Voice cast
The regular cast includes Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman, Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler, Frank Welker as Ray Stantz and Slimer, Arsenio Hall as Winston Zeddemore, and Laura Summer as Janine Melnitz. Jodi Carlisle guest stars as Alice Derleth. Arsenio Hall also voiced the library security guard.3
Plot
Near closing time at the New York Public Library, Professor Ted Klein frets over having the Necronomicon on public display, while Clark Ashton, a library official, assures him the book is safe. After Ashton locks the exhibit room, an intruder breaks in from outside. A security guard discovers the book gone and faints at the sight of a creature.
The next morning the Ghostbusters read in the Sunday paper that the library plans to exhibit the Necronomicon through the week. Egon explains it is the single most powerful book of spells ever written, and Ray adds that its copyright page alone must carry a P.K.E. valence of 9.9. Peter is more interested in his date, Candy, but Egon takes a call from the library and cuts the introductions short: he believes a Class 7 corporeal entity is responsible for the theft.
At the library, the visibly terrified Klein pleads with the team while Ashton waves the incident off as a ransom scheme. Egon's P.K.E. Meter confirms a high paranormal reading. Outside, Egon warns that the stolen book is the only English translation of the Necronomicon, and if its spells are read aloud the results would be catastrophic; the spells act as sonic keys that open portals to the dimensions where the Old Ones wait to take over Earth. He notes that Cathulhu makes Gozer look like Little Mary Sunshine. The team descends into a sewer manhole.
The Ghostbusters are quickly surrounded by Spawn of Cathulhu, which regenerate the body parts the proton streams blow off. Ray fires into the water to make a steam screen and the team escapes, Peter losing a boot in the process. Back at the firehouse, Ray confirms the creatures are Spawn of Cathulhu and explains that the stars must be in a certain alignment for Cathulhu to rise from the ocean floor. Peter correctly guesses the stars are aligned that very night.
Egon proposes consulting Alice Derleth of Miskatonic University about the Cult of Cathulhu. Ray and Winston research the Book of Dzyan and the Pnakotic Manuscripts while Egon and Peter fly to Arkham, Massachusetts. Alice insists on returning to New York with them. The group raids a cult meeting beneath Wagner's Occult Shop in Greenwich Village, but the cult leader summons a Shuggoth that seizes them all. Alice turns the creature to stone with a spell.
Out of leads, Ray suggests visiting an old acquaintance with a collection of pulp magazines. After hours of searching, Alice finds the issue of Weird Tales that explains how Cathulhu was once beaten. By Egon's calculations the cult will summon the creature at Coney Island, the southern tip of Brooklyn. Car trouble (Peter never rotated Ecto-1's tires and there are no spares) forces the team onto the subway, and they arrive too late. The cult raises Cathulhu, and neither full proton streams nor Alice's spell have any effect.
The Weird Tales story notes that Cathulhu was once lured to an electric plant and blasted with a massive jolt of electricity. Egon adapts the idea using the Cyclone roller coaster at Astroland: if they ionize the ride's metal superstructure, they can draw a lightning bolt. Peter rides the coaster to lure Cathulhu in, then drops to safety as the team electrifies the track. A lightning strike reduces Cathulhu to a red vapor that drifts into the sky. As the enraged cult moves to attack, the police arrive and Winston unmasks the leader: it is Clark Ashton.
Back at the firehouse, Alice offers to return the Necronomicon to Miskatonic University. Peter persuades her to stay a few days, and she promptly proposes outings to see the Eltdown Shards at the Natural History Museum and a lecture on the Zanthu Tablets at Columbia.
Lovecraft references
The episode is built almost entirely from names and concepts drawn from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Several characters are named after real Mythos authors: Clark Ashton (Clark Ashton Smith), Ted Klein (T.E.D. Klein), Alice Derleth (publisher and contributor August Derleth), Mr. Howard (Robert E. Howard), and Wagner's Occult Shop (Karl Edward Wagner). Miskatonic University and the town of Arkham are recurring Lovecraft settings, and the Necronomicon, the Old Ones, the Pnakotic Manuscripts, the Book of Dzyan, Shoggoths (here "Shuggoth"), and Weird Tales magazine all originate in or around the Mythos. The fictional grimoire "Mystery of the Worm," attributed to the alchemist Ludwig Prinn, is also referenced.4
Clark Ashton's tirade as the police haul him away echoes Lovecraft's short story "The Call of Cthulhu," from which the episode takes its title. Alice's incantation "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die" is the famous couplet Lovecraft attributed to the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred, here quoted via "The Nameless City." The separate spell Alice attempts against the fully risen Cathulhu includes the name "Nodens," an Elder God who appears across several Lovecraft works.
Production notes
Writer Michael Reaves spelled the monster's name "Cathulhu" rather than "Cthulhu" on purpose. According to story editor Steve Perry, Reaves believed Lovecraft's work might still be under copyright and changed the spelling to avoid any legal action against DIC.5 The episode call sheet still listed the original title as "The Collect Call of Cthulhu," and the episode was recorded on July 30, 1986.2
A number of script details were trimmed or altered before broadcast. Slimer was originally meant to swoop in and eat Peter's breakfast roll, and an exchange in which Peter referenced the Library Ghost from the first film as Ecto-1 left for the library was cut.6 In the script Ray declared the stars aligned every 600 years rather than the 60 years stated on screen, and a scene in which Alice translated "Mystery of the Worm" from Latin was dropped.7 The opening shot focusing on the library's lion statue mirrors the opening of the 1984 film.
Several throwaway details enrich the characters. When Ashton floats the ransom theory at the library, Peter invokes the Lindbergh kidnapping as a frame of reference. Janine is seen reading a book titled "Changing Your Job" when she answers the library's call. Peter reveals he has an Uncle Alf, who once advised him to open a hardware business. On the subway to Coney Island a fellow passenger tells Peter he would have taken him for an astronaut, which echoes the Sedgewick Hotel scene in the 1984 film where a guest mistakes Venkman for a cosmonaut. Winston explicitly regrets answering the Ghostbusters' newspaper ad from the events of the first film.
The episode is packed with additional throwaway jokes and pop-culture nods: Peter compares Cathulhu to "Godzilla wearing an octopus hat," calls Miskatonic "Frankenstein's alma mater," likens the roller-coaster fall to an old Disneyland E-ticket ride, and references horror writer Stephen King when the team arrives at Mr. Howard's address. Ray reveals he used to borrow books from the pulp collector Mr. Howard as a child. The cult meets in the basement of an occult bookshop, a detail that foreshadows Ray Stantz operating his own occult bookshop in Ghostbusters II. The spell Alice uses to petrify the Shuggoth, "Duppira al-kushni, askupati ani kalatum," was reused from the Dungeons & Dragons episode "Day of the Dungeon Master," also written by Reaves. Slimer does not appear in the finished episode.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 14. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "The Collect Call of Cathulhu" (1986).
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Marsha Goodman (2009). The Real Ghostbusters, "The Collect Call of Cathulhu" commentary. Time Life Entertainment.
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Reaves, Michael (2009). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Volume Two Disc Five, p. 16. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Benjamin, Troy & Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, p. 204. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR, USA, ISBN 9781506749273. Steve Perry: "I thought the misspelling was just a typo when I saw it on air, but Reaves told me he thought Lovecraft's work may still have been under copyright."
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Reaves, Michael (2009). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Volume Two Disc Five, p. 3. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Reaves, Michael (2009). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection Volume Two Disc Five, pp. 15-16. CPT Holdings, Inc.
