Plot
An empty lot in a neighborhood overlooking the Statue of Liberty is occupied overnight by a house. At the firehouse the Ghostbusters are bored, with no calls all week. Winston Zeddemore jokes they are simply too good and catch everything, and Egon Spengler agrees. When the phone finally rings with a real job, Peter Venkman is unimpressed, since the last several haunted-house calls were false alarms. The address is 1313 13th Street. Egon's P.K.E. Meter registers a major psychic force inside, then overheats and shorts out.
Mrs. Rogers answers the door holding her pet canary in a cage. As the team enters, Peter sends Ray Stantz to drive Rogers back to headquarters for safety while he stays to write up the bill. Inside, the house turns hostile: haunted kitchenware reverts to normal whenever Egon is near, and a door opens with a voice saying "Wat" before Peter is pulled in.
Consulting Tobin's Spirit Guide, Egon explains that Wat is a dominant force in the underworld, the leader of a legion of demons, who intends to invade and conquer the living world. Back at the firehouse, Janine Melnitz gives Mrs. Rogers a tour. Slimer eyes some cookies but is scared off when Rogers' canary, Precious, morphs into a monstrous flaming bird. Janine shows off the Containment Unit's new fail-safe, which requires the fingerprints and voice of the four Ghostbusters to access it. This device is unique to this episode and does not reappear elsewhere in the series.3 A monstrous silhouette readies to attack Janine, but vanishes when she states she does not have clearance to open the Unit.
At the house, the team is ambushed: hands reach out of the walls, gravity shifts, and the room turns into a throat-like tunnel as an anthropomorphic furnace climbs toward them breathing fire. Ray asks Peter for ideas; Peter has none, but asks if anyone has marshmallows. Egon takes readings in Rogers' bedroom closet and finds an enormous P.K.E. signature on her dress. Peter asks whether that means the dress is Wat, and Egon answers that Mrs. Rogers is Wat. The whole thing is a trap. Winston tells Ray to drop a trap; the furnace eats it and explodes, blasting the team outside, where two stone lions attack and Ray traps them.
Returning to the firehouse, the team searches for Wat. Peter is pulled into the bathroom and possessed. Peter, controlled by Wat, heads to the basement with Precious to open the Containment Unit. The others follow, and Egon's meter confirms the possession. Winston instinctively raises his thrower, but Ray stops him: they cannot blast Wat without harming Peter. Egon's solution is to tune two throwers, one to Peter's electro-metabolic frequency and the other to Wat's exact frequency, to pull the two apart, though a mistake could tear Peter to pieces. Slimer kicks Precious aside and Janine traps the canary, then restores the Containment Unit. Wat is pulled into a trap and Peter is freed. At the same moment, Mrs. Rogers' house collapses in on itself and is sucked into a chest, which then blows up and inverts. Peter, fed up with haunted houses and annoyed about his messed-up hair, ends up chasing Slimer through the streets after Slimer slimes him in an attempt to help.
Ghosts and entities
Wat is the episode's main antagonist: a dominant force of the underworld described in Tobin's Spirit Guide as the leader of a demon legion with ambitions to conquer the living world. Wat arrives on Long Island disguised as Mrs. Rogers, a kindly old woman, in order to lure the Ghostbusters and use Precious to manipulate the Containment Unit's failsafe. Wat later possesses Peter directly in a second attempt to open the Unit. The voice of Wat (and both Stone Lions) was provided by guest actor Leo De Lyon.
Precious is Wat's servant, presented to the Ghostbusters as Mrs. Rogers' pet canary. At the firehouse the canary drops its disguise and transforms into a large flaming bird to intimidate Slimer and Janine. Precious is ultimately trapped by Janine in the basement confrontation. Frank Welker voiced Precious in the original recording.
Mrs. Rogers' House appears overnight in an empty lot overlooking the Statue of Liberty at 1313 13th Street on Long Island. The house is an extension of Wat's power and is populated by several minor entities including Wall Hands (which grapple the team and invert the room's gravity), a Living Doorknob, Trunk Spirits, Book Bats, a Sofa Monster, Dresser Ghosts, and a Furnace Monster that breathes fire and consumes the team's first trap. At the episode's conclusion, the house collapses in on itself and is absorbed into a chest, which then explodes. Arsenio Hall voiced the Furnace Monster; Maurice LaMarche voiced the Door; Laura Summer and Welker voiced various Topiary figures.
Stone Lions are two animated stone statues outside Mrs. Rogers' House. They attack the team after the furnace explosion ejects them from the building, and Ray traps them both.
Production
The episode was recorded on June 3, 1986.1 It belongs to the show's first season and appears on Volume 1, Disc 1 of the boxed set. Like the rest of season one, it uses a track from the program's soundtrack, in this case the song "Don't Play Her Game."
Voice work in the original recording came from Frank Welker (Precious, Topiary figures), Maurice LaMarche (Eerie Voices and Creatures, Dogs, Door), Arsenio Hall (Furnace Monster, Eerie Voices and Creatures), Lorenzo Music (Peter Venkman) and Laura Summer (Janine Melnitz, Topiary figures), with guest voices Billie Hayes (Mrs. Rogers, Girl, Eerie Voices and Creatures) and Leo De Lyon (Wat, Lion #1, Lion #2, Topiary figures).3
It is one of seven early episodes later re-dubbed with Dave Coulier and Kath Soucie replacing several of the original cast. Coulier recorded his redub lines on January 27, 1988, and Soucie recorded hers on February 1, 1988.3 The episode was rebroadcast in its redubbed form as part of season four. The redubbed version was not included on the DVD release.
In the boxed-set storyboards, Ray throws an "Ecto-Gernade" (spelled that way in the boards) rather than a trap at the furnace monster.4
The episode was adapted by Peter Mandel into the short children's book The Real Ghostbusters in Haunted House Mystery, available as a PDF eBook through resources archived by Spook Central.3
Legacy
The episode's imagery has resurfaced in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters comics. Ray and Peter's file photos in Ghostbusters: Crossing Over issue 2 (page 21) are taken from "Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood," and Peter's possessed design in issue 5 (page 15) is based on his appearance while possessed by Wat. In issue 6 (page 6, panel 5), an alternate-dimension Egon modifies his thrower with a red-handled screwdriver, echoing the episode's climax.
Ghostbusters: IDW 20/20 retells a version of the Wat story with the Sanctum of Slime team of Dimension 50-S. The two accounts share the broad premise, Wat trying to pull an army out of a secured Containment Unit, but differ in many details: the house appears by day rather than overnight, Precious is an ordinary canary instead of a servant ghost, Wat kidnaps Egon rather than possessing Peter, and the team there confronts Wat directly instead of fighting through a houseful of ghosts. The Long Island setting also shifts: the episode places Wat south on Long Island, while the comic places the encounter north in Bayside, Queens.
References
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood" (1986).
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 3. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Spook Central, "The Real Ghostbusters Episode Guide: 'Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood'".
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Rader, Brad (2009). The Real Ghostbusters - "Mrs. Roger's Neighborhood" (1986), storyboards pp. 134-135. CPT Holdings, Inc.
