Plot
While dining at an Italian restaurant, Jon and his fiancee Olivia Stewart spot the Ghostbusters chasing a pack of ghosts outside. The chase spills into the restaurant through the kitchen. Jon wants to hire the team to deal with a ghost at the family mansion and grabs a business card, but Olivia insists on handling the ghost of her Uncle Horace herself. One of the ghosts the Ghostbusters failed to catch, a creature later called the Sprite, hitches a ride on the couple's car back to the house.
At the Stewart Mansion in Glen Cove, Horace's ghost wanders the halls searching for something he cannot remember, unaware that he is dead. Jon and Olivia dress in sheets and chains to scare him off, but Horace finds the dropped business card and calls the Ghostbusters himself to get rid of what he takes for intruders. Janine Melnitz takes the call, and the exhausted team only agrees to the job once she mentions the Stewart name and old money.
When the team arrives they blast Horace, then stop when he explains that he is the one who hired them, which is also how he learns he is a ghost. Egon Spengler picks up a second presence on the PKE Meter: the Sprite, which has been defacing portraits and breaking windows. After the Sprite snatches Olivia and dances with her in midair, Egon swings from a chandelier to rescue her and the team traps the ghost. With the haunting over, Horace finally remembers that what he was looking for was not an object but a chance to say goodbye to his niece. He tells Olivia he loves her and disperses peacefully. Olivia and Jon decide to keep the mansion and raise their family there rather than sell it.
Cast and characters
The regular Ghostbusters appear in their animated forms: Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, and Janine Melnitz. Slimer does not appear.
The guest characters are introduced only in this episode: Uncle Horace, the deceased uncle whose ghost lingers; Olivia Stewart, his niece and heir; her fiance Jon; and the Sprite, a childlike prankster ghost that serves as the episode's real menace.
The regular voice cast is credited as Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, and Laura Summer, with Julie Miller listed as a guest voice.1 LaMarche based Uncle Horace's voice and look on the comedian Ed Wynn.
Equipment and locations
The team uses the standard kit: Proton Pack, particle thrower, Ghost Trap, PKE Meter, and Ecto-1. Action moves between the team's firehouse, the Italian restaurant, and the Stewart Mansion, a residence in Glen Cove on the north shore of Long Island.
Production
The episode call sheet and SAG report list production number 76022.1 The same paperwork records recording sessions on September 12, 1986 and a second date the wiki dump reads as December 17, 1986 (the report writes 1987, taken as a clerical slip given the September 1986 first session and the October 1987 air date).1 LaMarche is also listed on the call sheet as having voiced Winston in this episode, which contemporaries attributed to actors covering for an absent castmate.1
Trivia
When the Ghostbusters crash into the restaurant, Peter says "I've always wanted to do this" and hurls a plate of pasta at a ghost, echoing his line at the Sedgewick Hotel in the first film, where he pulled a tablecloth instead.
Jon repeatedly misremembers names, calling the team the "Ghost Smashers," which was an early working title for the original Ghostbusters film.
Uncle Horace reads the team's slogan from the business card, with a line about "trolls on the bridge" that points back to the episode Troll Bridge. The card also gives the team's phone number as NO GHOST, or 664-4678. This is the first time that number is stated in the animated series; the 1984 film used 555-2368. The 664-4678 number had earlier appeared as 1-212-NO-GHOST in the 1985 novelization of the film.2
The episode title plays on the song "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf."
Home video
The episode is included on Volume 2, Disc 1 of The Real Ghostbusters DVD collection.3
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Marsha Goodman (1987). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Ghost?"
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Mueller, Richard (August 1985). Ghostbusters: The Supernatural Spectacular, p. 65. Tor Books, New York, NY. ISBN 0812585984.
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 13. CPT Holdings, Inc.
