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Ghost Trap
11 min read
The Ghost Trap, also called simply the Trap or the Muon Trap, is the device the Ghostbusters use to capture a wrangled ghost and hold it for temporary storage. A ghost pinned by Proton Stream fire is drawn into the Trap through a vortex that opens from its doors, then sealed inside until the contents can be emptied into the Containment Unit back at the Firehouse. The Trap has been part of the team's kit across both original films, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, as well as the comics and games.
A piece of ghostbusting equipment almost as important as the proton pack in the Ghostbusters universe, the ghost trap was used for detaining and transporting "busted" ghosts. Believed by some to entrap the ghost with a laser containment field, precisely how the trap works was never fully explained in the films.
The classic operating drill the team teaches is three steps: zap them (wrangle the ghost with a proton stream), trap them (open the Trap under the ghost), and store them (carry the full Trap to the Containment Unit).
The ghost traps were worn on the Ghostbusters' belts via a custom belt attachment, and each included a pedal for opening the trap remotely while a ghost was held in the proton pack's containment stream.
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The Trap's first on-screen use came during the Sedgewick Hotel job in 1984, when the team cornered Slimer in a ballroom. Ray Stantz slid a Trap across the floor while Peter Venkman and Egon Spengler held the ghost in their streams. Ray warned the others not to look directly into the Trap, stomped the foot pedal, and a bright vortex pulled Slimer in. Egon admitted he had looked into it, but suffered no ill effects. Once sealed, the Trap beeped, a red light blinked, and Ray carried it outside as it smoked.
However, it is more likely that looking directly into the trap will blind you, not steal your soul. In Ghostbusters it was simply that Egon was not close enough to be blinded by the trap, but was clearly bothered by looking into the Ghost Trap.
As cases piled up, the team accumulated full, smoking Traps. After Winston Zeddemore was hired, Ray handed him two of them on his first day, then demonstrated how to empty a Trap into the Containment Unit in the basement: unlock and open the system, dock the Trap, set the entry grid, and neutronize the field until the indicator switched from red to green.
Ghostbusters II
In 1989, the team trapped the Scoleri Brothers in a single Trap. To catch the Jogger Ghost in Central Park, a Trap was buried in the ground along his running route and triggered remotely from a park bench as he passed over it, capturing him without a proton stream. In the courtroom scene, all three Ghostbusters look away when the trap is opened. During the montage when Peter opens the trap he has his eyes closed, evidenced when he says, "bye-bye." Ray was not affected by the opening trap because he was wearing the Ecto-Goggles. Returning from cases, Janine Melnitz was again handed smoking, occupied Traps to her annoyance.
Although the traps look similar in both Ghostbusters 1 and 2, there are subtle differences in several details as well as overall shape. Most noticeable is the colour of the tubes on the left side of the trap. These were red in GB1 and silver in GB2. It is believed the smaller size of the trap in Ghostbusters 2 was because the actors complained about the weight of the traps. Like the proton pack, the ghost trap has been exhibited by Planet Hollywood.
In the Braxtan fanfilm, Return of the Ghostbusters, Ray's comment about not looking at the trap is expanded upon, with the characters describing how the soul can be pulled through the eyes into a trap, subsequently being stored like a ghost.
After Ghostbusters II
Sometime after the Vigo incident, Egon became fixated on stopping an apocalypse and left New York with most of the team's gear, including all of the Traps. He buried over a hundred of them in a dirt field outside his farmhouse in Summerville and rigged them to be powered in a single burst by three silo capacitors, intending to capture Gozer with the array.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife
In summer 2021, Egon captured Vinz Clortho in a Trap and fled the Shandor Mining Company site, but his truck was attacked and flipped. He made it back to the farmhouse, set up his capacitor-powered Trap field, and tried to spring it on Zuul, only for the capacitors to die out. He hid the loaded Trap in a secret compartment in his study floor and passed away soon after. His granddaughter Phoebe Spengler, guided by Egon's ghost, later found the puzzle in the floor and recovered the Trap.
Science teacher Gary Grooberson, a Ghostbusters obsessive, recognized the device as a real Ghost Trap and tried to open it using jumper cables from a school bus. After several attempts the Trap flashed open and released the spectral form of Vinz Clortho. Phoebe and Podcast later used the Trap on the ghost Muncher in the Summerville Foundry, but it landed upside down and he escaped, prompting Podcast to discover a modified mobile version built into Ecto-1, the Remote Trap Vehicle, which finally caught Muncher.
In the finale, Phoebe held the Trap out to bait Gozer onto the buried Trap field. The first attempt failed when Gozer broke the Trap apart by hand, freeing Zuul. During the final battle, Egon's grandson Trevor used the Ecto-1 gunner seat to shoot the three capacitors, powering the field of Traps in front of the farmhouse. The array activated and captured Gozer, Zuul, Vinz Clortho, the ghost wisps, and the Psychokinetic Atmospheric Influence at once.
Ghostbusters: Back in Town
In the Dark Horse comic Ghostbusters: Back in Town, the Remote Trap Vehicle was used against Madame Malveaux during a Times Square battle, after Phoebe dropped a positively charged Psychomagnotheric Slime crystal inside it and the trap cone was temporarily modified. In the six months that followed, Phoebe designed and built an aerial drone to carry a Trap, the Drone Trap, refining it in the field.
Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire
In summer 2024, Callie Spengler operated the Drone Trap to capture the Sewer Dragon after it flew out of the Remote Trap Vehicle's range. The Ghostbusters Engineer Corps used Traps as part of their Ionic Separator, depositing the extracted ghosts into the new Containment Unit. Trevor also tried, and failed, to lure Slimer out of his trash nest in the Firehouse attic onto a Trap using Cheetos.
Design and operation
Once a Trap captures a ghost and closes, it cannot be reopened without releasing what is inside, so the team carries several Traps in cases on each job and empties them afterward. The Trap is built as a sealed container that lets the team safely transport spirits to the Containment Unit, where they are released into the grid and stored indefinitely. Proton Packs are normally used to position a ghost first, though predictable targets like the Jogger Ghost could be caught simply by placing a Trap on their path and opening it at the right moment.
The "don't look in the Trap" warning is a running motif. Ray gives it on the first case, and both Egon (1984) and Peter (1989) ignore it without consequence.
In the comics and games the device picks up extra detail. In the IDW comics, a captured ghost's psychokinetic energy is compressed and rendered inert inside the Trap. A Trap can only render a finite amount of spectral matter inert; if the energy drawn in exceeds its safe capacity, the entity can fight containment or force its way out. A sample of a captured ghost can be drawn from a Trap for study. In Ghostbusters: The Video Game, the Trap looks the same but works differently: instead of a foot pedal, it emits a red beacon, and the player must use a capture stream to force the ghost into the cone it projects.
Across the comics and games
In the IDW comics, Winston used a Trap to make a capture for the first time at the end of his first bust near the Washington Square Arch, with Egon shouting the "don't look in the Trap" warning a beat too late. The comics push the Trap's limits repeatedly: several Traps were melted by the Megaspook as it escaped, five were needed to hold Rodefhiri, and a single Trap could not contain one of the Collectors for long.
During an encounter with Chi-You at Madison Square Garden, the team learned he could not be trapped until the tethers to his thralls were severed. Tiamat was eventually wrangled and sealed in a normal Trap, and Winston suggested leaving her in a limbo dimension rather than depositing her in the Containment Unit. Jillian Holtzmann modified several manual-release Traps to open wirelessly, tied to her Upper Arm Remote Trigger, and used them to ambush the Moby Dick Ghost at Woodlawn Cemetery. The first-hand experience of being trapped was described by the ghost of Jenny Moran, who likened it to being put under full anesthesia, quick and painless, with no ill aftereffects.1
To deposit ghosts more directly, Egon and Donatello combined the team's portal technology with the Traps to create the Trap-Gate. Modified Trap-Gates were later fitted atop Traps, though each Trap held only enough power for a single use. When the Transformer Ectotron shot a Trap and released Starscream in Prospect Park, the team began modifying Traps to better handle electrostatic discharge; Egon warned against bypassing the Trap's Cobbler Switch.
In Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, the Traps appear without a cord, suggesting some form of remote operation, and a junior team uses them only after a controlling entity has been weakened.
The Real Ghostbusters version
The Traps in The Real Ghostbusters animated series looked like the film prop but behaved differently. They could pull a ghost in the entire time the doors were open, not only as the Trap closed, and were shown capturing multiple ghosts at once, a capability later carried into Ghostbusters II.
The ghost trap in the cartoon functioned similarly to the one in the movie, albeit with slight changes. The trap could now capture more than one entity at a time. Whenever two or more ghosts were captured in the same trap, their molecules would merge, combining them into one entity. It is suggested that opening the trap would allow both entities to un-bind and escape, but this has never been explored. Also, the blinking indicator light is now the front bar graph as opposed to the small red light in the back.
A separate animated invention, the Ghost Trap built by Professor Dweeb in the spin-off series Slimer!, resembled a high-tech mousetrap. Dweeb tried to use it on Slimer while posing as a physician, but the trap activated prematurely and clamped down on Dweeb himself.
Mattel's first 1:1 replica of the ghost trap was released in October 2011. Announced at the 2011 San Diego Comic Con, the trap includes numerous features that mimic the actual ghost trap from the movies, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game. The trap has two different types of modes; during "movie" mode, the trap "shakes" to simulate as if a ghost has been captured inside. Also includes both red and silver interchangeable side power bars to easily switch between "Ghostbusters" and "Ghostbusters II."
The prop replica also comes attached with the pedal that is fully functional alongside the trap.
Props and development
For filming, the production utilized hero, stunt, and smoking traps. The hero traps were designed to be cosmetically appealing (including a removable trap "cartridge" and rolling wheels), while the stunt traps were made for action sequences. The smoking traps included strips of fabric along the sides to which an SFX smoking liquid was applied, giving the appearance of a recently-trapped spook.
For the 1984 film, special effects supervisor Chuck Gaspar built four working Traps, each measuring 6 by 8 by 14 inches and complete with electrical wiring, a hydraulic foot pedal, and a Futaba remote-control box that opened and closed the doors. These working props were kept operational by the prop department through both films.2 The smoke seen pouring off a full Trap came from fabric strips soaked in a smoke-generating liquid.3
For Ghostbusters II, Industrial Light and Magic expanded the animation of ghosts being drawn in, having them come apart with comets and lightning inside the trap cone. Mike Lessa devised a staggered effect in which the Scoleri Brother Nunzio went in head first, leaving his shoes behind for a second, and on Dennis Muren's suggestion Tony Scoleri left his eyeballs behind for an instant, to suggest the Trap was literally pulling the ghosts apart.4 A smoking-effect Trap prop for the sequel measured roughly 20 by 6 by 6 inches and was lighter than the first-film props.5
A Trap prop used in both original films later sold at auction for $327,600 in March 2025.6
The prop seen in Ghostbusters: Afterlife was fabricated by Studio Art and Technology.7 The roughly one hundred Traps buried in the Summerville field were Spirit Halloween brand Ghost Traps rather than hero props.
Ghostbusters 101 class notes, IDW Comics, "Ghostbusters 101" #2 (2017), p. 24. ↩
Hake's Auction #225, Part 2, "Ghostbusters / Ghostbusters II Ghost Trap Film Prop." Accompanying letter and item description note four working "ghost catching traps" designed by the prop department, manufactured by Chuck Gaspar, measuring 6 by 8 by 14 inches with electrical wiring, a hydraulic foot pedal, and a remote-control box. ↩
Wallace, Daniel (2015). Ghostbusters: The Ultimate Visual History, p. 57. Insight Editions, San Rafael, CA, ISBN 9781608875108. ↩
Eisenberg, Adam (November 1989). "Ghostbusters Revisited," Cinefex magazine #40, p. 20. Quoting Tom Bertino on the ILM trap-cone animation and the Lessa/Muren staggered effects. ↩
Prop Store, Lot #135, "Ghostbusters II (1989) SFX Smoking Ghost Trap," auction dated May 25, 2022. Dimensions listed as 20 by 6 by 6 inches. ↩
Variety, "Chewbacca's Bowcaster From 'Star Wars' Sells for $768,000, 'Ghostbusters' Ghost Trap Fetches $327K" (March 31, 2025). The Ghostbusters ghost catcher and pedal sold for $327,600. ↩
Inguanzo, Ozzy (2021). Ghostbusters: Afterlife, The Art and Making of the Movie, p. 72. Titan Books, London, ISBN 1789096529. ↩
