ThomasNATION Classic Reviews - Percy's Ghostly Trick
October 10, 2020
As Thomas The Tank Engine himself once said, 'every useful engine has their own story to tell' and the same can easily be applied to everyone within the online fandom as they all come from different tracks of life with my story being quite an interesting one starting back at my cousin's first communion nearly twenty-five years ago and I came across this die-cast model of Duck The Great Western Engine. Being two years old at the time, I had no idea what Thomas The Tank Engine was yet there was something that attracted me to this engine which I couldn't explain...was it the brightly colored paintwork, was it the big smiling face? It wouldn't be until the holiday season of that year when I received my first Thomas Wooden Railway train set and my first two video tapes from the television series that I started to become the fan that you all know today...and seeing as Halloween is right around the corner while we're still celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Thomas The Tank Engine, I thought it'd be fun to take a little trip down memory lane with the first truly spooky episode of the entire series which ended up becoming one of my absolute favorites of all time. So, get ready to cover your eyes and hide under the coach because...every year on the date of the accident, it runs again as a warning to others. Plunging into the gap, shrieking like a lost soul...this is 'Percy's Ghostly Trick'!
PERCY'S GHOSTLY TRICK: Percy pretends to be a ghost and scare Thomas to teach him a lesson for calling him a silly little engine for his ghost story.
In only an intro of twenty-five seconds, what immediately helps 'Percy's Ghostly Trick' stick in the minds of both children and longtime fans of the series is its dark atmosphere: the night sky, the fog effects and the bone-chillingly brilliant music by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell all help this opening as well as the entire episode one of the spookiest episodes that the series has to offer and not to mention the hauntingly echoed voices by George Carlin and Ringo Starr are so frightening whenever they appear during the episode. That being said though, many fans have wondered who this mysterious ghost engine in the opening was ever since the fandom was first formed online with the discovery of an unused face mask that was made for Thomas himself during the classic series which resulted in the writing of an infamous Creepypasta based around 'Timothy The Ghost Train' leading many fans to believe that there was supposedly a deleted prologue to the start of the episode and numerous of adaptations and parodies soon surfaced all over YouTube from a five-minute episode to a nearly two-hour long movie...and while I do applaud the fandom for turning this idea into a fully fledged character much like how the Bronies developed Derpy of My Little Pony after starting out as just a technical glitch into a full fledged character, this has officially been cleared up with the fact that this ghost engine is just Percy covered in streamers with Edward's whistle: while it's lazily designed looking back as an adult, it certainly would do its job for the kids watching this.
We then see that this spooky opening is actually a ghost story that Percy is telling Thomas and Toby at the Ffarquhar Quarry about the ghost train that his driver saw last night of which Thomas of course doesn't believe his friend: now Thomas himself is the one character in the entire episode that many longtime fans are gonna be split on as they get older since obviously he is meant to fill in the role of that one character in any spooky situation that believes there is no such thing as ghosts or monsters...but later on when Toby is telling him about Percy's accident, Thomas being more concerned about his train being late and not of his best friend's well-being seemed kinda out of character for someone like him. It is true that Thomas was arrogant and boastful in this episode but he's usually caring as well when it comes to his friends, here he's straight-up annoyed that Percy had an accident and that he was late...I'm surprised that none of those journalists who think that Sir Topham Hatt is the villain of the series especially when shutting Henry up in the tunnel ever brought this up in their articles bashing Thomas The Tank Engine.
Moving on, it turns out that this ghost train that Percy's driver saw is actually a pretend ghost on television leaving Percy feeling disappointed as we see him later making his way home that evening after his work in the harbor is done where we are treated to the creepy countryside visuals as Percy makes his way towards Crowe's Farm Crossing where a broken cartload of lime lays ahead on the tracks of which Percy unable to stop in time smashes into and covering him in white as he makes his way to the nearest signal box. As I got older, this episode as well as many others within the classic era of 'Thomas & Friends' were ones that I really started to appreciate more with age: as a kid, I never thought twice about the production of the episodes but now that's all I can think about when I watch these because I watch 'Percy's Ghostly Trick' now and just wonder how frustrating it must have been to control the fog effects and light the night scenes just right to give them that haunted spooky feel...it must have been a real pain in the ass. There is something so timeless about episodes like these that modern Thomas just can't replicate...but speaking of Crowe's Farm Crossing, there was actually a deleted scene from this episode showing Terence The Tractor with the broken lime cart in place of the horse that Sam The Farmer rides on in the original Railway Series story which I've seen quite a number of fan remakes of this episode within the community using this deleted scene to its advantage. While it sucks that Terence mostly made cameo appearances during the second season of the series with only one speaking role, just imagine what might have been if he appeared here as originally planned...
But of course, the part that everybody remembers whether children or longtime fans with 'Percy's Ghostly Trick' is the ending where Percy with Toby's help after meeting up with him at the signalbox gets the idea to pretend he's a ghost and scare Thomas who's being oiled up for his evening train at the time. This is where everything that makes this episode so amazing all comes into play at once as Percy's trick is put into motion: the dark atmosphere in the visuals, the bone-chilling music by Mike O'Donnell and Junior Campbell and the hauntingly echoed voices of the narrators as the characters exchange dialogue where I never knew that you could make something as innocent as 'The Three Little Pigs' into a horror story...but then again, Stanley Kubrick's 'The Shining' came out six years before this episode or 'Thomas & Friends' even premiered and that had Jack Nicholson reciting the same exchange before swinging an axe through the door that his wife played by Shelley Duvall was hiding behind while trying to escape her mentally deranged husband before making the iconic quote of 'Here's Johnny' thus I can't really say I'm surprised that Thomas basically decided to do their own take on this iconic moment in film history. After that, the episode ends in the exact way you'd expect it to with Thomas feeling quite shook up from his ghostly encounter that he immediately runs off when he hears Percy's whistle again in the distance the next morning unaware that his best friend is actually fine and feeling none the worse for his adventure since he cannot help but be pleased as Toby remarks that Thomas is acting as if he had seen a ghost before we cut to the closing credits.
While Season 5 of 'Thomas & Friends' is definitely known now for its spooky episodes of which some that are much spookier than this episode, 'Percy's Ghostly Trick' is remembered by so many fans including myself as the spookiest episode of them all when we were little kids before the fifth season of the series was even out...and with this being the featured episode on one of my first and favorite 'Thomas & Friends' video tapes of the television series, this episode obviously became a favorite of mine: it's one of the legendary episodes from the books and one that is definitely a staple to be watched every year when Halloween time rolls around. While I know that this episode has its flaws mostly in regards to Thomas' portrayal in the episode which isn't a problem considering that it was in the original Railway Series story as well, that won't stop me from giving the legendary classic that is 'Percy's Ghostly Trick' a rating of a perfect 5/5.
Final Score: 5/5
About the Author: True Blue
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