Duane Comack and Stephanie Alpert love pulling pranks and livening up their relatively boring town. The only exciting thing about it is Hill House, the town's only tourist attraction — a seemingly haunted house, home to the ghost of a mischievous boy who lost his life (and his head) after a run-in with the ghost of the sea captain who originally built the house.
Then, one night, Duane and Stephanie decide to see how true the legend is, by searching for the ghost's missing head...
It was adapted into the fifth episode of the second season of the 1995 TV series, with a novelization based on the episode being released as book 7 of the Goosebumps Presents series.
It was reissued in the Classic Goosebumps line in 2018 as a tie-in to the movie Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween.
The book provides examples of:
- Alas, Poor Villain: Andrew Craw, the eponymous headless ghost, is described as a despicable brat in his backstory. His punishment, however, is completely disproportionate, and when the children uncover his head, he actually thanks them before departing to the afterlife.
- Ambiguous Situation: With the Twist Ending at the end that Otto and Edna became ghosts, did they die sometime during the Time Skip, or were they dead to begin with? And for that matter, does that include Seth or not?
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Andrew Craw's ghost can move on to the afterlife after Duane and Stephanie find his missing head.
- Banister Slide:
- Seth tells Duane and Stephanie how the first time he snuck around Hill House, he came across the ghost of an old woman wearing black at the top of a staircase. When she saw him, she jumped on a banister and slid down it, and she screamed down. But when she got to the bottom of it about to touch Seth, she vanished in the darkness.
- The artwork of the 2018 reprint depicts the Headless Ghost doing this.
- Beat Still, My Heart: Seth tells Duane and Stephanie how a boy named Jeremy who visited the house decided to ride up the dumbwaiter, he never came back down. His friends waited, but when the dumbwaiter came down, it contained covered bowls. One of the bowls contained Jeremy's heart, which was still beating.
- Big "NO!": Duane has one when the ladder he's climbing on starts to break off from the wall and topple down.
- Big "YES!": Duane has one when he and Stephanie finally find a staircase after trying desperately to look for one all over the top floor.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: Duane and Stephanie come across this, seeing yellow slitted eyes staring at them all around. They turn out to belong to cats in the room.
- Cobweb of Disuse: Duane and Stephanie walk into one in the top floor hallway which they at first mistake for ghostly hands touching them. It takes them a while to get the material off them.
- Covers Always Lie: The cover seems to depict Andrew as an adult, even though he is a kid. Unless this is a case of Younger Than They Look.
- Dramatic Drop: When Duane sees Seth locking a door behind him, leaving him and Stephanie trapped in the room, he drops the candle he was holding onto the floor which extinguishes it.
- Dumbwaiter Ride: While showing Duane and Stephanie around the mansion, Seth tells the story of a third ghost, a rich Spoiled Brat in life who was addicted to ice cream that his butler would bring it up to his bedroom through a dumbwaiter. One time, he greedily crawled inside it after he got tired of waiting and immediately fell to his death. He turns out to have been making it up.
- Exact Words: When Otto catches Duane and Stephanie on the top floor and asks them what they were doing up there, the latter replies that they heard voices. Duane even lampshades that it wasn't exactly a lie.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Duane's mother notices that Duane has these, and asks him why he has these. Not wanting to tell her that this was because he likes to sneak out at night and go around town, he replies that maybe he's part raccoon. He apparently had this case multiple times already, and given how frequently he sneaks out at night, this shouldn't be surprising.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The ghostly sea captain who decapitated Andrew, although he's slightly more sympathetic than other examples.
- Hand Rubbing: Stephanie does this when she and Duane sneak off from the tour.
- Haunted House Historian: The local haunted location Hill House is staffed by the kindly Otto and Edna. Who turn out to be ghosts in the Twist Ending, although not malevolent ones.
- Heavy Sleeper: Both Duane's and Stephanie's parents are this. This makes it easy for the two to sneak out at night and haunt their neighborhood.
- It Kind of Looks Like a Face: While looking through Andrew's old bedroom, Duane sees what he thinks is his missing head. But it turns out that it was just an old-fashioned bowling ball with two holes that looked like eye sockets, with cracks in it to look like a nose and teeth.
- Lonely Doll Girl: After Andrew died, his twelve-year old sister Hannah went crazy and stayed in her room for the rest of her life surrounded by her collection of porcelain dolls, playing with them for eighty years until she died an old woman. She had hundreds of them, and they all had yellow hair, painted rosy cheeks, and blue-tinted eyelids.
- Loud Gulp:
- Stephanie makes one when she thinks she invaded a ghost's quarters.
- Duane himself does this while hearing Seth's tale about him sneaking around Hill House.
- Lying Finger Cross: When Stephanie keeps scaring and fooling Duane with her pranks, he refuses to follow her around Hill House. So she tells him that she promises she won't scare him like that anymore. Duane saw that her fingers were crossed, but followed her anyway.
- Man on Fire: Joseph Craw, Andrew's father, met this fate a year after Andrew's murder. He came home late one winter night and went to the fireplace to get warm. It's unknown how he got lit on fire, but when the maid came into the room the next morning, all that remained of the man were two smouldering hands gripping the mantel.
- Mirthless Laughter: Seth corners Duane and tells him he needs to borrow his head. Duane's first response is to giggle nervously. He wonders to himself why people do this, and speculates that it's probably as a way to refrain yourself from screaming.
- No Antagonist: The bulk of the story is just Duane and Stephanie looking for said ghost's head. The ghost himself, Andrew, doesn't appear until the end and wants nothing more than to be complete so he can leave for the afterlife. The other spirits are fairly harmless, two of them acting as tour guides of Hill House, while another just plays pranks on guests. The closest thing to a villainous ghost is the Sea Captain, and he's gone long before the events of the book.
- "No Peeking!" Request: Stephanie tells this to Duane on Halloween night so she doesn't see her costume and ruin the surprise. Duane replies that he wasn't looking, he was just stretching.
- Offscreen Teleportation: When leaving Hill House, Duane sees Seth staring at him in the hallway. But less than a minute after he and Stephanie get outside, Seth is waiting outside. Duane wonders how he got out there so fast. It turns out that he knew of a secret passageway in Hill House that leads out. However, considering the ambiguity of the ending, this might not be how Seth actually got outside.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: According to Seth, the woman at the stairs had eyes that glowed bright red like fire. When she slid down, her eyes left a bright trail like that of a comet. And when she suddenly disappeared, all that was left was the faint red glow, floating in the air.
- Staircase Tumble: This is how Andrew's mother died after he was killed, walking down the stairs one time and tripped.
- Surveillance Station Slacker: Manny, the night watchman of Hill House, is fast asleep both times Seth sneaks in and out of Hill House. This makes it easy for Seth to bring Duane and Stephanie along to explore after closing.
- Sympathy for the Devil: When it's revealed that Seth was just pranking Duane and Stephanie and he's actually Otto's nephew, Duane feels bad for him and vouches for him, with Stephanie backing him up.
- Time Skip: The book ends with Duane and Stephanie going to Hill House a few months later during the winter, after the whole headless ghost adventure. They take another tour, but as they are coming down the hill afterwards, they are stopped by two policemen. When questioned what they were doing up there this late at night, the children reply that they were just taking a tour. The policemen don't believe them, as Hill House hasn't been hosting tours in months, meaning that Otto and Edna died during that time.
- Wasn't That Fun?: After leaving Hill House the first creepy night, Stephanie exclaimed that it was fun. Duane wasn't so sure himself, and admitted to her that it was sort of creepy.
- You're Just Jealous: While walking home after meeting Seth and agreeing to his plans to meet him again at Hill House, Duane tells Stephanie of his distrust in him. She replies that he's just jealous because he's so brave for actually seeing a ghost. Duane is highly incredulous of this.
