Danny's Ghost



Danny's ghost is the main antagonist in the Goosebumps story The Ghost Next Door and appears as a black silhouette who stalks the protagonist, a teenage girl called Hannah. The ghost's ultimate goal is to break free of the spirit world.

Danny's ghost first appears when Hannah is at her Summer holidays and going back home after cycling round town for the day. She notices a strange black silhouette who seems to be following her. She thinks it's just her shadow but she realizes it's something different when the silhouette appears to be a man. He follows her home and says "Beware of Danny." The second time she sees the phantom, she is again cycling home and this time he follows her right to her door and says "Hannah, stay away. Stay away from Danny!" Hannah begins to be disturbed by these encounters.

Hannah has had suspicions that Danny, a boy who had become her new neighbour, is a ghost, because of his unexplained disappearences and eerie manner. At one point she goes to talk to his mother but she never answers the door or even hears her. However, later on Hannah realizes that Danny isn't the ghost when she hears two women talking about a fire which destroyed a house and killed an entire family - her own family. Hannah soon realizes that she is the ghost, she has returned after ten years, and she begins to realize that the phantom who has been following her might be a ghost too.

She rushes home to warn her family but then finds they're all gone - they've departed back to the Afterlife. So Hannah is a ghost, by herself, and she broods, but then she notices Danny and his friends break into the house next door and pour oil all over it, then set alight to it. However, the ghost traps Danny in the house, and his friends run out to get help. Hannah gets up to the door, and she meets Danny's ghost, who pulls back his hood, and reveals himself as Danny's ghost, and says that he is there to replace Danny, as when Danny dies in the fire, he will no longer be a ghost - he willl be reborn, and Danny will go to the Afterlife in his place. Hannah pushes through the fire, knowing she can't die again (being a ghost) and saves Danny, and then Danny's ghost is full of rage at being defeated, and vanishes - this time permanently imprisoned in the Afterlife.