Plot
During a localized summer heat wave, an earthquake makes the Ghostbusters suspect paranormal activity, especially after going two weeks without a bust. When the water pressure in the firehouse bathroom goes haywire, they detect unusually high concentrations of ectoplasmic residue. Ray is eager to explore the sewers, but Peter Venkman dismisses the idea. They head down to investigate anyway. Egon Spengler theorizes an inversion caused by an ectological cross rip, with elemental imbalances taking hold. In the sewers they find an extremely corrosive orange gel seeping through the foundation and more than forty ghosts. Ray recalls a childhood urban legend that Manhattan Island rests on a stone pillar, and that if the pillar ever broke the island would sink into the ocean. Egon confirms an ethereal spring nearby. The dangerous ectoplasmic energy pockets building up have the potential to influence dramatic warming trends across the planet. Unequipped for so many ghosts and unpaid, they take a sample of the gel in a trap for testing and call it a night.
Egon places the gel in an analyzer, but the readout will not be ready until morning. Unable to wait, Ray goes back down alone with Slimer. They follow ghosts down a tunnel, where Ray falls from a decrepit platform into a deep pool. He surfaces and is attacked by the ghosts, orders Slimer to get help, then dives back underwater and blasts a stone drain plug at the bottom. The plug gives way and the pressure pulls him through into a deep cavern below.
The next morning, Janine Melnitz arrives and cannot find Slimer. When Slimer returns, he manages to tell her Ray is in trouble by spitting out the Ecto-1 license plate and acting out the message. Janine wakes the others. Egon learns the orange gel has very high pressure readings, making it dangerous, but that its base substance is an inorganic suspension with a high quotient of lubricity, similar to axle grease, fed from an ethereal spring deep in the Earth. The team takes Janine's car to find where Ray left Ecto-1. The earthquakes worsen and the car plummets underground.
Ray wakes and explores until he reaches a vast room holding a spinning pillar, the Pillar of New York. He theorizes the gel is a lubricant for the pillar, which acts as a gyroscope, before the ghosts attack him again. The others reach the hole he fell through and help fend off the ghosts. Winston Zeddemore rappels down into the chamber and nearly falls through the hole left by the plug. Ray finds where the ghosts blocked the flow of orange gel to the pillar, and the team blasts the blockage clear. When the gel flows over the pillar again, the tremors stop.
Egon cannot say whether ancient gods, a lost civilization, Atlantis, or something else built the pillar, but the team determines its gyroscopic properties stabilize Manhattan. City officials do not believe the story about the pillar but pay the Ghostbusters anyway for stopping the earthquakes. Winston and Peter set to work repairing Janine's car while Ray feeds Slimer.
Ghosts, entities, and locations
Water Ghosts. The Water Ghosts are the episode's main antagonists: a collective of more than forty ghosts whose goal is to sink Manhattan and cause global chaos. They located the Pillar of New York and deliberately blocked the flow of its lubricant gel, triggering the earthquakes that frame the episode. The Ghostbusters drive them off by restoring the gel flow, but capture is not shown.
Pillar of New York. The central supernatural construct of the episode, drawn from the urban legend that Manhattan Island rests on a great stone pillar. In the show the legend is true: the Pillar is a real gyroscopic mechanism kept spinning by the orange gel from a deep ethereal spring. Without that gel it would slow and eventually fail, causing Manhattan to sink into the Atlantic. Who or what built it is left unresolved. The Pillar later appears as a background detail in IDW's Ghostbusters Issue #6 (page 10) and Issue #7 (page 5), within the Fantastic Land setting.
Pillar of New York Gel. The orange lubricant that keeps the Pillar spinning. Egon's analysis identifies it as an inorganic suspension with a high quotient of lubricity, essentially a natural axle grease, sourced from an ethereal spring below the Earth's surface. When the Water Ghosts block its flow the built-up pressure creates the ectoplasmic energy pockets that manifest as earthquakes.
Ancient Sewer Plug. A stone object at the bottom of a pool in the sewers that seals the only passage into the Pillar's chamber. Ray discovers it during his solo investigation, dives down, and fires at it. The plug gives way and the pressure sucks him through into the catacombs below.
New York Catacombs. The artificial subterranean chambers beneath the sewer system that house the Pillar. Built at an unknown point in history, they are only accessible through the hole left by the Ancient Sewer Plug. The catacombs are where the Water Ghosts have been massing and where the Ghostbusters finally confront them.
Cast
Equipment and items
Locations
- Firehouse
- New York Catacombs
Quotes
- Winston, watching the ooze melt through Egon's sample jar: "Plastic, huh? Maybe you should try a glass one." Egon: "That WAS glass."
- Peter: "We're professionals, not vigilantes! People pay us to do this! We can't just bust every single ghost in the universe just because they're there!"
Trivia
The episode was recorded on November 14, 1986.2 It is based on the urban myth that Manhattan was built on a pillar. After feeling the earthquake, Ray remarks that the firehouse is as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar. Peter references Popular Mechanics magazine during his bathroom mishap and later mentions AAA after Janine's car falls underground. Peter also calls Ray "Great Carnac," a likely nod to the Johnny Carson character Carnac the Magnificent. In his sleep, Egon apologizes to his mom for burning down the garage. At one point Winston rappels down a wall despite a built-in ladder nearby.
Janine says she is glad she lives in the Bronx, although she is later depicted living in Brooklyn.
The episode shares some parallels with Ghostbusters II, including a brightly colored goo bubbling up from the sewer and a Ghostbuster hanging from a rope over a pit. It predates that film by two years.
The Pillar of New York appears as a background detail in IDW's Ghostbusters Issue #6 (page 10) and Issue #7 (page 5) within the Fantastic Land setting, one of the few direct visual callbacks from the IDW comic run to this episode's mythology.
