by Ruby Jean Jensen
1987, Zebra
Little kid Brian loses his dog in the spooky abandoned nursing home which was also an asylum for the criminally insane. He and his friends find half of a chain letter, see a spooky derelict, and one of them, Shelly, vanishes. The other friend, Abby, sends the chain letter to an older boy she likes. He throws the letter away and ends up driving over a cliff. Abby and Brian make a half assed effort to figure out the chain letter's curse while members of the town are haunted by visions of the missing dog and child. Abby pushes another girl off a cliff and lures Brian to the nursing home. Something happens off-page and Abby drowns in a deep pool of water, the end.
In an epilogue it's explained that Shelly and the dog drowned in the pool, one that search parties somehow missed. Brian's older brother finds the other half of the chain letter, which reveals that sending the chain letter sells your soul to Satan.
I usually don't like to get hung up over the rules, but here being around the letter may or may not result in you mysteriously drowning, sending the letter turns you into a homicidal maniac, throwing the letter away gets you killed, burning it summons a mysterious figure, and holding on to the letter indefinitely has no discernable effect.
The ghosts, spooky bearded man, and haunted asylum don't figure into anything. The chain letter barely does, claiming exactly one victim. While Jensen didn't follow the expected cliché of the chain letter claiming a series of victims, she only replaced it with an ounce of evil child towards the end, spending more time on Brian's dad having an affair with Shelly's mom.
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