Gamebooks (Choose Your Own Adventure Style)

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 7


Since Ricardo was being chased by hundreds of ghosts in the Good Ending, let's wait for him in CHOICE #9 to see what happens.  Surely he can make it three more blocks before they make him into a pickaxe pincushion, right?


"Let's wait here,' you say.  You sit on the ground, the tomahawk on your lap.  You study it; it seems to glow, pulsating gently with a light and power of its own.  'I hope we're making the right decision.'  Lisa's statement startles you.  That's exactly what you were wondering.  The eastern sky keeps brightening.  It will be dawn soon-and too late.  Just as you are about to tell Lisa you can't wait anymore, she shouts, 'Here he comes!'


You can see him now.  Ricardo is racing toward you, holding the pipe over his head.  Behind him runs a multitude of Indians and prospectors.  They are running after Ricardo and shouting loudly.  Ricardo stumbles to a halt in front of you.  'Where's the chief?' he pants.  'I got the ghosts.'  The chief is nowhere in sight.  The ghosts keep running.  They rush past Ricardo, still shouting.


You wonder where they are going; then you see them pouring into the abandoned mine shaft building.  Like a circus act they run into the building until you are sure it can hold no more-and then a few more pile in!  Just as the last ghost disappears, the sun rises.  THE END"


I'm calling this a Neutral Ending.  Since I didn't exorcise the ghosts by spinning the tomahawk in this timeline, the ghosts will be High Ridge's problem in 2039.  Hope the heroes write down the  instructions for the next generation, and keep the pipe and tomahawk in an easily accessible location!  Or will the High Ridge townsfolk sell them on eBay to separate buyers instead?


This Neutral Ending gets a more detailed illustration than the actual Good Ending.  Ricardo looks like he's pointing his thumb at the ghosts, who look more cartoonish than the drawings in the rest of the book.  My hero looks at the ghost, and Lisa gives Ricardo a wide-eyed stare.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

2 Deaths

0 Bad Non-Death Endings

1 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 8


If we continue to dig in CHOICE #8, Ricardo has to quit because of blisters and shoulder pain.  He's on watch duty after that, which pays off when he alerts us:  "The ghosts!  They've banded together and are headed this way.  They're after us!  Hurry!  We've got to get out of here.'  He has a frightened mouth agape expression as he points into the black background in the drawing.  Lisa and the player character hold their shovels still in the foreground as they look at Ricardo.


On the way, we see a "small, brown, weathered building" which is at the mine shaft.  This is where the ghosts entered to disappear at dawn in CHOICE #9.  CHOICE #10 is to hide there on Page 88, or keep moving on Page 109.


Lisa is the "reluctant third" to enter the mine shaft building.  "Watch out for the open mine shaft", I say.  My character, unlike Cedric the owl, has the sense to warn everyone about danger BEFORE taking the fatal step into the pit.  The building is "dark, damp, and cluttered with rusty mining equipment", and the windows are "grimy with dust and cobwebs."


Ricardo becomes stupid again when he sees the two groups of ghosts and says "They look dead."  Lisa has to tell him "They are dead."  Since the ghosts are coming, Ricardo pulls us up to the "massive beams above the mine shaft".  Maybe it's leftover lumber from Mad Monster Mansion.


"Just in time!  You are well hidden when the door opens.  One ghost follows another inside until no more can fit into the room.  Then, with an ear-splitting cry, the first in line jumps into the shaft.  One at a time they follow, screaming and moaning horribly.  Lisa holds one hand over her mouth, the other tightly clutching a beam.  Ricardo watches carefully, only his eyes moving.  You feel shaky, your knees weak.


You watch them all jump into the shaft, wondering if they'll fill the shaft up.  Then you realize they're returning to the ground.  The last one disappears just as morning sunlight pierces the eastern window.  None of you moves for several minutes.  Then, stiff-legged, quiet, each absorbed in your own thoughts, you climb down and head out into the clean glare of the sun.  THE END"


I insult Ricardo a bit more than he deserves.  He saved the party in this Neutral Ending, which is more than can be said for some Treasure Diver companions.  In the illustration, a prospector is the first to jump into the shaft, with the other ghosts just behind him. Ricardo holds onto the beam tightly with both arms and legs, though my character has a much more relaxed position with both legs  hanging over the beam.  Lisa has one hand covering her mouth and one holding onto the beam, just as the text says.  The room itself is well-drawn, with extra details such as a hook hanging from the ceiling, a barrel full of tools to the right, and a large gear on the left.



Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

2 Deaths

0 Bad Non-Death Endings

2 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 9


CHOICE #10 ranks with CHOICE #9 as one of the safest parts of The Horror Of High Ridge.  This is what happens if we keep running in CHOICE #10 instead of hiding close to the mine shaft. 


"Let's get out of here!' you say.  Dropping your shovels, you leave quickly, walking away from the approaching ghosts.  You are all silent as you walk hurriedly through the quiet town.  When you enter your cabin, you feel safe at home, but you wonder how long it will be until the ghosts return to bring terror back to High Ridge.  THE END"


The year 2039, if the museum statue refers to a previous visit, and the ghosts return every 50 years.  Wonder what happens if for some reason the ghosts can't enter the mine shaft before sunrise.  Can they be exorcised that way?  Also, why would the ghosts being able to "fit" be a problem if they're immaterial in the first place?  This ending's drawing is an X shape of a pickaxe crossing with a shovel.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

2 Deaths

0 Bad Non-Death Endings

3 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 10


After refusing Walking Eagle's quest in CHOICE #7 because it's "too scary", our "heroes" are presented with CHOICE #11.  I was expecting an immediate Death or Bad Non-Death ending as punishment for failing the Morality Test, but The Horror Of High Ridge must not be as strict as La Isla De Los Dodos.  (Then again, in that book, the "distress call" you were supposed to help turned out to be a trap by pirates. . .)


The options are to leave High Ridge in the jeep on Page 54, or wait out the night in the cabin on Page 75.  Neither sounds like a good idea.  Cabins are a horror setting tradition to begin with, and if this book follows movie conventions, the jeep won't start.


"Let's get out of here!' you yell, as you head toward the jeep.  Lisa and Ricardo sit stonily by your side as you drive down the road.  You can tell they don't like your decision to leave.  You don't like your decision to leave either, but you didn't have much of a choice-staying was just too dangerous.  You hope you don't regret your decision too much.  THE END"


That's it?  The ghosts don't catch up to us, and the jeep works as it should?  And the drawing is just the stock pickaxe and shovel X cross?  For a book with a reputation as one of the scariest CYOAs, The Horror Of High Ridge has a lot of disappointment.



Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

2 Deaths

0 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 11


Remaining in the cabin in CHOICE #7 gives us a slightly more thrilling ending, although Paul Granger is really phoning it in by including the generic knife drawing at the bottom.


"I want to stay in the cabin' you say, but just then Lisa asks, 'Do you smell what I smell?'  'Fire!' Ricardo yells.  The cabin is ablaze.  You look out the window and see a group of Indians and prospectors, weapons at the ready, standing around the cabin.  It looks as if your only choice is the way you will die.  THE END"


The genie in The Fisherman And The Genie story in the 1001 Nights offered a wish like this to the fisherman.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

3 Deaths

0 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 12


Wait.  The route where you go outside to investigate the ghost moans in CHOICE #1 doesn't have the majority of the endings?  Let's follow Lisa's advice and stay in the cabin, which will probably burn again later.


Paul Granger puts more effort into this part when an arrow breaks a window, and then disappears.  My character's long face looks especially freakish here with the frightened facial expression.  Ricardo is drawn as usual.  Lisa looks like she's screaming, and is wearing some type of old-fashioned polka dot gown.  Her hand is over her chest.


CHOICE #12 is to remain in the cabin on Page 12, or leave High Ridge in the jeep on Page 8.  Might as well get the boring ending out of the way first and try to escape.  Lisa is the most frightened of all the characters, but she insists "I'll have to pack"?  Ricardo thinks she's being crazy.  My character tells Ricardo to leave the kerosene lamp on because it might fool the ghosts into thinking they're still in the cabin. 


Ricardo shouts "Indians!  I saw Indians!  Back there!".  Does he also react this way if he's near a reservation?  Lisa says "Aw c'mon, Ricardo.  You're just hallucinating".  She probably doesn't think Native Americans still exist.  My character sides with Lisa, saying to Ricardo "The moonlight in the mountains plays tricks on the eyes.  Lisa's probably right.  Besides, you're just thinking about the arrow and that got you to thinking about Indians. . ."  Little do the heroes know that High Ridge is the world capital of archery contests, and hobbyists like to challenge themselves by shooting at furniture through windows.


Lisa yells "WATCH OUT!" just before we would have crashed into a boulder.  A rock slide had inconveniently closed off the road.  It makes me think of the snowstorm in Murder On The Orient Express which forces the suspects to stay on the train.  Keeping characters confined in one space to force them to interact with the plot is an easy and useful literary technique.


Still, the rock slide is not a perfect obstacle.  CHOICE #13 offers three options.  We could abandon the jeep and walk along the road on Page 29 as Lisa wants us to do.  The other decisions are to camp like Ricardo suggests on Page 22, or return to High Ridge on Page 13.


We get a flashlight and the blankets from the jeep and climb over the stones.  We see the red glow farther up the mountain, where High Ridge is.  A cliff to the right of us prevents us from seeing by moonlight, and we have to conserve flashlight batteries.  "Every few minutes one of you stumbles on a rock or into a hole. . ."  Two miles later, and a police officer shouts "Stop!  Hands up and don't move!"  Hopefully these aren't the fake police from Hijacked!.


The sheriff knows me, and says "Kill the lights, Sam" to the deputy.  We ask each other what we're doing outside late at night.  The sheriff says "We're investigating complaints of screams, rioting, and other disturbances up in High Ridge.  You don't know anything about that, do you?"


All three heroes begin to talk simultaneously, until the officer tells us to speak one at a time.  We mention the moaning sounds, the vanishing arrow, and the rock slide.  The sheriff's going to High Ridge to investigate, and wants to use my jeep.  CHOICE #14 is to go back to High Ridge with the sheriff as a companion, or to keep moving away from the haunted town on Page 66.


"No problem, Sheriff, take my jeep.'  The sheriff calls out his thanks and roars away.  You, Ricardo, and Lisa continue trudging down the mountain.  Finally you reach the highway and catch a ride into Barton City.  Later that day you read a newspaper account of the horror that visited High Ridge.  You are shocked to learn of the deaths of ten townspeople and of the disappearance of the sheriff and his deputy.  You wonder just what's going on in High Ridge, but you don't feel like going back to find out.  THE END"


It's a definite Bad Non-Death Ending, since the sheriff and deputy are dead for sure.  These ghosts only make people "disappear" in the dictator's sense of the term.  Do the anonymous residents also perish in the Good Ending?  The drawing is the recurring knife again.




Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

3 Deaths

1 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 13


CHOICE #14 is the worst place to be in the book so far.  If you walk past the rock slide in the jeep, the sheriff and deputy are killed, but the protagonists live.  If you are a bit braver and return to town with the sheriff, a fatal ending ensues.


"Sheriff, we'd like to go back to town with you.'  The sheriff is silent for a moment.  Then he says, 'All right, I guess you'll be safe enough if we stay in your jeep.'  The three of you climb into the back of the sheriff's car and head up the road.  At the slide, you all transfer to your jeep.  Sam slides behind the wheel and you take off.


Just as you near the cliff where Ricardo says he saw somebody, the sheriff turns to ask you a question.  Suddenly the air is filled with bullets and arrows.  Sam is the worst hit, and he slumps down, twisting the steering wheel.  The jeep plunges over the cliff and crashes hundreds of feet below.  Searchers don't find your bodies for a month.  THE END"


This must be Paul Granger's favorite ending.  You can see a wheel falling off the jeep as it plunges into a conifer forest.  A full moon can be seen a bit above the cliff, and the guard rail has snapped.  How far past the town limits can the ghosts go?


Barton City from the previous ending is the name of a real place in Michigan, but the state's mountains are far away in uncharted North Wisconsin the Upper Peninsula, not a place you would drive to in a night.  Gold and silver mining did exist in Michigan in the 19th century, so the prospectors wouldn't be out of place.



Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

4 Deaths

1 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 14


In CHOICE #13, we follow Ricardo's advice and camp at the rock slide site.  On the page before the ending, there's another knife drawing, but the handle seems to have a lighter color.  It's not a Good or even Neutral Ending, as the line "Toward morning somebody does come up the road, but you are in no condition to greet him" implies.


"That afternoon, the headlines in the local newspaper read:


HORROR AT HIGH RIDGE


High Ridge, Calif. (AP)  Something has frightened fifteen residents of this small mining town in the Sierra Nevada right into the intensive care unit of the University Medical Center in Sacramento.  The same mystery force killed ten others and scared the thirty remaining inhabitants into leaving town.


'I don't know what it is,' said Lottie Howard, one longtime resident, 'and I don't care to stay and find out.  If you could see the faces on those people, you wouldn't want to stick around either.'  Hospital spokesmen will only say that the fifteen people are 'stable and under observation,' but one hospital employee said unofficially:  'If they were dead, you'd say they were scared to death because that's how they look, but they're not dead-they're in comas.  I don't know what you'd call it.'


Police have cordoned off the town, and refuse to comment further at this time.  THE END"


I know there was a newspaper article ending in some other gamebook, but I can't find it right now, and I'm not looking through 100+ pages to find out.  This is my favorite conclusion so far, and now we actually know where the story takes place!  Wonder how the real Associated Press would react to the occurrences in a typical CYOA.  Comas definitely fall into Bad Non-Death Ending territory.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

4 Deaths

2 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 15


When we have second thoughts and decide to return to High Ridge in CHOICE #13, my character says "We all saw the arrow-or think we did.  Then we panicked.  What I mean is, there's probably a perfectly rational explanation for the whole thing.  Maybe someone's playing a trick on us.  Some little kid probably fell down from laughing so hard when we took off in the jeep."


This is a sequel to an R.A. Montgomery book!  Rationality vanished a long time ago when the backstory involves going to a House Of Danger with chimpanzees plotting to conquer the world by dropping counterfeit currency out of egg-shaped aircraft.  House Of Danger also had holograms, so it would be a nice reference if in one path the "arrow" was an illusion.


Lisa tells "terrible jokes" on the way back, and I'd like to know what those are.  She might actually turn into an interesting character that way.  Ricardo yells "Stop!" and says "The place where I saw those Indians-or whatever they were-is just around the corner.  I think we should check it out on foot before driving through there.'


CHOICE #15 is to take Ricardo's suggestion on Page 42, or believe he's "just nervous" and keep driving on Page 44.  Ricardo did put us in a coma in the previous ending, so will we do better if we ignore him?


"Ricardo, you're just too nervous,' you say as you step on the gas.  'You were just hallucinating after seeing that arrow. . . .'  'Wait!' Ricardo and Lisa shout, but it's too late.  A rain of bullets hits down on you.  In your last earthly glimpse, you discover Ricardo was wrong.  It wasn't Indians with arrows on the cliff.  It was prospectors with guns.  THE END"


I'll have to admit, "your last earthly glimpse" is a creative variation on the stock "the last thing you see is. . ." Death.  The illustration has lines of bullet trajectories hitting the jeep everywhere.  All three characters are either leaning backward, or in Lisa's case, have already fallen to the ground.  It's one of the endings that Paul Granger liked enough to bother to draw something other than a single knife or a pickaxe and shovel cross.


The past two endings mean Ricardo is a jinxed companion:  you can't win if you follow him, and you can't win if you reject him.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

5 Deaths

2 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings

[Herman Gigglethorpe]

Choose Your Own Adventure:  The Horror Of High Ridge Alternate Endings Part 16


CHOICE #16 happens once we get out of the jeep in CHOICE #15.  Ricardo wants to climb the cliff next to us on  Page 64, while Lisa wants to sneak on the roadside on Page 58.  Ghosts probably have ESP, so Lisa's idea will probably fail, and climbing the cliff is obvious setup for a falling Death.


Lisa says "I wish we had a gun", and I do have one in the jeep:  a .22 caliber.  The hint for CHOICE #17 is "It's not really powerful.  Perhaps it would cause more trouble than it's worth.  On the other hand, maybe it's better than nothing."  What isn't mentioned is that bullets are no use against ghosts anyway, and there are no living human antagonists in High Ridge.  The options are to take the .22 rifle on Page 93, or leave it in the jeep on Page 114.


"You decide to take the rifle.  Lisa and Ricardo gasp when they see it.  'Hey, you look serous.'  'I just remembered I'd stuck it back here.  It's only a .22, but who knows?'  You fling it over your shoulder.  'Let's go.  There's a place back here that's easy to climb.'


You go first because you know the way and can whisper directions to Ricardo and Lisa.  Halfway up, you come to the only tricky part of the climb.  There's a narrow ledge you have to walk across sideways.  You inch your way across it, then turn to tell Lisa how to get off the ledge.  As you turn, the rifle barrel catches on a tree branch jutting out above you.  The scraping of the twigs on the metal startles you, and you lose your footing.


The branch gives a little shove as it straightens.  You fall headlong into the open air.  The sound of you hitting the road is loud in the quiet night.  Ricardo and Lisa are on their own now.  THE END"


I knew there would be a plunge off the cliff.  Julius Goodman played well by having a gun kill the hero. . .and not with bullets.  There's an illustration of the player character falling towards the curved road with the rifle strapped to his arm.  Ricardo and Lisa are standing on a ledge above the hero, looking down at his Death.  How come most of the fun endings and illustrations are in the "stay in the cabin in CHOICE #1" route?  The Horror Of High Ridge is a lopsided CYOA.


Endings So Far


1 Good Endings

6 Deaths

2 Bad Non-Death Endings

4 Neutral Endings

4 Inconclusive Endings