Plot
A touring bus arrives in Lewiston, a New England village, on the evening of a full moon. Tourists spot a witch flying overhead. The witch and her goblins attack the bus, tear off the rear bumper, knock the tires loose, and carry off the driver.
At the Firehouse, Egon is in the middle of a volatile experiment when an explosion throws him from his laboratory into the bunkroom, where he nearly falls out the window. Winston and Ray pull him back inside. Egon explains that a vision of a hideous hag broke his concentration. The phone rings, and Winston takes a case involving witches and goblins. Peter and Slimer laugh off the idea until Winston mentions the job pays double the usual fee for the trip from New York to Massachusetts.
Ecto-1 carries the team to Lewiston, where they meet Mayor Moody at the site of the kidnapping. Moody wants the case solved before the town's 300th Pilgrim Festival, two days away, or thousands of tourists will be frightened off. Near an ice cream parlor, the team is baffled to see several people who all look exactly like Egon. They come upon a statue of Eli Spengler, whose plaque credits him with driving out witchcraft 300 years earlier; during the annual festival the townspeople wear Eli Spengler masks in his honor. Egon realizes the stories his Grandma Spengler told him about Eli were true.
Slimer is sent out with a P.K.E. Camera to scout while the team watches the live feed from Ecto-1. One building, the Lewiston Girls Academy, surges with activity. Goblins steal the camera, and during the fight the witch flies off with Mayor Moody. She recognizes Egon and swears revenge, naming herself Kestrel. Egon works out that Kestrel is abducting descendants of the original Pilgrims who captured her. The team is thrown out of the academy by the headmistress, Prandish, who does not want the girls distracted before final exams.
The team searches a nearby dig site where old stone ruins were uncovered during construction of a new gymnasium. The P.K.E. Meter picks up abnormally high readings before shorting out. Underground, Ray finds an Elron Witchcraft Altar missing its rock crystal centerpiece, and Peter kicks up half of the crystal. After a fight with goblins, who steal Egon's glasses, Egon runs a test from a mini-lab in the back of Ecto-1 and accidentally sucks Slimer into the crystal half, identifying it as a primitive containment unit. Ray guesses Kestrel holds the other half.
To get inside the academy, the team goes undercover: Egon and Peter pose as students, Ray as a janitor, and Winston as a track coach. Ray mixes a batch of "Exorcism Juice" in a closet. Kestrel, possessing Prandish, tears up the students' exams. The team converges in the basement but cannot locate her. In a cavern of ruins, Kestrel drops Egon's glasses into a cauldron and casts a spell.
Goblins flood the academy and fight the team. Kestrel emerges from a vent and possesses Egon, gaining the knowledge of where the other crystal half is kept. She takes a broom and flies off before Ray can douse her. Kestrel opens the safe in Ecto-1, takes the crystal half, and joins the two halves at the Eli Spengler statue, vowing to imprison her victims forever. Ray and Slimer mix another batch of Exorcism Juice and douse Kestrel, forcing her out of Egon's body. Egon recovers, grabs the crystal, and traps Kestrel and the goblins. The team celebrates at the Pilgrim Festival, where Peter mistakes a masked woman for Egon and insults her before discovering everyone is wearing Egon masks. He puts one on and joins in.
Kestrel
Kestrel is the episode's primary antagonist, an ancient witch who terrorized Lewiston roughly 300 years before the events of the episode. A band of Pilgrims led by Eli Spengler trapped her and her goblins inside a Containment Rock Crystal, a primitive precursor to the Ghostbusters' own Containment Unit, placed on an Elron Witchcraft Altar deep beneath what would later become the Lewiston Girls Academy. The crystal was cracked in half during excavation for a new gymnasium, which freed her. Her sole goal upon escape is to abduct the descendants of the Pilgrims who imprisoned her and seal them away forever inside the rejoined crystal.
Kestrel's primary power is possession: she can inhabit a human host, transmogrify the host's appearance, absorb the host's knowledge and memories, and imbue the host with enhanced physical strength. She commands a legion of goblins and is shown casting spells via a cauldron. Tobin's Spirit Guide describes her as "An evil demoness who has no physical shape so she takes possession of people's bodies and makes them do terrible things." In the Insight Editions printing of Tobin's Spirit Guide she is classified as a Class 4 possessor, placing her among the most dangerous ghost entities encountered by the team. Linda Gary provides Kestrel's voice in her own form; because Kestrel possesses Egon during the episode's climax, Maurice LaMarche also provides voice work for the character in that role.
Kestrel reappears in the Insight Editions Tobin's Spirit Guide book with a distinct, non-RGB backstory tying her to the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, where she is depicted as the one genuinely guilty party among the executed.
The Spengler family
The episode adds to Egon's family history by establishing Eli Spengler as one of his ancestors. According to the statue's plaque, Eli drove out witchcraft in Lewiston some 300 years before the events of the episode. Egon refers to a story Grandma Spengler told about her "Great Grampy Eli" imprisoning the witch in a crystal, which would make Eli his great-great-great-grandfather. This continues a recurring thread in the cartoon of Egon's relatives being entangled with the supernatural.
The name Eli carries additional layering: it means "ascend" or "uplifted" in Hebrew and appears in the Bible as the name of a High Priest and the last of the Judges in the days of Samuel (1 Samuel, ch. 1). Like the name Zedekiah (another Spengler ancestor referenced in the series), it reinforces the implied Jewish heritage of the Spengler family. Visually, the animators gave Eli the same distinctive swept-back hairstyle as his descendant, an anachronistic but intentional touch that makes Egon instantly recognizable behind the Pilgrim-era costume.
Production notes
The episode was recorded on June 12 and 28, 1989, with Dave Coulier recording alone on the first of those dates.2
A few small touches connect the village to its Pilgrim history. One of the local parlors is named "Mayflower Ice Cream," a nod to the Pilgrim cargo ship. Egon, trying to warn Prandish about the danger at the academy, calls the building "a veritable psychokinetic Chernobyl," referencing the 1986 nuclear accident. A poster for a school dance on October 31 is visible when Egon is possessed.
Janine does not appear in this episode.
The P.K.E. Meter's overload readout at Lewiston Girls Academy receives a later callback in IDW's Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #4 (page 18, panel 5), where the same screen image appears in the background.
Episode order
In both air-date and DVD order, "If I Were a Witch Man" follows "Elementary My Dear Winston" and precedes "Partners in Slime". It was released on home video as part of The Real Ghostbusters box sets.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 32. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1989). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "If I Were a Witch Man" (1989).
