Ghostbusters: The Video Game (1991)
The Video Game establishes that the Sedgewick Hotel was founded in 1897 by Godfrey McCallister Sedgewick, a misanthrope turned hotelier. An inordinate number of guests and staff met untimely ends there over the decades, and many remain, drawn to an inexorable force trapping them in the hotel's corridors and suites. The Portrait of G. Sedgewick was commissioned in 1910.
In 1986, the Ghostbusters gave the hotel a clean bill of health. During Thanksgiving weekend in 1991, Slimer returned and numerous entities manifested. Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, and the Rookie pursued Slimer through the twelfth floor before trapping him again in the Alhambra Ballroom. Meanwhile, other ghosts haunted additional floors, and three Stone Gargoyles atop the building animated and attacked the team. After an electrical fire broke out on the third floor, the Paranormal Contracts Oversight Commission sealed off the hotel and cut most of the power.
The team subsequently discovered that the Sedgewick is one of the nodes in Ivo Shandor's Mandala. Returning to shut it down, they encountered the Spider Witch, a professional widow who murdered victims in Room 1221 on the twelfth floor in the 1920s, painting the walls with blood and nesting with victims' remains. A secret passage in Room 1221 led to a thirteenth floor that the hotel's official layout denied. Egon Spengler and the Rookie defeated the Spider Witch there and shut down the node, finding themselves back in a ballroom afterward.
Sargassi's, a seafood restaurant on the third floor of the hotel founded in 1950 by Pappy Sargassi, was also cleared of his ghost during this visit.
Additional rooms (Video Game)
- Third floor: Sargassi's restaurant; kitchen; utility room with backup generator.
- First floor: Lobby, Alhambra Ballroom, Ruby Ballroom, Jopel's Lapels Men's Fashion, Les Oiseaux Fine Wines And Liquors.
- Twelfth floor: Room 1221 (Spider Witch's suite with hidden entrance to the 13th floor).
- Thirteenth floor: Spider Witch's Lair (secret, absent from hotel directories).
IDW Comics
In the IDW Comics continuity, the Sedgewick Hotel hosted members of the Cult of Gozer from the early 1920s through around 1938, with meetings taking place in the suite of Evelyn Lewis, a cult member. The cult's leader, Ivo Shandor, performed a ceremony in the early 1920s intended to draw Gozer to the dimensional plane; instead it conjured a semi-corporeal manifestation of gluttony: the green ghost that would eventually be nicknamed Slimer. The ghost proved too lazy to leave the hotel and wreak havoc as the cult envisioned.
Lewis pursued her own ambitions, conducting human sacrifice in her twelfth-floor suite, arranging victims' remains in a nest-like structure and writing on the walls in blood. She apparently committed suicide; her suite was sealed by hotel staff. In 1951, a bellhop encounter with Slimer on the twelfth floor was severe enough to prompt a resignation. Over the following decades, Slimer terrorized guests including honeymooning couples.
In the late 1970s, the ghost of Pappy Sargassi manifested at his Sargassi's seafood restaurant in the hotel lobby. After the Ghostbusters' initial 1984 bust, the Sedgewick's booking rate surged. Kylie Griffin later theorized that Slimer was likely a hotel employee in his past life, possibly a chef given his obsession with food, who died of a heart attack. Egon Spengler disagreed with that assessment.
The Sedgewick's history with the Cult of Gozer was documented in both Tobin's Spirit Guide and Funder's Cults of the Northeast.
Slimer! (Animated)
In the Slimer! animated series, the Sedgewick Hotel is a 16-floor upscale hotel near Central Park, rated three shrieks in the Ghost Travel Guide. Management consistently denied the hotel was haunted, though the 13th floor (which officially does not exist) was occupied by a group of ghosts. Slimer's original 1984 capture is alluded to throughout the series.
The hotel was managed by Morris Grout, assisted by Bud. Mrs. Van Huego and her dog Fred resided in the penthouse on the 16th floor. Professor Dweeb was also at one point associated with the hotel. The Sedgewick appeared in the Slimer! series but never in the main The Real Ghostbusters series.
Ghostbusters: The Board Game
In this tertiary-canon story, a rogue Sandman put all hotel patrons into a deep slumber and took up residence in one of the ballrooms. The Ghostbusters stopped him, then cleared out a Boogieman, sealed Fear Spirit World Gates, defeated Samhain, and finally defeated Boogaloo before hotel inspectors arrived. The hotel retained its four-star rating.
Production notes
The Sedgewick Hotel scenes in Ghostbusters (1984) were filmed primarily at the Millennium Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, California, at 506 South Grand Avenue (the 5th Street entrance was used for the exterior shots). The original plan was to shoot at the Waldorf Astoria in New York, but the lobby was too small and too costly, according to producer Joe Medjuck. The Biltmore is a historic hotel opened in October 1923, designed by architects Schulze and Weaver (the same firm responsible for New York's Waldorf-Astoria).
The elevator scenes and all corridor scenes were constructed sets on Stage 12 at The Burbank Studios. The practical reason was the Biltmore's narrow hallways, its busy floor pattern and white walls (problematic for the effects crew), and concerns about damaging the hotel itself. Production designer John DeCuir acquired a "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" set from MGM and reconfigured it for use in those scenes.
The ballroom sequences took approximately two to four days to film at the Biltmore. The only modifications to the Biltmore ballroom were a breakaway chandelier and a set of prefabricated replacement walls, each embedded with fuses and pyrotechnic materials ignited on cue. The Proton Stream effects were animated and composited later by Entertainment Effects Group. Director Ivan Reitman has cited Slimer's flight around the chandelier as one of his least favorite effects in the film.
The same Biltmore 5th Street entrance was reused in Ghostbusters II for the mink coat attack scene. The Biltmore's back staircase also doubled as the staircase in Dana Barrett's apartment building in the first film. Ivan Reitman also used the Biltmore lobby for filming Dave (1993).
In early script drafts (July 6, August 5, September 30, and October 7, 1983), the impetus for the Sedgewick Hotel to call the Ghostbusters was a honeymooning couple in Room 1210 who encountered Slimer. This scene was filmed but cut, surviving as the "Deleted Scene: Honeymooners." The hotel was called "Hotel Sedgewick" in the original storyboards; the name order was reversed before filming.
See also: Biltmore Hotel for more on the filming location.
References
- Ghostbusters (1984), Chapters 11-14
- Ghostbusters: The Video Game (Realistic Versions), "Welcome to the Hotel Sedgewick" and "Return to the Sedgewick" levels
- IDW Comics: Ghostbusters Annual 2015 ("The 12th Floor"), Ghostbusters Annual 2017 ("The Origins of Slimer"), Ghostbusters Year One
- Slimer! animated series; Slimer! Series Bible
- Tobin's Spirit Guide (Insight Editions)
- Cryptozoic Entertainment, Ghostbusters: The Board Game, The Sedgewick Scramble Campaign
- Spook Central, "California Filming Locations: Sedgewick Hotel"
