Production details
The production number was 140-502. The episode is number 124 in broadcast order and number 116 in DVD order. The voice cast recorded the episode on April 4, 1990.32 Storyboards were handled by Kazumi Fukushima, Will Meugniot, Steve Moore, Brad Rader, Vince Waller, and Stan Phillips, with revised boards dated March 22, 1990 and the final version dated March 30, 1990.4
Regular voice cast included Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, and Kath Soucie. Guest voices were Marilyn Lightstone, John Stephenson, and Josh Keaton.
Straczynski described the episode as a tribute to horror writers Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson, both of whom he name-checked in his own writing guide years later.5 The title and premise riff on Jackson's 1959 novel "The Haunting of Hill House" and Richard Matheson's 1971 novel "Hell House."
Plot
A fifth-grade class tours the Firehouse and runs wild. Only Peter Venkman and Slimer are around to greet them, as the other Ghostbusters are giving a lecture and Janine Melnitz has the day off. While Slimer keeps most of the class occupied, two skeptical boys poke through the clutter on Peter's desk and find a snow globe. Peter tells them it is a souvenir from one of the team's most dangerous cases, and the story flashes back.
One Thursday night, a man named Jeffers Marston visits the Firehouse with an offer: Heck House. Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler recognize the name immediately and try to leave. For fifty years no one had stayed the night there and survived, and Ray recalls one of his paranormal-studies professors from Columbia University who stayed half the night and was left a drooling wreck. Peter cuts in with a joke about Elvis Presley before Jeffers can finish his pitch. Jeffers explains the terms: one million dollars to anyone who can last from dusk to dawn without a Proton Pack. The offer comes from the will of the late E. Henry Merriweather, a wealthy former adventurer in the supernatural who left the money to the Ghostbusters as a final challenge. Jeffers Marston served as executor of that will.
Peter talks the team into going, and each starts dreaming of what to buy: Winston Zeddemore a quantum chain for Ecto-1, Peter a Porsche, Ray an osmotic processor. Egon still refuses but comes along. The moment they enter, Jeffers asks how long ago sundown was, learns it was two minutes earlier, and bolts for his car.
Inside, the house turns on them. A chandelier nearly drops on the group in the foyer. Ray dodges a haunted light switch and a bed that tries to eat him. Winston's room is arranged upside down. In the library, Peter teases Egon about their first case at the New York Public Library, where books flew off the shelves, then leaves him alone; a book starts to slide out at Egon, who warns it not to even try, and it slips back into place.
Slimer is dragged through a hidden passage and chased by dancing skeletons, a demonic horseman, a giant black cat, and a pack of spectral dogs before clawing his way back. Peter pauses to tell Slimer about the first time he went camping with his father, where he learned there is nothing in life too big to handle. Reunited over sandwiches, Egon announces that Heck House holds 2,436 ghosts, far more than the most haunted house on record, the Crowley House in London, with 25. Ray points out that only about a dozen people ever lived there, so the count makes no sense. The team returns to the foyer to find every exit bricked up; a brick Peter knocks loose simply slides back into the wall.
The lights cut out and Ray and Winston vanish. Slimer is pinned by a living chair. Winston is invited to join a hunt by several Dark Knights, declines, and steals one of their horses. When Peter asks why he knows how to ride, Winston admits he wanted a horse at age twelve but his mother said no because they lived in an apartment. Ray lands among Sheet Ghosts, tricks them into a dryer, and gets wrapped up by a towel dispenser. In the library Egon finally works out the truth. Peter knocks a knight from his horse, catches up to Winston, and the two ride at a landscape painting and bail at the last second; the pursuing knights leap into the painting and vanish. Peter, spotting Ray stumbling in, mistakes him for a ghost; Winston spots the Ghostbusters shoulder patch in time. Peter refers to Slimer as "Lassie" as the dog-like ghost helps reunite the group.
Egon reveals the answer: Merriweather, the man behind the house, wanted to build the most haunted house in the world, so he filled the library with 2,436 books and cast a spell that brought every story to life. The ghosts are the books. Egon's plan is to rewire the house into one giant Ghost Trap using a device he calls a P.K.E. Inverter. As ghosts march on the library, Ray and Egon finish the device, throw the switch, and the team escapes through a weakened wall as Heck House collapses, taking all 2,436 ghosts down with it.
Their celebration is cut short when Jeffers declares they violated the terms by leaving five minutes before dawn, so they get nothing. Peter takes a souvenir anyway, having the rubble of Heck House pressed into a paperweight, with all 2,436 ghosts still trapped inside. That paperweight is the snow globe from the framing scene. Back in the present, the two skeptical boys are spooked by the shadow of a dragon ghost and run out of the office.
Ghosts and one-off entities
Heck House is a purpose-built haunted house constructed by Jonas Heck (referred to as Joshua Heck once in the episode). Heck traveled the world studying magic, returned to the United States, built the house, stocked its library with 2,436 books of ghost stories, and cast a spell to bring every story to life. The spell also prevented the resulting ghosts from leaving the house. Over fifty years the location killed or drove insane every paranormal investigator who entered. After the events of the episode, the collapsed house is compressed into a paperweight.
The 2,436 Ghosts of Heck House are the episode's main antagonists. They are not traditional spirits but rather living stories, each conjured from one of the 2,436 books in Heck House's library. Known manifestations include animated skeletons, Dark Knights on horseback, a giant black cat, a painting ghost that shifts the canvas into a trap, a sentient chair, Sheet Ghosts in the laundry room, a demonic horseman, spectral dogs, and a dragon ghost that haunts the framing scene. The voices were split across the regular and guest cast.
Jeffers Marston is the executor of E. Henry Merriweather's estate, voiced by John Stephenson. He presents the challenge at the Firehouse, drives the team to Heck House, abandons them at the two-minute mark after sundown, and returns before dawn only to disqualify them on a technicality.
Fifth Grade Visitors are a class on a Firehouse field trip who serve as the audience for Peter's flashback narration. Two boys in particular find the snow globe and remain skeptical until the dragon ghost's shadow chases them out of the office. The first kid was voiced by Joshua Wiener; the second by Kath Soucie.
Trivia and references
Egon mentions Gozer and other past cases while refusing to go. When Peter reminds Egon of the first library case, he hopes the Heck House spirits never saw "the movie made about all that," a recurring nod to the idea that the original Ghostbusters film exists within The Real Ghostbusters continuity, a joke first floated in "Take Two."
The episode is dense with horror references. Egon rattles off authors whose works fill the library: Poe, Jackson, Matheson, Howard, Machen, Le Fanu, Lovecraft, and Bloch (Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, Robert E. Howard, Arthur Machen, Sheridan Le Fanu, H.P. Lovecraft, and Robert Bloch). The rival haunted houses Egon cites also carry nods: the Whateley House in Arkham points to Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror," the Crowley House to occultist Aleister Crowley, and the Vincent Mansion likely to horror actor Vincent Price.
The house's builder is named Jonas Heck in most references, though the episode itself calls him Joshua Heck in one line, creating a minor internal inconsistency. The name is possibly an inside reference to the DC Comics character Jonah Hex.
Peter's line, "I'm here to kick ectoplasm and chew bubble gum, and I'm fresh out of bubble gum," is a family-friendly take on a line from the 1988 film "They Live." The episode also nods to the 1940 film "The Ghost Breakers," including the opening lightning and the premise of a house no one can survive a night in.
Two of the Spectral Dogs seen near the end of the episode are the same character designs used in "Janine, You've Changed."
Egon mentions during the episode that he has some medical training, though mostly limited to first aid. Winston's horseback-riding skill is explained in a throwaway line: he wanted a horse at age twelve but his mother refused because they lived in an apartment. Peter calls Slimer "Lassie" when the ghost acts as a scout.
In the episode order, "Heck House" follows "Ghostworld" by air date (and "Russian About" in DVD order) and precedes "Mean Green Teen Machine."
References
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 36. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1990). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "The Haunting of Heck House" (1990).
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 36. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Rader, Brad (2009). The Real Ghostbusters, "The Haunting of Heck House" (1990) (Storyboards p. 1). CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Straczynski, J. Michael (1996). The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, p. 227. Writer's Digest Books, Cincinnati OH USA, ISBN 0898795125. The line reads: "The following is excerpted from 'The Haunting of Heck House,' a tribute to the work of Shirley Jackson and Richard Matheson that I wrote for The Real Ghostbusters."
