Previously on Nancy Drew Ghost Stories: Amnesia is bad but being unmarried and ugly is worse; anagrams are a foolproof security system; and you should definitely invite old men you meet on the beach back to your house.
Mystery #4: The Ghost Jogger
Okay, this title is just hilarious. The ghost jogger? Do ghosts really care that much about fitness?
Nancy goes for a run in the park and some dude “wearing a long white cape with a hood that completely covered his face” hands her a note. It tells her to “Find them in the empty barn with the flaming horse on it” and is signed “The Grand Wizard Family Ghost.” Then the figure runs off and she can’t find him again.
She goes home and tells Hannah, her housekeeper, about the encounter. Hannah gasps that perhaps it’s related to the recent disappearance of two children, a brother and a sister. Hannah thinks that the mystery jogger wants to Nancy to search for the children for some reason, and Nancy’s like, “Oh, totally, that makes complete sense and I’m definitely going to do it based off this random note given to me by a member of the KKK.”
Nancy and George go out the next day and trip over the barn with a flaming red horse on its hex sign. They peek in and see two men and a woman carrying off the missing children. That was convenient. Nancy and George try to follow them, but Nancy’s car runs out of gas and all they know is that the kidnappers are driving a station wagon.
Nancy goes jogging again for more clues and runs into the racist jogging stranger again. He hands her another note thanking her for trying, then telling her to “try the riverboat with the old sea captain.” Once again, he disappears before Nancy can ask him any questions.
Carson tells Nancy about a mysterious sea captain whose boat, the Magnolia, has been docked in River Heights for years except now it’s not anymore but it’s still nearby so Nancy and her friends can find it. Whatever. Nancy brings Bess and George along to investigate, and Bess is pessimistic about their chances of solving the mystery: “If the police can’t find [the children], what chance do we have?” George: “You forget how we earned our fantastic reputation. We have spirit and determination!” Indeed.
Anyway, apparently Ned once went camping around these parts and randomly met a riverman named Pete (sure?), so Nancy’s plan is to find Pete and get him to track down the riverboat. They find Pete on an island in the middle of the river, and he’s like, “Oh yeah, the Magnolia has disappeared and no one knows anything about it but I still know where it is and it’s close enough that I can take you there today.” I don’t even know. Before he takes them out, though, Pete invites them in for breakfast. “Bess, especially, was happy with this suggestion”, the book notes. Sigh.
The mysterious boat turns out to literally be a ten-minute ride away from Pete’s island. Nancy goes aboard but sees the kidnappers are already carrying the children off the boat. Then the ghost jogger shows up (still in his weird costume) and is like, “Oh btw the kidnappers are my uncle John Clark and his friends and they’re doing this for the ransom money.” Quoth the book: Nancy was confused. Same here, girl.
Uncle John speeds off down the river and into an abandoned boathouse. Nancy and the ghost jogger follow, and the ghost jogger announces that he was nicknamed “the family ghost” because he was always appearing when he wasn’t wanted, but his weirdo stalker KKK-cosplaying ways turned out to be a good thing, so what now! While he and Uncle John argue, Nancy goes to retrieve the children.
The children’s parents show up, and Uncle John claims that he should receive the reward money (I thought he was after ransom money?) for finding them, but the ghost jogger is like, “Au contraire!” He finally takes his stupid-ass hood off, and Nancy notes that he’s actually super hot. Nancy, can you focus?
The ghost jogger — whose real name we never find out — says he overheard Uncle John talking about his dastardly plan, but he didn’t want to cause a family scandal by calling the police. Well, I’m glad he had his priorities in order.
Anyway, the children say, “The cheers for Nancy Drew and her friends!” (that’s how children in the late 20th century definitely talked) and Nancy’s like, “Actually, the riverman is the real hero!” and I’m like, actually, the real hero is me for getting through this Hannah for making the connection to the missing children in the first place, surely? Like without her, Nancy would’ve just been like, “Weird note” and went on jogging. Whatever.
Mystery #5: The Curse of the Frog
Yes, this is just as bad as it sounds. There’s a ghost frog in this story, if that gives you an idea of how to adjust your expectations.
Nancy is approached by a Romani girl named Mary, whom the book repeatedly refers to as a “gypsy” because it was written in the 1950s 1980s. Mary is concerned that a local fortune teller, “Madame Zurga”, is scamming people and giving the local Roma community a bad name. Interestingly, I feel like this story was actually trying to be progressive for its time by being like, “The spooky fortune teller is actually a fake and doesn’t represent real Romani people!”, plus it has some infodumping about the Roma that’s probably pretty educational for sheltered 12-year-olds. Of course, leaning into the tired fortune-teller stereotype at all, along with the repeated use of “gypsy”, just makes the whole thing look wildly insensitive to us today.
Anyway, Madame Zurga has a pet frog that everyone thinks has magic powers (sure?) and she keeps threatening to put the titular curse of the frog on anyone who crosses her. (Frogs are indeed a symbol of bad luck for the Roma, although I don’t know why it’s freaking out the rest of River Heights’ WASP inhabitants so badly.)
Nancy visits Madame Zurga to investigate. Madame Zurga makes Nancy hold the frog, which grosses Nancy out. I don’t know, maybe I’m a frog apologist, but I feel like this story is leaning way too much on the assumption that frogs are inherently terrifying creatures to most of the world. I think they’re cute! At the very least, I don’t believe Nancy “Let’s Spend 85 Hours Sorting Bug Poop” Drew would be easily grossed out by them. Anyway, Madame Zurga pumps the room full of smoke, making Nancy feel woozy, then she says: “Your enemy has placed a curse on something in your father’s office safe. It must be removed at once, or you both may die! Only I can save you from such a curse. Tell me! What is the combination to his safe?” HEE! No points for subtlety.
Nancy bolts from the shop and clears her head, noting that the smoke must have something in it to make customers sleepy and more likely to spill their secrets to Madame Zurga. She comes up with a logical explanation for almost everything that happened in there, except for the frog’s “breathing in and out” and “ominous croaking”. I…what is there to explain about that? It’s a living creature, Nancy.
Another friend of Nancy’s, Nikki Lamar, is introduced. Nikki’s cousin Yvette has been going to see Madame Zurga recently, and her mental state has been deteriorating with every visit. Yvette also has developed a recent phobia of frogs. Nancy agrees to stay with Nikki over the weekend and look into what’s going on with Yvette.
At the Lamar house, Yvette exposits that she came to the US from Martinique with her uncle, who was a sailor and amateur stonemason. Yvette tells Nancy that she’s been seeing and hearing the frog every night since she started seeing Madame Zurga. Madame Zurga is trying to help her — or so she says — but her form of therapy is mostly just asking Yvette about her uncle. Yvette recalls that her uncle said something ominous about “seven stones” and keeping “[his] secret bottled up forever.” Coincidentally, Yvette found a bottle of seven stones somewhere in the house, which she then gave to Madame Zurga. Madame Zurga keeps telling Yvette that she needs to tell Madame Zurga her bank account number uncle’s secret in order to escape the curse of the frog. Nancy gasps that there are seven stones with the ship design carved on them on Yvette’s fireplace and everyone’s like, “What could this mean?!” Ooh, I bet it’s a puzzle! Quick, press on them to see if moving one moves the others!
The next morning, some dude named “Mr. Karnak” shows up, saying he heard about Yvette’s super-cool nautical fireplace and would love to take photos of it for his “interior design magazine.” Yvette’s like “Sounds legit” and lets him poke around the fireplace. Nancy finally speaks up when he starts trying to pull the stones out and asks what magazine he writes for, and he’s like, “What an INVASIVE question! It’s like you don’t even BELIEVE me!” He flounces out and Nancy apologizes to Yvette for speaking out of turn. Yvette thanks Nancy for questioning him, because apparently she was just gonna let him pry apart her fireplace otherwise? Jesus Christ, Yvette, take some responsibility for yourself.
Nancy inspects Uncle Louis’s room and finds a ship in the bottle, which is named La Grenouille, aka “The Frog” in French. Yvette gasps that she actually developed her phobia of frogs when she was younger, because she once walked in on Uncle Louis and his friends…hanging around…wearing frog masks? As you do, I guess.
Nancy inspects the fireplace and sees that the stones form an arrow pointing to a particular…stone? Under the mantel? I don’t know, the writing is kind of weird here and I’m not totally sure what’s going on, spacially. Anyway, she presses the stone and a secret passageway opens up. I mean…if this story isn’t going to give us decent mystery building or racial sensitivity, at least we’re getting a secret tunnel out of it? I guess?
They find an underground vault with a big chest of treasure, and then Mr. Karnak and Madame Zurga show up. They thank Nancy for finding the treasure for them (hee! the more things change) and then threaten them with an unspecified weapon*. Karnak says they’re going to steal the treasure, then seal the Clue Crew in the vault to die.
* Seriously, they never mention what this weapon is supposed to be, so I guess you can pretend it’s whatever you want? I’m going to picture Mr. Karnak threatening them with a pair of Fiskars scissors, personally.
Nancy’s like, “Aha, but you’ve forgotten THE CURSE OF THE FROG!” Just then, a giant frog comes bouncing in, croaking ominously. Then Ned and his friend Burt show up out of nowhere and take down Karnak and Madame Zurga.
Nancy reveals that she bought the huge frog at a toy shop earlier in the day, and Ned put a tape recorder in the toy to play the croaking noises. I’m sorry? Karnak and Madame Zurga abandoned the treasure they’ve spent ages searching for because of a TOY FROG? How could they even mistake this for the real thing? Embarrassing. Nancy then explains that Karnak/Zurga bugged Yvette’s house and were projecting spooky images and sounds of frogs at night, and they must have also been listening and overheard the conversation about the fireplace.
Yvette finds a letter in the treasure chest revealing that Uncle Louis was in a pirate gang that wore frog masks on their raids (for some reason). They stole a bunch of treasure from various ships, and then one day Uncle Louis was like “Maybe stealing is wrong?” and ran away with all the treasure, intending to return it to its various rightful owners one day. He was a cowardly custard and was afraid the pirate gang would find him, though, so he just sat on the treasure and was like “Hmm maybe I can get my niece to return it and incur the pirate gang’s wrath instead of me :)” Karnak is the son of the gang’s leader, who was trying to track Uncle Louis down for great justice revenge.
Oh, and the fact that Uncle Louis happened to be in some weird gang obsessed with the same animal that’s bad luck in Roma culture was just a massive coincidence. I mean, at least they’re admitting it? Nancy and Ned muse that Madame Zurga was also using tech trickery to make the creepy croaking noises, but Nancy’s like, “Haha, I’m not going back to her shop to find out, though!” Fuck Mary and all those other people Madame Zurga scammed, I guess.
Mystery #6: The Greenhouse Ghost
Praise Jesus, I’ve finally made it to the end. So Carson is working on the case of one Mr. La Forge, owner of a florist business specializing in orchids. His business had been experiencing mysterious troubles, like the property being vandalized and flower orders being destroyed, and eventually Mr. and Mrs. La Forge were like “fuck it” and died of stress. Also, before their deaths, the La Forges were working on producing a deep blue orchid and had nearly cracked the formula before their deaths. (Yes, the first story in this book was also about someone nearly cracking an important scientific formula right before their death/disappearance. Never let it be said that Nancy Drew wastes a plot, good or otherwise.) Everyone acts like the La Forges were onto some wild secret that would’ve rocked the floral world, but I’m going to mildly spoil it for you and say that they were just working on a way to dye orchids blue. They didn’t manage to like create a new cultivar of orchid or anything.
Anyway, now the La Forge children want to sell the estate, but no one will buy, due to rumors of a ghost haunting the property’s greenhouse. Nancy’s like, “I ain’t afraid of no ghosts!”, and the Drews go over to the house, accompanied by Togo the dog, who weirdly disappears after the first couple of pages. The Drews promptly meet two suspects: the house gardener, Joe Hendricks, and his assistant, Kiki. Kiki is so named because he’s meant to be Polynesian (Nancy can tell because she “had been in Hawaii some time before”) and the writers couldn’t be bothered to look up real Polynesian names. (I mean…okay, I did go to school with a Samoan girl we called Kiki. But it was a nickname!)
Kiki shows them around, and they pass a closed room that he notes is used for experiments. Nancy gasps that this must be where the “secret orchid research” is conducted. I’m sorry, I know botanists do real work cultivating hybrids or whatever, but the phrase “secret orchid research” will never stop making me laugh. Nancy too is intrigued by the concept of secret orchid research, and wonders if perhaps it’s a front for crime.
Hendricks and Kiki take them into the main house, where they promptly see a ghostly figure on the staircase, holding a tube of blue liquid. Hendricks and Kiki immediately run away, and the ghost comes down the stairs and disappears through a doorway under the staircase. So…were Nancy and Carson just standing there and watching while it walked all the way down the stairs and through the hall? This story would be so much shorter if one of them had just tackled the ghost.
The Drews go back upstairs and Nancy investigates the blue fluid the ghost was holding. She figures it has to do with the project to make a blue orchid and goes poking around the house. She finds the La Forges’ bedroom and attached lab; several bottles of color are lying around, but none of them match the blue fluid the ghost was holding. The La Forges’ unfinished formula is also out in the open. Nancy thinks someone must be using the lab to keep working on ~secret orchid research~ and is using the ghost as a distraction.
She takes photos of the formula using her “tiny high-speed camera” (hee! remember, you have to use high-speed film indoors because it’s dark!), but Hendricks busts her and tries to take her camera. Nancy manages to hold onto it and decides Hendricks is suspicious.
She asks Carson who might be playing the part of the ghost — who the book has finally decided to specify is a female, instead of you know, describing her as such when Nancy saw her — and Carson notes that Kiki is married. His wife was the La Forges’ secretary and got a larger share from their will than Hendricks and his wife did, to the Hendricks’ displeasure.
Nancy investigates the lab again and finds a white wig in one of the drawers, with a stamp saying it’s from a beauty salon in River Heights. Nancy goes to the salon and finds out that the wig was special ordered by Hendricks. Nancy assumes that Mrs. Hendricks is the ghost.
She invites Bess and George to come to the estate with her to spend the night and watch for the ghost. When they see the house, George teases Nancy about moving in with Ned and Bess says, “I wouldn’t live in a house with a ghost in it, even for free.” Sure, Miss 1980s Housing Market can say that -_-
A bunch of spooky shenanigans happen, culminating with the sight of the ghost. Nancy runs to the lab and finds the wig again, but not the ghost. Mrs. Hendricks walks in on her and gets mad that Nancy is snooping around. Nancy tells her that she’ll never get her hands on the La Forge house, to which Mrs. Hendricks says, “You think you know it all, but you’ll never find out the real secret of this place!” Smooth. That definitely makes me think she’s not a suspect.
Nancy picks up the phone in the hallway to call her dad, but there’s already someone on the other end…somehow? There’s no mention of the phone ringing earlier. Whatever. Nancy pretends to be Mrs. Hendricks and the man on the other end helpfully reminds her that his name is Ed Smythe and nobody can know what they’re doing. Nancy tells Carson about this, and Carson IDs Ed Smythe as a rival florist who would probably love to get his hands on the blue dye formula.
The next day, Nancy runs into Kiki. She asks him if he wants to help her test the dye formula, so they go to the secret orchid research room. While they’re experimenting, Mrs. Hendricks finds them and locks them in, then turns the temperature control down to freezing. Bess and George have to save Nancy and Kiki, and they’re like, “OMG, we can’t find the button for the door! Or the button to unlock the temperature control!” except then they find the buttons a paragraph later because there’s only two pages left in this story (thank God).
Nancy dresses up as the ghost and confronts Mrs. Hendricks, who’s in the middle of her own cosplay and freaks out at the sight of another ghost. The Clue Crew accuses the Hendrickses of stealing the blue dye formula and selling it, using the ghost act to scare people away while they worked on finishing the formula.
Just then, Kiki bursts in and says he’s figured out the key to the formula. Everyone rushes to the greenhouse and he shows them the blue orchid and Nancy’s like, “Wow, whoever buys this place will be lucky to have you as a gardener!” and Kiki’s like, “Haha as long as there are no more ghosts!” And then they all have a hearty chuckle over the orchid while Mrs. Hendricks escapes, presumably. And that’s the end of it.
So that happened. All these stories were terrible, but let me take a whack at ranking them anyway:
6. The Ghost Jogger (nonsensical, anticlimactic, the main character runs around in a stupid outfit that nobody comments on)
5. The Greenhouse Ghost (the concept of secret orchid research and floral rivalry seems like it should be interesting or at least funny, but it’s actually boring as shit. also ends nearly as abruptly as the ghost jogger story)
4. The Curse of the Frog (incredibly stupid and racially insensitive; both the main mystery and resolution come out of nowhere; on the other hand, the secret pirate frog gang shit is so absurd it goes back around to being funny)
3. The Ghost Dogs of Whispering Oaks (one of the less fleshed-out stories in this book, which feels weird considering that somebody liked it enough to incorporate it into a game; the anagram shit is incredibly dumb; has some genuinely spooky moments though)
2. Blackbeard’s Skull (somewhat lame mystery but fairly cool backstory/setting; Nancy gets into legit danger that lasts more than 2 paragraphs; actual potential ghost shenanigans)
1. The Campus Ghost (continuing the grand tradition of short story collections putting the least shit story first, this story is the only one that has any kind of foreshadowing/telegraphing, instead of having things just happen. the plastic surgery resolution is kind of lame and there are some unsatisfying loose ends, but overall this is the one that feels the most like an actual mystery. also i’m still laughing at them blowing off sophie’s amnesia like, “oh whatever she’s just rambling about cattle ranching because she’s from texas.”)
Anyway, I hope HER Interactive hurries up with the new game because my God I am starting to question my life decisions reading these books. The other book that Ghost Dogs was based on is one of the later main series books (and it has Ned!) so here’s hoping it isn’t quite as shit. We’ll find out, I guess!
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