Before the Ghostbusters
Ray went to Camp Waconda as a boy, where roasting Stay Puft Marshmallows by the fire became one of his fondest memories, a detail that would later matter a great deal. He worked in the private sector at one point but was not suited to producing the results expected of him. By 1984 his parents had died and he had inherited his childhood home. He took a research post at Columbia University, studying paranormal phenomena alongside Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler. Ray and Egon were usually the first to interview case subjects, however far-fetched the stories. Ray held firm to a personal paranormal experience of his own, an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration, and brought it up at every opportunity. Before the team had any equipment, he and Egon investigated the Farview State Hospital in Pennsylvania and confirmed it was haunted; Ray pocketed a human pinkie from the site.
Ghostbusters (1984)
Ray, Peter, and Egon were called to investigate a free-floating apparition at the New York Public Library. Their first attempt at contact ended with Ray shouting "Get her!" and all three fleeing as the ghost transformed. The experience cost them their university grant, and at Peter's urging Ray agreed to go into business. He took out a heavy mortgage against his house to provide the starting capital, found Hook and Ladder No. 8 and was instantly sold on it, and turned up with a battered Cadillac hearse that became Ecto-1.
The Ghostbusters' first real job was the Sedgewick Hotel, where Ray was the first of them to encounter Slimer. He came around a corner while smoking, faced the ghost alone, and fired. After a destructive chase the team trapped Slimer in the ballroom, the first successful field use of their equipment. Ray demonstrated the Containment Unit to the team's new hire, Winston Zeddemore, and grew increasingly worried as Egon's data pointed to a coming surge of psychokinetic energy. He described the situation with a Twinkie analogy: "a P.K.E. surge of incredible and even dangerous proportions."
He and Egon traced the trouble to Dana Barrett's apartment building at 550 Central Park West, whose architect Ivo Shandor had built it as a superconductive antenna to draw in spiritual turbulence and open a door for Gozer. When the team finally faced Gozer atop the building, Ray addressed the entity as a "duly designated representative" of the city and ordered it to return to its dimension. Asked by Gozer whether he was a god, he answered "No," and the team was blasted off the roof. When they regrouped, Winston's instruction was plain: if someone asks you if you are a god, you say yes.
Told to choose the form of the Destructor, Ray tried to empty his mind, but the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from his Camp Waconda childhood slipped in. The team beat Gozer by crossing their proton streams across the gate, against Egon's earlier warning that doing so could be fatal.
Between the films
The collateral damage from the Gozer incident left the Ghostbusters buried under lawsuits from nearly every city and county agency, and a judicial restraining order put them out of business. Egon went to work at an institute studying whether human emotion affected the physical environment, a theory he and Ray had developed. Ray opened his own shop, Ray's Occult Books, and on the side he and Winston worked children's parties in their old uniforms. He was also invited to document one of Madame Malveaux's seances and confirmed her clairvoyant powers were genuine.1
Ghostbusters II
By 1989 Ray and Winston were reduced to performing at birthday parties to jeering children. When Dana's son Oscar was menaced by a runaway baby carriage, Egon brought Ray in to help, and the trio examined the child and took readings on First Avenue, where Ray was lowered into the abandoned pneumatic transit tunnels and discovered the River of Slime. His sample-taking accidentally knocked out power across the city and got the team arrested again.
At their trial the judge inadvertently energized a sample of the psychoreactive slime and conjured the Scoleri Brothers, two executed murderers he had sentenced; the Ghostbusters were freed to capture them and were back in business. Ray and Egon discovered the slime, which they dubbed psychomagnotheric, reacted to emotion and could be positively charged, demonstrated by making a toaster dance. The slime trail led to a painting of Vigo the Carpathian at the Manhattan Museum of Art. Vigo entranced Ray more than once. On New Year's Eve the team used positively charged slime to animate the Statue of Liberty and crack the slime shell around the museum. During the final confrontation Vigo possessed Ray outright, transforming him into a demonic form, until Winston doused him with positive slime and broke the hold.2
Between Ghostbusters II and Afterlife
Ray quit smoking in the 1990s, which Peter remained proud of for decades. As ghost activity dwindled and cases dried up, Egon became obsessed with an apocalyptic event he believed was coming and eventually left, taking Ecto-1, his proton pack, the traps, and a quantity of fuel isotope. That crippled the team, and the loss of the firehouse finished it. Ray went back to running his bookstore; Winston went into finance and covered the rent. About ten years on, Egon phoned Ray from a small town in Oklahoma raving about a "rising storm" and a coming "psychic tornado," and Ray, unable to believe him, turned him away. He later admitted Egon's behavior had frightened him. At some point Ray had a quote of Revelation 6:12 tattooed on his left arm.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
In 2021 Ray took a phone call at the bookstore from Phoebe Spengler, calling from jail in Summerville, who told him Egon had died. The conversation drew out the whole story of the team's collapse and Ray's estrangement from his old friend. Ray reunited with Peter and Winston and drove out to Oklahoma, where they joined the fight at the Spengler farmhouse just as Gozer reappeared. This time, when Gozer asked Ray whether he was a god, he answered "Yes." Egon's ghost manifested to help his grandchildren, the team trapped Gozer, Zuul, and Vinz Clortho, and Ray apologized to Egon for not having believed him before Egon peacefully moved on. Ray also turned out to be the sole subscriber to Podcast's show, "Mystical Tales of the Unknown Universe," and thought it found its voice in the 46th episode.
After Summerville, Ray quietly smuggled some Mini-Pufts back to New York and kept them in the basement of the bookstore.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
Podcast became Ray's producer and intern, renting the bookstore basement and helping him run an online show, "Repossessed," in which everyday objects were judged haunted or ordinary, the ordinary ones destroyed on camera. Ray bought any genuinely haunted items and donated them to the Paranormal Research Center for extraction. One purchase from Nadeem Razmaadi turned out to be the Orb of Garraka, a brass relic imprisoning the ancient entity Garraka.
Ray, banned from the New York Public Library for reasons left unexplained, returned anyway with Phoebe and Podcast to consult a researcher there about the orb's chant. He was arrested again, and afterward Winston pleaded with him to slow down and enjoy his golden years; Ray insisted he already was, doing what he loved. He coached Nadeem, the last of the Fire Masters, into using his pyrokinetic gift, citing legends from the Burning Bush to the hearth-god Sambō-Kōjin. When Garraka froze the firehouse and emptied the Containment Unit, Ray ran the unit in reverse, neutralizing its mass-energy density to force it to re-prime and pull Garraka back in, sealing the breach. He also admitted, to the team's frustration, that he had thought about what it would be like to be a ghost every day of his life.
Comics: Back in Town and Dead Man's Chest
Dark Horse's Back in Town and Dead Man's Chest continue Ray's story alongside the recent films. In Back in Town he helps Phoebe trace a green "super slime" back to the Vigo affair, recognizes Madame Malveaux as the thwarted clairvoyant behind a new threat, and confirms that the original psychomagnotheric slime vanished along with the supernatural activity after Vigo's defeat. In Dead Man's Chest he researches the pirate Captain Kidd with Phoebe and a new recruit, operates a Drone Trap to capture Kidd at his old Manhattan home, and concludes from the experience that he is in no hurry to get on a boat.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game
In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, set after the two original films, Ray is one of the senior team members, voiced by Dan Aykroyd. He is the same wide-eyed enthusiast, repeatedly asking the new recruit to collect samples and take readings, and is the most vocally supportive of the Rookie. The mortgage on the firehouse is in his name, and when Stay Puft once again menaces New York he is quick to insist, "It wasn't me this time." He is also shown to be a capable navigator, piloting the team's boat, Marine Ecto-8.
IDW comics
The long-running IDW comic series follows on from the first two films and develops Ray's backstory at length. He met Peter and Egon at Columbia in the 1970s, where the three enrolled in the school's experimental parapsychology doctorate program; Ray earned a PhD in parapsychology and co-built much of the team's equipment with Egon, starting with the P.K.E. Meter while both were still in graduate school.3456 His undersea sponge migration is shown as a genuine deep-sea expedition he tracked and recorded.47 The series also reveals that Ray's long interest in operating an occult reference library, shaped in part by conversations with a journalist researching the team's early years, eventually crystallized into Ray's Occult Books.
The series sends Ray through one extraordinary scrape after another: displaced to Arthurian England where he fought dragons with a steam-powered pack and befriended King Arthur, kidnapped into a demon's worship, lost in the Collectors' Limbo, and repeatedly thrown into trances and possessions by Gozer during the Tiamat crisis. The crossover with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles teams him with Donatello on dimensional engineering and with Raphael during a multiverse-hopping chase, and he also crosses paths with the Transformers, helping the Autobot Ectotron and battling the entity Kremzeek. Across these stories he carries a long romance with Jenny Moran, who is killed and becomes a ghost herself, and he keeps inventing gear, from a Ghost Gun built "because he thought it'd be cool" to a Psychokinetic Defibrillator for safely exorcising possessions.89 He also developed the Dimensional Inverter with Egon to warn of dimensional breaches.610 During the period when Walter Peck revoked the Ghostbusters' operating permits, Ray spent more time at his bookstore, where Kylie Griffin served as manager.
Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed and Rise of the Ghost Lord
In Spirits Unleashed, Ray, now mostly off the front lines, tracks down and pays a small fortune for a first edition of Tobin's Spirit Guide, mentors a new trainee, and helps free Winston from possession by the entity Nameless using a binding relic. In Rise of the Ghost Lord, he advises and coordinates the San Francisco Ghostbusters by phone, warning them about an "Apocalypse Avoidance Super Surge" and, during a confrontation with Garraka, drawing on the research of an old contact to help extract and contain the entity. In Sanctum of Slime, he pushes the team to hire and train new rookies as supernatural activity rises again.
The Real Ghostbusters and Extreme Ghostbusters
Ray appears throughout the animated continuity, where his deeper treatment lives on the Real Ghostbusters pages and his guest return on the Extreme Ghostbusters ones. He was voiced by Frank Welker, with Pat Fraley standing in for some Extreme Ghostbusters material.
The official series bibles defined Ray in consistent terms across both the network and syndication runs. The Season 1 network bible described him as "the idealist, sincere and totally dedicated to his cause as a Ghostbuster" and "a true ecto-scientist" who approaches every new assignment with "all the zeal of a school kid," able to recite obscure supernatural facts "the way a sports nut reels off baseball statistics."11 The Season 2 network bible (revised for Season 3) sharpened the emphasis: "most enthusiastic and child-like of the bunch. Ray views life through the wide eyes of a kid," an optimist "always finding the good in people, objects or" situations.12 Both bibles credit him with immediately falling in love with the firehouse and convincing the others to buy it, and with bringing home the wreck of a hearse that became Ecto-1.12
The animated Ray is the most childlike of the team: fond of cartoons, toys, and comic books -- the series names "Murray the Mantis" and "Sammy K. Ferrett" among his favorites, and he still sleeps with a Dopey Dog doll -- and physically rounder than his live-action counterpart. He showed mechanical aptitude even as a student, having built a shapechanging car back in shop class. His family hails from Russian immigrants; his Aunt Lois owns the large house his ancestors built in the 1860s, and his cousin Samantha holds the old Peterson family farm. He is given a hometown of Morrisville, where his childhood crush Elaine Fuhrman still lives; the two were reunited when Ray returned to receive honors from the town. Inherited oddities include a Scottish castle and dukedom from his uncle Andrew McMillan and a Queens joke shop from his long-lost Uncle Gaylord. He is the resident mechanic, maintaining Ecto-1 and most often flying the Ecto-2 helicopter, a role he built from a single free flying lesson. He regularly wears work gloves and ecto-goggles in the field. After Andrew McMillan's death, Ray exorcised the castle, converted a village's garbage trucks into ghost traps, and turned the property over to the town. Ray is also the one who chose to keep Slimer as a team mascot and gave the ghost his name, reportedly "just to annoy Peter." In the spinoff Slimer!, he remains Slimer's closest friend.
Extreme Ghostbusters brings Ray back for the two-part premiere "Back in the Saddle." After the team disbanded he had done pyrokinesis research at a university in Idaho until a mishap became a major explosion and cost him the job, leaving him a used-car sales manager at Perpetual Motors, deep in debt. He wears Egon's old uniform through the episodes and proves his knowledge of the supernatural is still sharp, earning the respect of the new recruits.
Personality
Ray's devotion to the work is plain: he mortgaged his inherited family home to start the company, took on most of the repair and modification of Ecto-1 himself, and still ran into a banned library at retirement age rather than stay home. He is generally the most optimistic and enthusiastic of the team, the one who exclaims "That's great! Actual physical contact!" after Peter is slimed, though flashes of cynicism surface now and then, as with his "ungrateful little yuppie larva" line in Ghostbusters II. The official RGB series bibles summed up the trait that persists across every continuity: Ray finds the enterprise "most thrilling" of all the team, and his enthusiasm "spills over into everything he does."11
He is not conventionally religious but seems to believe in a spiritual realm and is broadly read in occult and folklore subjects well beyond his formal training. He has memorized a verse from Revelation 6:12 and had it tattooed on his arm. He thinks about what it would be like to be a ghost every single day and is happy to say so.
Casting and design
Dan Aykroyd, who has a documented interest in the paranormal and the occult, contributed directly to the design of the proton pack, ghost trap, and other equipment, and to much of Ray's technical dialogue in later films.13 His hands-on involvement with the franchise's hardware means the character's scientific credibility traces partly to Aykroyd himself rather than solely to the screenwriting. Harold Ramis described Ray and Aykroyd alike as "honest, straight-ahead, enthusiastic," noting the value of having a "nuts and bolts" mechanic on the team.14
Ray's seduction dream in the first film was originally shot as a real assignment at Fort Detmerring before being re-edited into a dream sequence; Aykroyd was filmed driving the hearse off the private property before authorities arrived.
Because of a scheduling conflict, Aykroyd could not play the scenes of Ray possessed by Vigo. Creature-shop crew member Howie Weed, a large man already on set, volunteered for the makeup, saving the production from bringing in another actor for fittings.15
For Frozen Empire, costume designer Alexis Forte aged and distressed a denim jacket so it would look like Ray had worn it for years, a callback to his first-film look.16 Ray's line about quitting smoking in the 1990s was a deliberate nod to the heavy smoking in the original film.17
Frank Welker voiced the character across The Real Ghostbusters and most of Extreme Ghostbusters. The series bibles gave the animation team a precise brief: they were to model the animated Ray on the film's character but lean into the "child-like" and "idealist" qualities as a defining trait rather than a secondary one, separating him clearly from Peter (the cynic) and Egon (the detached scientist).1112
Ray Stantz is among the most replicated Ghostbusters at GBFans.com. His flight suit, which Aykroyd wore across all four films and which shows progressive weathering with each appearance, is one of the most closely studied costumes in the forums. As the character credited within the story with assembling and maintaining Ecto-1 and co-designing the core equipment, Ray sits at the center of the prop documentation that defines GBFans.com's technical community: the proton pack, ghost trap, and P.K.E. Meter pages all trace their in-universe design lineage to Ray and Egon. Dan Aykroyd's public appearances, interviews, and franchise commentary are followed closely by the community as a primary source for production history.
Quotes
"Say goodnight, fellas, 'cause the REAL Ghostbusters are here to stay."
"Of course you forget, Peter. I was present at an undersea, unexplained mass sponge migration."
"Symmetrical book stacking. Just like the Philadelphia mass turbulence of 1947."
"Ready... Get ready... GET HER!"
"Well, this is great. If the ionization-rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities, we can really bust some heads... in a spiritual sense, of course."
"You've never been out of college! You don't know what it's like out there! I've worked in the private sector. They expect results."
"My parents left me that house! I was born there!"
"Hey! Does this pole still work?!"
"Wow. This place is great. When can we move in? You gotta try this pole. I'm gonna get my stuff. Hey. We should stay here. Tonight. Sleep here. You know, to try it out."
"Everybody can relax, I found the car. Needs some suspension work and shocks. Brakes, brake pads, lining, steering box, transmission, rear-end."
"Uhhh... this magnificent feast here represents the last of the petty cash."
"Don't look directly into the trap!"
"This is where we store all the vapors and entities and slimers that we trap. It's simple really. Loaded trap here...open and unlock the system...insert the trap...release...close and lock the system...set your entry grid...neutronize your field...and the light is green, the trap is clean. The ghost is incarcerated here in our custom-made storage facility."
"Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here."
"As a duly-designated representative of the City, County, and State of New York, I order you to cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or the nearest convenient parallel dimension."
"I tried to think of the most harmless thing. Something I loved from my childhood. Something that could never ever possibly destroy us. Mr. Stay Puft!"
"Listen! Do you smell something?"
Trivia
- In the film novelization, Ray was raised on Long Island by a doctor father and a homemaker mother and has an estranged older brother, Carl, described as the macho type with two boys in military school, and a younger sister, Jean, who is bisexual and has a daughter; his father willed him the house in part because Peter had once seduced Ray's sister at a family reunion. The same book has Ray's parents die in a plane crash, after which Egon kept insisting they might still be alive in the Bermuda Triangle until Ray finally punched him.18
- Several unmade sequel scripts featured a Stantz relative as a new Ghostbuster: the 1997 Hellbent treatment introduced Ray's nephew Frank, written with Chris Farley in mind, and the later Alive Again drafts introduced Ray's son Dean.19
- In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Ray has a voicemail from the public library noting his overdue books and a fine of $417.42.20
- The "I looked at the trap, Ray" moment and the eight takes it took to film the team silently voting Ray down the manhole in Ghostbusters II are both well documented.21
- Ray's Revelation quote in the first film is off by a chapter from the verse he intends. He also mentions playing "Ghosts and Gargoyles" in seminary, a detail that places him in a broadly religious educational setting despite his otherwise secular demeanor.
- Dan Aykroyd made a cameo appearance as a mustachioed Ray Stantz in the 1995 live-action Casper film. He was defeated by Casper's uncles and fled; this portrayal is generally not considered part of the canonical Ghostbusters continuity.
- Ray's favorite foods, as established in the films, appear to be Chinese, Greek, and Chicago-style pizza. He finds Thai food too spicy.
References
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Ghostbusters: Back in Town Issue #3 (Dark Horse Comics, 2024) (Comic p.14). Ray Stantz: "Her clairvoyant powers were real. I witnessed them firsthand when I was invited to document one of her seances."
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Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). Ghostbusters Revisited, Cinefex magazine #40, page 45. Cinefex, USA. Tim Lawrence: "Howie Weed wore the makeup for scenes of Vigo transformed within the painting and for a subsequent scene when Ray becomes entranced by Vigo and momentarily turns into a demon before his friends restore him with a blast of positive slime."
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Ray Stantz, Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary: Ghostbusters (IDW Publishing, 2019) (Comic p.6). Ray Stantz: "Don't you remember Professor Tonick's Esoteric Literature Class Freshman Year?"
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IDW Publishing, Ghostbusters Year One Issue #2 (2020).
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Ray Stantz, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #1 (IDW Publishing, 2017) (Comic p.9). Ray Stantz: "You know you remind me a little of my nephew. Heart on his sleeve, but so worried about so much he just sounded angry all the time."
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IDW Publishing, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters Issue #1 (2014).
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Winston Zeddemore, Ghostbusters Year One Issue #1 (IDW Publishing, 2020) (Comic p.3). Winston Zeddemore: "I'm honestly a little surprised there's still any interest in the story after all those talk shows Pete and Ray did, but, hey."
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Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters: Infestation Issue #1 (IDW Publishing, 2011) (Comic p.3). Peter: "And let's not forget your last set of calculations almost sank Coney Island!"
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Peter Venkman, Ghostbusters: Infestation Issue #2 (IDW Publishing, 2011) (Comic p.7). Peter: "Oh, please. You built it because you thought it'd be cool."
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Egon Spengler, Ghostbusters International Issue #7 (IDW Publishing, 2016) (Comic p.17). Egon Spengler: "Going over the data from recent encounters resulted in an epiphany in regards to Ray's Psychokinetic Defibrillator."
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Spook Central, "The Real Ghostbusters: Series Bible (Network, Season 1)" (February 18, 1986); "The Real Ghostbusters: Series Bible (Syndication)" (February 20, 1986). Character descriptions for Ray Stantz.
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Spook Central, "The Real Ghostbusters: Series Bible (Network, Season 2, Revised for Season 3)" (March 7, 1988). Character description for Ray Stantz.
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Den of Geek, "Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Jason Reitman Finally Addresses the Biggest Spoilers in the Movie" (November 22, 2021). Jason Reitman: "Particularly the dialogue for his character. When he's talking to Phoebe on the phone and he starts talking about the fuel isotopes and things like that, this is just stuff that only Dan can come up with."
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Shay, Don (November 1985). Making Ghostbusters, p. 9. New York Zoetrope, New York NY USA, ISBN 0918432685. Harold Ramis: "Then it's always useful to have a mechanic, a nuts and bolts person, honest, straight-ahead, enthusiastic. And that really worked for Dan."
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Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters The Ultimate Visual History. Insight Editions, San Rafael CA USA. ISBN 9781608875108.
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Spook Central, "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire Production Notes" (March 22, 2024). Alexis Forte: "Dan had the fitting and loved it, and then we took it away and aged it so it looked like he'd had it for years. We gave it some stains and sanded down the corduroy."
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Variety, "How 'Ghostbusters: Afterlife' Pays Homage to the Original With Audio Easter Eggs" (November 24, 2021). Will Files: "We took the sound when Dan Aykroyd slides down the pole at the beginning of 'Ghostbusters.' We just stole it from the original and we put it into Phoebe's scene."
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Mueller, Richard (August 1985). Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular. Tor Books, New York NY USA. ISBN 0812585984.
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Greene, James, Jr. (2022). A Convenient Parallel Dimension: How Ghostbusters Slimed Us Forever. Lyons Press, Essex CT USA. ISBN 9781493048243.
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Mr. Spektor, Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Realistic Versions), Firehouse 2nd Floor Answering Machine Message 4 of 13 (2009) (PC/PS3/Xbox 360). Terminal Reality. "Mr. Stantz still has a number of books checked out that are overdue. The current fine is $417.42."
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Goldstein, Patrick (June 1, 1989). "Return of the Money Making Slime," Rolling Stone #553, page 54. Wenner Media LLC, New York NY USA. "On the eighth take, they're completely in sync. Who'll hit the sewers tonight? Ramis looks at Murray. Murray eyes Ramis. Then they both slowly swivel their heads, staring at Aykroyd."
