CYOA: #5 The Mystery of Chimney Rock by Edward Packard

We're on #5, and other than the first one, we haven't heard from concept creator Edward Packard yet, but we're about to go on a five book run of titles authored by him: The Mystery of Chimney Rock, a haunted house themed story, Your Code Name is Jonah, a spy themed one, The Third Planet from Altair, a space opera, Deadwood City, a western, and Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? a very classical whodunit style mystery with a house full of suspects. All five of them are considered real classics of the series; among the best. I admit that I hadn't read any of them recently (well, I just read Chimney Rock in preparation for this review), so we'll see if I think they hold up to both my own rose-colored memories and their reputation.

As mentioned, Chimney Rock is a haunted house themed story. In typical CYOA fashion, you're off visiting some extended family, in this case your two cousins Michael and Jane (who are sometimes referred to later as your friends; I suspect Packard forgot) doing things that you shouldn't be doing; in this case, daring each other to explore a spooky old house that's the subject of a bunch of local rumors, gossip and folklore. Chimney Rock has more structure than any of the stories we've read so far in the series; you meet recurring characters in several branches, like Mrs. Bigby, the old lady, or witch, or ghost, or whatever of the house, Lena her maid (who wears a French maid outfit, oo la la, although I expect that was just to signal clearly and bluntly that she was a maid, not that she's meant to be sexy. Sigh. I was too young when I first read this to appreciate the joke anyway. There's also Melissa, Mrs. Bigby's cat, or familiar, or alternate form, or whatever exactly she ends up being, according to your branch. There's Jervis, the unfriendly and menacing caretaker, who isn't necessarily actually as unfriendly as he appears, and in many branches, one of your cousins or the other brings the police along too. Gilliam Prem, the lawyer who dresses more like he's from the 1880s than the 1980s makes an appearance, who is a later recurring character in at least one other book that I remember, too.

The copyright on the book is 1979, but the first printing appears to be January 1980. My copy is a 14th printing from July 1982, and the price on the cover is $1.95, the most expensive so far. The ever wonderful Paul Grainger does the artwork, and the cover claims that there are 36 possible endings. My copy also has a stamp from my dad's book collection, if you remember when people used to stamp the inside covers of their books, and an inscription on the blurb page that says my younger brother gave the book to my sister. Somehow it's in my collection. Whoops! I guess if she ever wants it back, I can pick it up easily enough on Thriftbooks at a reasonable price. In today's money, of course—not for $1.95. Which, let me take just a moment here to comment on; while this is only two years later than my earlier books, the price has increased from $1.50 to $1.95, which is really quite a jump, especially for a 8-10 year old kid.

In many of the later volumes in the series, you end up splitting very early (usually on your first choice) into an A-story and a B-story that kind of both go their own way, often exploring two different facets of the theme of the title. There's a hint of that here; your first choice is either that you go into the house on a dare from our cousin Michael, or if you don't, your cousin Jane does instead, and you end up having to rescue her. However, this isn't quite as distinct an A-story and B-story, because both stories are extremely similar, and there is even the possibility of one leading you into branches of the other and vice versa. As also mentioned above, there is more structure, though—all of the branches offer similar explorations of the same theme. While in, for example, By Balloon to the Sahara, you might end up joining a submarine pirate crew who only hunts whalers, or you might end up dealing with aliens in a flying saucer in the desert, or you might be doing who knows what with desert tribesmen, all of the options here have to do with penetrating the mystery of a single haunted house and its surrounding grounds. While there are obviously many different things you can choose to do, the underlying premise is very similar in all branches. The one thing that does vary somewhat, however, is how true the supernatural rumors actually end up being. You could easily end up being the victim of a witch's curse, or you might end up discovering that Mrs. Bigsby was just an eccentric old lady who left everything in her will to her cat, and potentially you if you end up becoming the cat's new owner. 

While I say haunted house, it's not really a haunted house in the sense that there's ghosts around very often (unless Mrs. Bigby is one, which she might be.) Perhaps because I read it recently, I found that the premise reminded me quite a bit of Lovecraft's story "Rats in the Walls" which is also a ghost story that in most respects really isn't; its a story of interdimensional monsters (like Lovecraft's often are) and witchcraft and creepy animals with atypical behavior. This tighter focus and more consistent structure really is a huge part of why this book is considered one of the real classics. Along with, of course, the unusual theme; there really weren't very many other attempts at anything that even resembled a ghost story in the series, with a focus more on exotic adventure in most. 

The protagonists could be kids, but according to Grainger's illustrations, they look like teenagers of about 15-16 or so, which is probably appropriate given that the popular slasher flicks from the same era usually featured teenagers getting into trouble too. Even though this is way toned down from Friday the 13th or Halloween given that it's a kids book, I have to wonder if they didn't play at least a subtle subconscious influence on the book, or at least its illustrations.

If you're looking at checking out these old books, this is definitely one that I recommend; it's one of the true classics of the genre and series, and considered by many to be among the best in the run. As with many, it's been republished, sometimes under different trade dress, and the alternate title of The Curse of the Haunted Mansion. As always, I recommend getting it from the original Bantam run, with the original title, text, trade dress and artwork. This one has aged into a truly vintage classic.

I have to admit that when I was 10, the idea of exploring a haunted house wasn't as interesting to me as some of the more exotic adventure stories were. If my brother hadn't bought this as for my sister and it ended up in my hands somehow, I doubt I'd have bought it myself in its original run. I'm glad that I do have it, though. Of the five I've read so far in my modern re-read, it's by far been the best one, and I do appreciate ghost stories more than I did relative to space opera as a kid. That said, if you don't mind branching out into some of CYOA's competitor series, Twistaplot #9 Horrors of the Haunted Museum offers a similar theme and is even written by R. L. Stine before he got famous for writing the Goosebumps series, and Which Way Books #1 The Castle of No Return is another one from the same era that I remember reasonably fondly. No doubt there's more. 

Anyway, you get it. I like it, and it's aged on me over time, and I've come to appreciate it more. What are some of the things that happened to me while exploring Chimney Rock?

• I got turned permanently into a mouse. More than once, actually. I was also shrunk to the size of a mouse, and a couple times it's not clear if I became a mouse or just the size of one. At least two of those times, I was eaten by the black cat Melissa.
• I escaped the house, and ended the curse, according to the caretaker, because the old lady died. Not sure that I necessarily was responsible for that, though, although it beats dying by the curse. In true horror story fashion, just surviving reasonably intact is considered a pretty good ending.
• I ended the curse by walking out of the house with the cat, which was actually the old lady transformed into a cat, but since I took her out of the house, she was stuck for good as just a cat.
• I escaped, but poor Lena, the terrified maid, froze in place and dropped dead on the doorstep and didn't make it out with me.
• I got stuck in some kind of Sisyphus curse where I had to pick up pieces of a broken china cat, but there were always more pieces no matter how many I picked up. Amusingly, instead of saying The End like normal, this one says There Is No End.
• We all got out, even Lena, but the old lady was dead. The police called it a heart attack, but Lena knew better.
• I escaped the house, but unknown to me, a black cat as big as a T. rex followed me out.
• The cousins and I escaped, but the policeman that went in after us disappeared.
• In one where I actually didn't go inside, but tried to bust my cousin out from outside the house, Jane escaped out a window by jumping through the glass. The police say that they'd charge us with breaking and entering, but given that it's Chimney Rock, he's just glad we didn't permanently disappear.
• I escaped, and get read the riot act at the police station, but they end up letting me go because they've got bigger problems; my cousin Jane never came out of the house.
• I escaped, and Mrs. Bigley died. I again narrowly escaped prosecution, but given that Mrs. Bigley was supposed to already be dead anyway, I'm not quite sure I follow exactly. I visit again later, and the house has been torn down, but it's supposed to be creepy that the cat was never found (in my experience, if a cat doesn't want to be found in a big wooded estate, it isn't going to be.)
• I fell down the stairs trying to escape the house, and had a permanent scar on my head reminding me of my narrow brush with death.
• Mrs. Bigley was a ghost that wanted to be freed from her own curse. I managed it by shining the sunlight on her.
• Died in a basement cave-in
• Escaped the basement cave-in with Michael, but Jane somehow twisted her ankle, and a policeman told us to scram
• Locked in a closet which, I suppose, must have been airtight, because it only has a few hours of air in it.
• killed a policeman because he thought I was a ghost and died of a heart attack.
• broke out of Chimney Rock through a window, and got stitches and scars to always remind me of Chimney Rock.
• Got out with Jane, but got pneumonia, had to stay at my cousins longer, and would have died if not for antibiotics, I'm told.
• found Mrs. Bigley's husband as a stuffed mouse in a cupboard. Lost Jane.
• jumped out of a second story window and escaped with a broken arm for my trouble.
• escaped through a coal flume
• left, but some ghostly eyes and a voice told me to not even turn around and look again. Amusingly, I was given the option to do so anyway, and got turned to a page that just said Aaauuughthunk, except stretched out down the page.
• fell off the roof trying to escape through an upper window, and the police found my body in the grass later.
• left safely, with the cat who decided to follow me home.
• didn't keep the cat, but realized that if I had, I'd be the new heir of Chimney Rock, which I'm told is worth a quarter million. In 1979-1980, that was pretty darn expensive for a house.
• went home, the cat vanished somewhere and Chimney Rock was torn down and the plot of land to be host to new apartments
• escaped Mrs. Bigley from her bone room where the remains of all her victims are.
• died in the bone room
• Jane and Michael kept Melissa and inherited the quarter million dollar house
• I kept Melissa and inherited the quarter million dollar house

As I said, I didn't always love this one, because when I was 9-10 years old, I was much more interested in the space adventures and stuff like that. This one seemed a little quieter, and for a ghost story, was surprisingly lacking in ghosts. But I'm more mature now than I was 40 some odd years ago, and I appreciate what this one does much more than I did then. This book has actually aged significantly better than Montgomery's Space and Beyond, which I now consider one of the worst of the original run of adventures, even though thematically it seemed to be more up my alley. We'll see as I go through them, how I feel about the rest of this little Packard run I mentioned earlier. Next up is Your Code Name Is Jonah, a spy thriller that I always liked a lot, then Third Planet From Altair, a space exploration story that again I remember quite liking. Then Deadwood City, which as it sounds is a Western. I don't remember being terribly impressed by that one, but that's because it was a Western, which in 1981 or so when I read it would have seemed like an old-fashioned genre that I had little interest in. I've since come to appreciate Westerns considerably more, so I hope to like that one more now too. And finally, Who Killed Harlowe Thrombey? which is a classic mystery where you solve a murder that takes place in a mansion from among a list of suspects who were all hanging around looking guilty. I mean, almost by the numbers mystery. I remember considering this one kind of a classic too, in part for its unique setting and the exploration of a genre that nobody else explored in any other volume. This batch, volumes 5-9, are really kind of the real core of the series as I remember it; the absolutely most classic. A few of the early teens also qualify, but by the later teens and early twenties, although I was still into them, and some of my favorite volumes will come from that range, the series felt established already, and we all knew what to expect. It was the novelty of the 1-9 or so that I really fell in love with at the right age.