4 min read
Loathe Thy Neighbor is an episode of The Real Ghostbusters. A ghost is pestering the Micawbs, a family stranger than many of the spirits already locked away in the Containment Unit. The case proves unusually hard for the Ghostbusters, who spend most of it sorting the merely weird from the genuinely paranormal.1
The episode was written by Michael Reaves and first aired on November 7, 1987, during Season 3. It appears on Volume 3, Disc 4 of the boxed DVD collection.
Join the community
Free accounts post in the forum, upload to the gallery, edit the wiki, and follow your favorite franchises. No credit card. No catch.
Loathe Thy Neighbor carries production number 140013.2 The voice session was recorded on June 1, 1987.2 Regular cast for the season included Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, and Arsenio Hall, with guest voices Lewis Arquette, Jane Kean, Anna Mathias, and Scott Menville. Lewis Arquette voiced Bello Micawb in an uncredited cameo.1
A strange family hires the Ghostbusters to get rid of a ghost in their house. When the team arrives, only Ray is eager to explore. Peter presses the doorbell and everyone is startled when it shrieks. A hunchbacked butler, Creegor, answers and invites them in. The maid creeps up behind Egon and frightens him before offering to take the team's coats. Mr. Micawb greets the guys and offers worm wort tea. When he tries to reheat the kettle, it burns a hole through the table and drops through; he then offers warm yak milk, which they decline. Slimer, meanwhile, is spooked by a portrait that changes its appearance.
Lucretia Micawb comes downstairs and explains she is busy with spring cleaning for a family reunion. Her feather duster comes to life and dusts both Egon and Slimer. Their son Thaddeus insists there is no problem at all and introduces his pet dog, Patchwork, whom he built himself. The Micawbs' daughter, Lydia, who looks like an ordinary person unlike the rest of the family, announces she has finished cleaning the northwest wing. Mr. Micawb asks Lydia to show the team around while he explains that the family tried to get rid of the ghost themselves and failed. They have never seen it, only heard it. Because the relatives are due in the morning, the Micawbs ask the team to stay the night, when the ghost is most active. The guys are ready to turn the job down until Micawb says he will pay whatever they charge.
In the ballroom a chandelier comes loose and falls; Peter tackles Egon clear in time. Winston voices his suspicion of Thaddeus. Lydia next leads them to a study holding thousands of old books. Egon confirms rising supernatural activity and readings unlike anything he has seen before. Books begin to levitate and grow mouths lined with sharp teeth. Rather than let Peter open fire, Ray reads a spell aloud from the Golden Grimbor, which returns the books to normal.
The team splits up. A gargoyle attacks Peter, and Winston disintegrates it. Dinner follows, with courses including Spider Hair Fondue and Ancient Tree Mold in a Bat Breath Sauce; Slimer happily eats everyone's portions while Egon keeps some mold for his collection of spores, molds, and fungi. Creegor shows the team to their room, where Thaddeus tries to scare them with a glowing blanket and is sent off with Patchwork, who is chewing on one of Ecto-1's tires.
Ray suggests the entity is not a ghost but a paranatural being, and the team explains the distinction to Peter. They trace the readings to a hidden passage triggered by a whistle, follow it past strange growth, and reach a locked door. Thaddeus stops them and confesses: while trying to build a playmate for Patchwork, he accidentally opened a doorway to another dimension. Tentacles burst through the door and the team fights its way into the room, where the being is nestled in an abyss. It grabs Slimer and then Winston, and the guys blast carefully to free them. Egon points out the being can only absorb so much energy and tells everyone to keep firing at full stream; after a final burst it explodes and vanishes back down the abyss. The team reports the good news as the relatives arrive, and Slimer eats all the hors d'oeuvres.
The Ghostbusters appear with their usual gear, including the Proton Pack, Particle Thrower, Trap, and P.K.E. Meter. The Micawb household and the haunting include Creegor the butler, the maid, Bello and Lucretia Micawb, their children Thaddeus and Lydia, the patchwork dog Patchwork, an animated feather duster, living portraits, a foyer skeleton, living armor, book chompers, a gargoyle, a skeletal vacuum cleaner, and the basement entity. The setting is the Micawb Mansion.
The Micawb family draws on the benign-monster comedy of The Addams Family and The Munsters. Bello and Lucretia resemble Gomez and Morticia Addams, while Lydia, the normal-looking member of the household, fills the same role as Marilyn Munster. The shrieking doorbell echoes the variant sounds used to summon Lurch on The Addams Family.
The episode draws a distinction the show uses elsewhere: a "supernatural being" is something that was once human, such as a ghost, while a "paranatural being" is an alien life form not of our world. For this case the team is hunting a paranatural being, since most of the mansion's oddities are merely supernatural and not the threat the clients are worried about.
Copies of the Golden Grimbor and the out-of-print Nameless Horrors and What To Do About Them appear both in the study and in the room leading to the paranatural being. Janine does not appear, making this the only Season 3 episode without her.
