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The Haunted Mask is a living mask intent on possessing its user, and the main antagonist in the Goosebumps books The Haunted Mask, The Scream of the Haunted Mask, and Goosebumps Wanted: The Haunted Mask. And as well as the Goosebumps TV episodes, The Haunted Mask, and The Haunted Mask II. And The secondary antagonist of goosebumps 2 haunted Halloween.

It is considered one of the series' most iconic antagonists.

History[]

Background[]

The Haunted Mask is actually one of many, created by a nameless shopkeeper long ago. The shopkeeper had no love for himself, for he was born with an ugly face. As a grown man, the shopkeeper became a scientist in the field of biological engineering and in turn used this to create a beautiful human prosthetic face. He made this face of human flesh and made it so that when he put it on it would attach itself to his flesh and would remain so forever. But something went wrong: when he put on the beautiful Mask it changed, it became hideous. No matter what he did to stop the decay, the face turned into an ugly monstrosity. The face turned a dead green, its teeth grew into animal fangs, and its flesh became contorted and deformed. The shopkeeper did the only thing he could do. Knowing that the face he made was never supposed to be removed, he took a knife and carved deep into the skin where the Mask was supposed to end. This first failed attempt became the Haunted Mask.

After painfully removing the Mask, he tried countless other times to create the perfect flesh mask for him to wear to hide his face. They all failed just the same. It was after his failures that he realized that the reason the masks had failed to remain as they were created was because they changed his outside appearance but not the way he still felt inside: ugly. These feelings in turn were what transformed the faces. They changed to reflect the man he still was on the inside, hideous. The shopkeeper took his failed attempts, dubbing them "The Unloved," and put them on a shelf in the back room of the mask shop that he was still working on setting up, as a reminder of what he was still trying to accomplish. Meanwhile, in this back room of the shop, these living Masks waited and watched for an opportunity to gain a body.

Goosebumps[]

In the Goosebumps movie, the mask's original wearer, Carly Beth Caldwell (played by Clare Halstead), makes two extremely brief silent cameos wearing the Haunted Mask. She appears once all the way on the left of Slappy's newly awakened army and once gleefully skipping towards the ferris wheel in the finale. Like most of the other monsters in the film, she does not speak.

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