never found. The school then destroyed all copies of the script –except for one that was locked up in the school vault… until now.
Many students’ grandparents recall this cursed play (like Tina Powell’s grandfather). Tina Powell is Brooke’s chief rival at school, hoping Brooke falls ill so the role of Esmerelda can be available for Tina instead. But Brooke never falls ill. While practicing for the play, she and Zeke discover strange things –a mysterious figure in the shadows dressed like the Phantom laughing in a green and blue mask cackling, (at first, Brooke believes it is Zeke), and they also find a trapdoor from the stage that leads down to a vast dark tunnel beneath the school. There in the darkness, they eventually find a strange little scowling man with deep purple scar. He says his name is Emile, the night janitor. But we later learn there is no night janitor at the school.
Other strange things start happening –vandalism, signs, and missing items—all of which appear to be attempts to frame Zeke. A new kid at the school named Brian Colson starts helping Zeke and Brooke as they try to figure out who the Phantom is while Zeke keeps getting into deeper trouble (he is kicked out of the play and grounded by his parents). Things come to a head when the Phantom has seemingly written in red paint over the artful backdrop to the play: “Stay away. Stay away from my home sweet home!”
As Brooke and Brian try to prove Zeke innocence, they sneak back into the school one evening and travel down through the trapdoor to the end of the tunnel beneath the school where they surprisingly discover small living quarters –was this where the boy lived when he disappeared seventy-two years ago? Before long the denizen turns up and he turns out to be none other than Emile, the man who claimed to be the night janitor but who is actually revealed to be a homeless man who has been living down here for about six months. He was the one who wrote the ominous messages trying to scare away the children.
So, who is the Phantom? Is it Zeke playing a prank on his friends? Is it Emile trying to scare away the kids from his home? Could it be their teacher Ms. Walker who has insisted on performing this play for some reason? Is it the mysterious new kid Brian Colson? Or could it even be Brooke’s younger brother Jeremy who is only briefly mentioned?
At any rate, after Emile is identified, he flees from the school and the mysterious occurrences stop happening. The play continues on and during the big performance night, Brooke is happy with her performance until it is time for Zeke as the Phantom to appear onstage. As she starts reciting her lines, she realizes Zeke is not the person behind the Phantom mask! But before she can say anything, the Phantom starts talking about how he once disappeared and fell to his death (pointing over at the trapdoor on the stage). Brooke realizes this is the real Phantom, the ghost of the small boy who has been haunting the school. She suddenly tries to unmask him, but he screams and tumbles down the open trapdoor, presumably to his “death” again.
At the end of the play, Zeke runs up to Brooke rubbing his head (he was apparently knocked out) while the performances are given positive reviews from everybody, including Ms. Walker. But back at Brooke’s locker, she and Zeke find an old yearbook from the 1920s that displays an advertisement for the upcoming play “Phantom.” The boy who was set to play the lead? None other than Brian Colson.
My Thoughts on Phantom of the Auditorium
Phantom of the Auditorium is a delightfully spooky children’s mystery story. In many ways, it is a whodunnit that keeps you wondering which character might be running around the school, scaring everybody as the Phantom (my guess early on was that Brooke’s younger brother Jeremy was actually the one tormenting his sister). But the twist ending winds up being fairly predictable, the new kid named Brian Colson is just too much of an unusual person to suddenly arrive on the scene, and one wonders why Ms. Walker would be so insistent that the class perform this notorious, cursed play in the first place. But I still thought Phantom of the Auditorium was a nice little homage to Phantom of the Opera and its many offshoots.
Corresponding Episode Review
A Season 1 episode, “Phantom of the Auditorium” is a charming little story that stays mostly true to the book, though I will admit the the mysterious curse of the phantom hits much harder in the book. There are also additional school employees in the episode, and the onscreen conclusion shows the yearbook lying inside the trapdoor with Zeke instead of inside Brooke’s locker (in the episode, the yearbook title reads “Tomorrow’s Leaders” and the year is 1923). There is an amusing moment of goofy ’90s special effects when Brooke looks into the fiery eyes of the Phantom onstage. It is all good fun. Notably, several of the actors also appeared in Are You Afraid of the Dark? and one of the lead actors, Julia Chantrey (who was cast as Tina in the episode), later played Terri in the 2000 Disney Channel original film Phantom of the Megaplex, a terrific junior scary movie I remember watching numerous times as a kid, and Kathy Greenwood (who played the teacher Ms. Walker) is primarily a comedic actor who made frequent appearances on Whose Line Is It Anyway?, and lastly actor Stuart Stone (who plays Brian Colson) also appeared in Donnie Darko (2001) and he played the pudgy red-hatted kid named Ralphie in The Magic School Bus.
Stine, R.L. Phantom of the Auditorium. Scholastic, Inc., New York, NY, 1994.