20th Century Ghosts Trivia Quiz

Answer: Buttonboy

Eddie Carroll writes for an anthology known as 'Best New Horror' and, frustrated with the monotony of his job, he's interested when he receives a note from an English professor, Edward Noonan, who claims that a certain short story, 'Buttonboy', was perverse enough to disgust readers out of memberships with other magazines. Carroll is instantly intrigued and begins to read.

The story itself concerns a woman degraded and abused by a ten-foot-tall man and her experiences with a man named Jim whose eyes are wired shut and pierced by smiley-faced buttons. After ten years of disfiguration, that which haunts her returns to claim her. Carroll is thrilled with the story, considering it a wonderfully-written piece. He takes it upon himself to contact Edward via email, asking for contact info for Peter Kilrue, the author.

Contacting Peter proves to be tough; no one seems to know where the eccentric man is, not even past employers. After attending a fantasy convention in New York, Carroll is directed to the man's house only to be introduced to his brothers. Carroll is unnerved by what he finds in the residence-- a frail woman in a bed; chains in the wheelhouse-- when he goes to his car, he forgets his keys with his jacket in the house and makes a break for the forest. A chainsaw can be heard in the distance and all he can do is keep running.

Answer: The Rosebud

A ghost appears to moviegoers at a small, independent theater, but very rarely and only under special conditions that the owner, Alec, can never determine. He listens to stories, true and false, from his patrons and begins to obsess over this woman who, as ethereal as the light from the projector, speaks and disappears during the films.

He saw her once himself; it was when he sneaked into a matinee showing of "Fantasia" as a teenager. She sat next to him, under the projector, and he noticed her nose bleed. When he began to realize that she was not a living, breathing person, he backed out of his chair and watched as she transformed in front of his eyes. The owner of the theater, Harry Parcells, tells him that she'd never been seen in a matinee before. Handing him a newspaper clipping, Alec reads that the girl, Imogene, was killed during the premiere showing of "The Wizard of Oz". She was nineteen. Alec gets a job serving popcorn at the theater.

Alec receives a message from another person who saw Imogene in the past, a film director in fact. He purchases the theater, but not before he mentions a dream he had about the building being boarded up; a woman's voice cries from inside. Alec receives messages from several other people, all the same, outlining the same dream, and all of them saw her as well. When the theater reopens, the first film played is "The Wizard of Oz"; a documentary camera captures the first showing. As the movie comes to a close, a woman appears in the seat next to Alec and they embrace. As the line "there's no place like home" is said by Dorothy onscreen, the woman disappears and an ambulance is called. Alec is dead.

Answer: He's inflatable

This story concerns an inflatable boy named Arthur Roth, the only friend of a school-aged child with family problems. The narrator met Arthur in the sixth grade when he was added to his class. With the noticeable handicap of being made of light plastic, many of the kids picked on him, threatening to pop him. The narrator helped him out, preventing bullies from kicking him onto the roof of the school.

The two of them got along famously, but they didn't like each other's parents (and vice versa). The narrator's father thought Arthur was a fairy-boy and bought a pitbull, a dog that could chew holes into him. Arthur's mother thought that the narrator needed more creative outlets and a religion. Nonetheless, the two stayed strong friends. Oddly, the narrator felt that Arthur kept bringing up the topic of death, weaving it into conversation.

One morning when the narrator went to the dentist, Arthur went to his house looking for him and encountered the pitbull. The narrator found him hiding in a car, melting away in the hot sun. He got him out just in time but he was never the same after that. Coloured a light brown and always needing more air, Arthur decided that he didn't want to suffer anymore. With the narrator watching, Art took hold of several helium balloons and lifted off over the sea, hoping to reach the point where the sky opens up.

Art's body was found by officials six months later, washed up by the surf; his parents moved away. The narrator grew up, emotionally-jarred by the loss of his inflatable friend. In college he met a girl named Ruth, the first inflatable person he'd seen since Art. They got married. When he tells her the story, she says it's sad and asks if he ran out of air. The narrator claims he ran out of sky.

Answer: A bug

Francis Kay dreams of being an insect. As a schoolboy who faced bullying kids, he found his pride in a world of bugs, particularly by eating them in front of large groups of schoolmates. One day as a teenager, Francis wakes up to discover that he is, in fact, a large insect. When his dad comes home and checks on him, he makes his new appearance known and heads out the front door. He learns that he requires unorthodox diet and that he has the ability to fly but he questions whether or not he can survive unseen as a giant bug.

Returning home, Francis sneaks into the kitchen to find food on the table but his father and step-mother are asleep in the next room. He's unable to resist and both of them wake up; his father brandishes a shotgun. Francis doesn't realize what he's doing but he kills both of them without really meaning to, at least not at first. He eats his father's body, satiating himself before heading on his way.

Francis sneaks into the cellar of his high school and, when classes begin, he attacks the students (including his best friend). The army is called and they arrive as Francis begins to fly away, emitting a piercing locust scream.

Answer: Abraham Van Helsing

Maximilian (Max) Van Helsing searches for his brother, Rudy, during a game of hide and seek. A local woman tells him to head home before dark and he does; his father, Abraham, is given a lie about where Rudy is-- Max says he's cleaning spilled flour-- and he heads inside to practice his English. When Rudy arrives home after dark, during an unsafe time, Abraham beats him as punishment.

Sneaking into their father's study on another occasion, Max asks Rudy if he believes in vampires when they find nine-inch wooden stakes concealed in the room. Rudy doesn't believe, he says, and Max find a picture containing his mother's image under a chair. When he pulls the picture out of the frame, another photo is underneath, one of a woman tied to a bed. A doctor holds a hatchet from outside the shot. Both Max and Rudy are caught by their father who, surprisingly, delays their scolding. He tells them that their neighbour is dead.

The next day, Abraham brings his boys into the basement to show them the body of their neighbour who has been transformed into a vampire. To show them his craft, he forces Max to drive the stake into her heart, which he does, and Rudy to decapitate the body. When Rudy refuses, Abraham takes Max upstairs and locks Rudy in the basement until get does his deed. Abraham doesn't think twice. He turns on his father with the stake and mallet, carrying on the tradition of his vampire hunting lineage.

Answer: Baseball

Young Homer watches the baseball game from home. His father is one of the team owners and his temper is getting him in trouble. When a bad call is supposedly made, he makes a fool of himself on live television. The family is unimpressed and unsurprised; this happens often enough. Homer attends sessions with a psychiatrist who believes that his neuroses are being blown out of proportion. Homer won't eat foods unless they're inspected; he won't touch tin foil; he doesn't like VCRs; the list goes on.

Despite the flaws, Homer loves his father because he can deal with his problems. Once, at a hotel, his father dealt with a grating, headache-inducing air conditioner by jokingly stuffing their ears with cotton balls. Homer's Aunt Mandy isn't as good at dealing with his problems. Once, on a trip to Lincoln Street, Mandy took Homer on a picnic and he stumbled upon a dead body hidden in a pile of leaves. Mandy denied that the body was dead and, in fear, Homer fled the scene.

The next month, Homer's family takes a tour of a boarding school for special needs children although his father isn't too pleased. At the park, Homer's father sends him on a scavenger hunt and muses that the park is certainly a better place than at home. Homer agrees.

Answer: Al

Finney watches as an overweight man struggles to load groceries into his car. When he offers to help, the man, Al, tells him that he's a childrens' clown before spraying him in the eyes with a canister of painful foam. Al stuffs Finney into the trunk of his car and brings him home, hiding him in the basement and assuring him that everything will be alright.

In his dark prison, Finney finds an old, black phone on a table but Al tells him it doesn't work and never has. He also says that he won't make him do anything he won't like and that the room has been soundproofed. No one will hear him. This doesn't stop Finney from trying to be heard. While exploring the room a bit later, Finney believes he hears the phone ringing, but no one is on the other end.

A couple days later, Al's brother, Frank, discovers Finney in the basement. The rescue is short-lived when Al hits Frank in the head with a hatchet, causing them both to tumble down the stair. Finney takes the opportunity to defeat his captor, hitting Al in the face with the black phone receiver and strangling him with the cord. This time, the phone begins to ring.

Answer: Video store

Working at a video store, Wyatt makes fun of his co-worker Kensington's new tongue piercing, a cosmetic addition she made for a new boyfriend from the local carnival. When he pushes things too far and Kensington goes to tattle on him, he heads out on a smoke break. He remembers his high school and his past job cutting local lawns; most specifically he recalls his issues with illiteracy in class. His boss fires him for 'repeated incidents' culminating with his threatening remarks towards Kensington. He heads home through the nearby forest and comes across a familiar car, that of a mother and her two sons. He'd cut their lawn years before.

When Wyatt approaches the car, the woman behind the wheel is holding her eldest son and a large gash can be seen on his neck. She worries that the man who made the cut is nearby and she asks Wyatt to help her. He tries to find a cell phone on the ground but to no avail. She exits the car and he notices a knife. When he attempts to run for help he trips over his shoelace and she attacks him, swiping at his face with her sharp nails. He's able to bring her to the ground and incapacitate her. When he checks on the boy in the front seat he tries to compress the wound with some sort of material, finally settling on his vest.

His only chance, Wyatt decides, is to find help. Running out to the road, he sees a state trooper car in the distance and a dark figure standing at the front bumper. He begins to cry for help.

Answer: Alaska

When Eric was seven he took his brother Nicky's mask of The Streak and climbed a tree with it, wearing his trusty cape. Nicky tried to get him to come down, insulting him for making fun of him, but Eric didn't return tot he ground until the branches of the dead elm tree snapped. Something odd happened though-- the cape somehow kept him afloat, suspended in the tree, until the pin holding it together ripped through and he fell to the ground. Nicky tried to jump down a staircase with the same cape but it didn't quite work. Their mother burnt it the next week.

Eric met Angie, his brother's prospective girlfriend, when they were teenagers and they hit it off, moving in together after high school and beginning their lives. Eric slowly fell into alcoholism, however; she left when he started urging her to pack up her life and move to Alaska to live in isolation. He moved in with his mother shortly after, living in her basement. One day, while collecting linens for his bed, he was shocked to discover his old cape as he began to levitate over the ground.

Getting used to the ability to fly, Eric decides to float over to Angie's house and he surprises her in her room. He takes her for a test flight, whisking her into the sky. She speaks to him as though he could be a superhero, just like he and his brother read about in comic books. When he and his brother played superheroes, however, he was always the bad guy. Ascending into the sky, he asks her who she was speaking to on the phone before his arrival before dropping her to the ground below.

Answer: Silence

A family of three (a mother, father, and son) arrive at a 'Museum of Silence' curated by Alinger, a man who has spent many decades collecting the last breaths of many deceased people. The breaths are kept in hermetically-sealed containers with 'deathoscopes' attached to the sides. These deathoscopes allow the listener to tune in to the particular sounds (or lack thereof) in the final human breath. Amongst the collection are the last breaths of Edgar Allan Poe and Roald Dahl.

When the mother of the family decides to listen to the final breath of a burn victim she expresses discomfort and an urge to leave. Her husband and son both wish to stay and listen, however, as they find it interesting. Her son finds particular interest in the aspirator used to collect the breaths. When she leaves, she carelessly walks into the middle of the road, getting struck by a car. The father asks Alinger to help her, what with his medical background, but he takes his time. The son hands Alinger his bag, suggesting that he may need something inside.

Answer: Phantom forests

This story, the shortest in the collection, seems to be a musing about the possibility of plants becoming that which haunts. In the past, when forests have been cut down in the United States, some seem to have lingered. One, which was built over by a tea house and lodge, was reported to have cold spots where large trees once stood; one of the bedrooms bleeds sap during certain times of year.

Another in Pennsylvania seems to show phantom trees in swimming pools and rooms-- even a local mall somehow manages to attract flora and fauna alike. One has to wonder: can a once-living tree haunt the land on which it was once sustained?

Answer: Gage

Killian and Gage traveled, homeless, through the United States, jumping from boxcar to boxcar and trying to avoid trouble. One month during a colder season, the two of them stopped off in Lima where they were found by a security guard. The man hit Gage in the back of the head with his billy club but Killian stuck with him. Over the next few days, Gage started seeing doubles; then he started falling down; soon he was dead.

Other homeless people considered that the guard was named Lima Slim, a man known for being one of the roughest, most dangerous guards in the area. Fearing another guard named Arnold Choke at the next stop down the line, Killian jumps at a switch and finds himself near a house by a tree marked with a deep charcoal X. The woman inside makes him toast and eggs and switches his shoes, advising him to continue onward because Arnold Choke is quite harmless. She decides to give him a new pair of shoes, belonging to her late husband, as well as a shirt and pants. She also gives him directions to the nearest, safest town before he heads on his way.

In the yard, Killian comes across the widow's daughters playing at a mock-funeral. They ask if he'll join them and he hesitates to do so. Unflinchingly, they suggest that he's completely suited to play their dead body, especially considering the source of his outfit.

Answer: George Romero

Dressed as a zombie and prepared for a movie shoot, Bobby Conroy runs into an old high school friend, Harriet Rutherford, proving their history by recalling an obscene poem. The two of them start to catch up and Bobby doesn't note his fond thoughts about her, especially when her son, also named Bobby, appears. It turns out she married a man named Dean.

George Romero steps up to announce the start of the shoot and before the cameras start rolling, Harriet invites Bobby to lunch with Dean. This goes well; Dean seems to be easy to get to laugh, even despite Bobby's self-deprecating humour. When they return to the set, Bobby expresses his disappointment in meeting Dean and Harriet claims she likes his patience. She notes how she always liked Bobby and even wrote to him, but he stopped responding.

Romero asks the two of them to be in a shot together and Tom Savini rigs them with squibs for the shot. When the cameras start to role, both Harriet and Bobby perform the stunt, ending up on the same mattress. He wonders if perhaps there's a chance that things could work out for them in the future.

Answer: The Playing Card People

Jack and his parents drive out to Big Cat Lake to their grandfather's old cabin. After their grandfather passed away months earlier, the house fell into disrepair; the trip is a chance to get the house appraised. Arriving at the cabin in the dark, the family heads inside to find the main room littered with masks and mirrors. Jack is a bit frightened by this unique decor and questions the purpose of both elements, but his parents brush it off. That night, Jack believes he sees a figure standing outside.

Jack wakes up in his parents' bed in the morning not knowing how he got there. While his mother makes breakfast she says that the family actually refers to the cabin as the Masquerade House and that he needs to wear a mask, otherwise, a race of evil beings known as the Playing-Card People will come for him. He shrugs this off, but considers a mask.

His mother sends him into the woods to collect firewood and he finds a clearing containing a lean-to; two people are inside. They urge him to stay to play a game of Cold Hands, a simple poker game with very few apparent rules. Jack gets the winning hand and he's able to ask both of them a question-- he realizes that to get back to the cabin he just needs to take the path closest to the 'Anywhere' sign and he realizes that he doesn't really know the two people he's with. He's given his hand and told to leave

When he arrives back at the cabin, a Jaguar has parked itself in the driveway. His dad sits inside while his mother deals with the appraiser. His mother hands him his father's mask and tells him to wear it while the appraiser claims that everything in the house is hers and it's up for grabs. Jack sees her reflection in one of the mirrors and she's wearing a painted-on outfit-- she's the Queen of Spades. Jack and his mother leave with their things and she tells him to pretend that his father ever existed. By the time they're on the road, surprisingly, he can't remember a thing about him. She suggests that he hold onto the cards he's been dealt and he decides to continue wearing his father's mask.

Answer: A cardboard box fort

Nolan's brother, Morris, went missing and he didn't expect to see him again. Born with several mental conditions, he was diagnosed with juvenile schizophrenia at 11 and many other syndromes as time passed. At a young age, however, Morris had an unnatural affinity for constructing things, first out of Dixie cups and Legos, and later out of cardboard boxes, carpet, and other materials, even making cities, structures, and landmarks out of materials in the basement of their house.

One day, returning home from school, Nolan found Norris on the basement steps, frightened about not being able to get out of his new project. He said he heard a voice telling him to come to the window, and outside he'd see sunflowers. He thought he saw them, but got too scared. When the family searched the basement, they didn't find anyone there.

At school, Nolan started hanging around with Eddie Prior, a charismatic troublemaker in the same grade. When he brought him to check out the basement fort, Morris had created a cardboard octopus with several tunnels snaking from a giant central room. Heading inside, the boys seemed to experience different things despite crawling through the same boxes. Morris recommends that they take the same route out.

After Nolan and Eddie are responsible for a horrible accident on the highway, they talked about it in front of Morris, who informed them that he would be starting a newer, more elaborate structure. The next few days were difficult for everyone as they couldn't quite forget about what had happened. Nolan found Morris in his room and while Morris said he'd build his new structure to make him feel better, Nolan claimed that nothing would really help.

The next time Eddie showed up, Morris invited him into the basement to check out his new fort, a marvelously-painted, expansive creation. When Eddie went inside it seemed like he couldn't hear Nolan behind him. He kept going until it seemed he'd disappeared completely. When Eddie couldn't be heard any longer, Morris began to dismantle his creation. Eddie was never seen again.

Many years later, when Eddie and Morris both moved out of their parents' house, got jobs, and started their lives, Morris was found one morning in his apartment having constructed a new structure out of billowing, white sheets. One route, he claimed, led him to a vineyard, sealed off by a window. He was voluntarily committed to a mental health center three days later.

While Nolan was visiting one month, Morris brought up the box forts, asking if he thinks he killed Eddie. This was the last time Nolan saw Morris. While cleaning out his things, a guard showed Nolan a fort Morris made in the basement of the hospital. Nolan, worriedly, suggested that it be destroyed.