This is a weird stream of consciousness thing that is both me critically reflecting on Ghostbusters in 2023, and also sort of reinventing it with a proposed infomercial. Why this all rushed into my head this afternoon I’ll never know.

“Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters” is a catchy lyric and a fun in-universe slogan for the freelance ghost catchers, but it’s also a truncated set-up and punchline. “Uh oh I have [crazy problem x]! I know, I’ll call [crazy problem x]busters!” It’s a goof on what crazy times we live in, and how New York City really is the city that has EVERYTHING. As time goes on, the problems of the world get stranger and more unpredictable–new problems mean new solutions that can be sold for a premium… enter the Ghostbusters. 

I started playing around with the set-up and punchline of Ghostbusters. Movies and TV shows about exorcisms and spiritual combat with the supernatural have been consistently HOT for the last 10 or 15 years. The Conjuring and Insidious movie series both come to mind. Even still, nobody else besides the Ghostbusters are out there doing Secular Humanist ghost removal. What if you’re not Catholic? What if it turns out that there aren’t as many rabbis trained to fight dybbuks as the movies would have you think? What if an exorcism is just too damned expensive? 

Who ya gonna call?  Ghostbusters!

But maybe you’re still not convinced. Maybe you can afford the fancy Roman Catholic Exorcism deluxe package with all the trimmings.  But please know, the majority of exorcisms end with the possessed dying of dehydration after days or weeks of what is essentially torture. And it doesn’t matter how many tarps you put down, that room will NEVER smell the same again. Grandma’s possessed by Xlliczik the Heretical Serpent of Cosmic Malignance and you’re pretty sure she voted for Trump twice, but that doesn’t mean you want to KILL her! …and permanently ruin your guest room.

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!

So what do the Ghostbusters do differently? They trade in science, not superstition! Their patented Ghost Grabber™ energy lasso system safely, quickly, and cleanly guides unwanted apparitions out of your home and into the Ghostbusters’ patented Ghost Trap™ portable containment unit. Kids, it’s like a spooky PokeBall! And it’s up to the Ghostbusters to catch ‘em all when you call! 

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!

But what if you or a loved one is possessed by a screaming, 6-headed Victorian child with teeth for eyes and eyes for teeth? Ghostbusters can solve that with science too, thanks to our new Ectoplasmic Therapy Treatment. Postively-charged psychomagnatheric ectoplasm safely and painlessly encourages the devil, demon or faerie to release its victim, allowing us to then capture the entity with our Ghost Grabbers [this should be accompanied by a corny animated graphic showing the pleasant corporate version of hosing someone down with psychically-charged ghost goo, forcing a little devil to pop out of the person being hosed down]. Ectoplasm or “slime” is safe and easy to clean up, since it simultaneously somehow exists as both a viscous liquid and a harmless (SPECIFICALLY NOT ODOR-LESS LOL) smoke-like gas. Ghostbusters guarantees that every canister of Ectoplasm is 100% positively charged, thanks to a powerful, proprietary system that combines cutting edge parapsychological methods with feel-good dance hits of the 70s, Mister Rogers reruns, and aromas such as fresh-cut grass and homemade chocolate chip cookies. 

Smash cut to an unconscious-looking man slumped in the corner of his destroyed living room, in the center of a massive wall-to-wall-to-floor-to-ceiling splatter of swirling, thick, multicolored, translucent, smoking slime. He suddenly (jump-scaringly) snaps awake and gives a thumbs-up with alarming but seemingly genuine joy and enthusiasm. “Thanks Ghostbusters! I feel great! …Better than I’ve ever felt in my life, actually! …I love y–”

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!

Did you know that the Ghosbusters patented Ghost Grabber energy lasso system works on MOST supernatural entities? That’s right, the Ghostbusters can handle a lot more than Casper and his shitty freeloading friends! Thanks to our safe, reliable particle accelerators, neutrona wands and muon cannons, we can easily wrangle:

• Ghouls
• Goblins
• Golems (also Constructs and Homunculi) 
• Great Old Ones
• Not-so-Great Old Ones
• Gods
• Gozerians
• Gremlins
• Graboids
• Spooks
• Specters
• Shades
• Slimers
• Sprites
• Skinwalkers
• Zombies (Certified for both Graveyard and Voodoo varieties)
• Zuuls
• Imps
• Banshees
• Yokai
• Kaiju (premium pricing applies, limited availability)
• Demons
• Animated Skeletons
• Orbs
• Pixies
• Disembodied Voices, Heartbeats, etc.
• Lycanthropes and other sundry were-persons
• Ogres (Certified for all layer densities)
• Poltergeists
• Poultrygeists
• You but from a different dimension/timeline
• Leprechauns 
• Cryptids
• Cryptkids
• Cryptkeepers
• Devils (Includes Jersey subspecies)
• Liches (get stitches)
• Fiends
• Extraterrestrials
• Phantoms
• Phantasms
• Nosferatu
• Yesferatree
• Incubi, Sucubi, Whateverthefucubi
• Apparitions
• Doppelgangers 
• Revenants
• Fierce Critters
• Flat Woods Monsters
• Mothpersons 
• Chupacabras
• That Son of a Bitch Sasquatch 
• Dybbuks
• Domovois
• Tulpas
• Pah-Wraiths
• Space Ghosts (available on East and West coasts)
• Astral Projections
• Elves
• Bugbears
• Jackalopes
• Time Travelers
• Trolls
• Wights 
• Blights
• Deadites
• Cenobites
• Chimeras
• Mummies
• Angels
• Vampires
• Hobgoblins
• ERIC
• Will o’ the Wisps
• Won’t o’ the Wusps
• Wendigos
• Witches
• Wizards
• Warlocks
• Warios
• Slendermen
• UFOs
• Atlanteans
• The Loch Ness Monster (try us you little fuck)

(this list would scroll by WAY too fast, naturally)

If you got it, we’ll get it! Our staff is uniquely qualified to assess and identify whatever being or beings are hiding your keys and whispering your name to you in your dead uncle’s voice when you’re alone in the dark.

“With both kids in sports after school and my husband working nights, the last thing I had time for was a basement full of gnomes! They seem cute until your wallet “magically disappears” one day and any time you ask them if they know anything about it they turn invisible. I know I didn’t order 3 dozen little pointy hats.” 

A happy, cleancut, generic Ghostbuster hands the lady her wallet and holds up a smoking, shaking trap. “Worry ‘gnome’ more! We’ll put these little guys away where they can’t cause any more trouble.”

The Ecto Containment Unit is a clean, sustainable, humane way to house the various entities captured by the Ghostbusters. “Those gnomes thought they were tough stuff in your laundry room, but they’ll cool their heels in the Ecto Containment Unit. It generates and maintains a self-contained pocket dimension capable of binding the space-time psychopatterns of corporeal and non-corporeal supernatural beings.”

[Cheesy graphic/computer animation of three gnomes being locked up in an old timey jail, sharing a cell with a mind-breakingly terrifying entity, maybe the frowny demon from the earlier Slime animatic or maybe just a jumble of eyes, teeth and fingers]

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters! We’re ready to believe you!

I wanted to fit in a warning-label type gag about how Ghostbusters strongly urges you not to think about the Slime while receiving Ectoplasmic Therapy Treatment, because the Slime is so empathetic and mood-sensitive that you might make it upset. And if it gets upset to the point of becoming negatively charged, it can start spawning/attracting/summoning the ghosts of serial killers and evil gods and stuff. I think they’d blaze through this super fast in audio-only, like in medicine commercials when they blast through all the horrifying side effects before you can process what they said.

For some reason Ghostbusters shit-talking exorcisms and trying to sell themselves as a safe, secular, science-based alternative popped into my head and struck me as weird and funny. I liked the idea of bringing Ghostbusters more in line with the satire of Robocop crossed with the sincere lunacy and uncomfortable weirdness of I Think You Should Leave. Tim Robinson has a lot of “frequent customer of the Ghostbusters” energy IMO. Some of the stuff I wrote I could practically hear in the cadence of schlubby 80’s Bill Murray, which IMO is much different from post-2000s “cool guy” Bill Murray.

It’s also fun to think of a Ghostbusters organization that includes some of the strange, slime-heavy shenanigans of GBII and the Video Game. GBII revolves around mood slime and the Game came up with really cool ways to incorporate slime blowers with the proton pack, including a fast, seemingly harmless way to undo possession–blast ‘em with happy slime! I also pulled some ideas from the animated show and tabletop RPG from back in the day. Even in the ‘84 movie they’re dealing with beings way beyond simple ghosts, so it makes sense to me that they’d be sort of a catch-all “weird shit patrol.” I always thought of them as that anyway.

Instead of doing the Star Wars/Halloween “legacy sequel” stuff, Ghostbusters IMO could stay fresh and relevant by focusing on the thesis-joke of the original movie (instead of the admittedly wonderful minutia): we live in a crazy world with crazy problems, so damn it we need crazy solutions! And hopefully the jokers selling us this shit are on the up and up!

Who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters!