 The girls are very excited because it s the thousandth birthday of the Castle, which is the home of Cackle s Academy and Amanda Honeydew - one of the pop band, The Spell Girls, and an old girl of Cackle s Academy - is to be the special guest at the celebrations. Special presentations are being organized. Miss Bat is preparing a performance of one the Spell girl songs with Fenella, Griselda, Sybil and Clarice. The second years are planning some dramatic episodes from the Castle s history. But then things go wrong. Sybil, who is meant to be playing the clarinet, loses confidence and walks out on Miss Bat s band. Mildred and her friends are elbowed out of their drama slot by Ethel and Drusilla who want to do the storming of the Castle by Major Barebones in 1644. Mildred and her friends decide to do their own Living Waxwork of Horrors in the dungeons - but then a real horror-story breaks. It transpires that Mr. Hallow, Ethel s father and Chair of the School of Governors, is planning to sell the Castle to Amanda and build an ultra-modern school with the proceeds. Miss Hardbroom resigns in protest, but, after a surprisingly frank and tender meeting with Mildred in the dungeons, Mildred plots and schemes with her friends and her enemies - to put off Amanda and save the old Castle from being turned into a theme park. Sybil has found the confidence to improvise on the clarinet but the words they sing to the Spell Girls  song is designed to unsettle Amanda - and the Living Waxwork in the dungeon is designed to terrify the wits out of her.