Plot
A rainstorm batters a rustic mansion. In one room a man in a bed tells a joke about a kangaroo and then melts away, revealing himself as a ghost. An older woman, unamused, decides she has had enough and calls the Ghostbusters. Janine Melnitz takes down the address and rings the alarm, and the team heads for Arkham. On the way, Egon Spengler explains that their client is Charles Von Limburger, heir to the world's largest cheese fortune and the maker of Limburger brand cheese. As Ecto-1 passes through the city, Ray Stantz points out Miskatonic University. At the front door, Winston Zeddemore voices his unease about the case.
Charles answers the door and lets the team in. He and his wife explain that they have been plagued by manifestations ever since they moved in three weeks earlier, hearing crashing, banging, howling, moaning, and groaning. Charles worries that his lack of sleep is ruining his business. Egon uses his P.K.E. Meter to track the source, which the meter pinpoints upstairs. The Limburgers decide to leave the mansion to the Ghostbusters for the weekend so as not to be in the way.
Upstairs the Ghostbusters find a hole in a wall. Ray is unimpressed until he gets slimed in the face, and Peter Venkman, surprised it was not him for once, gets slimed too. Peter fires his Particle Thrower into the hole and a tiny ghost emerges. As Peter shoots at it across the room he creates many more holes, and dozens of ghosts pour out. Egon and Winston assemble a probe and monitoring station to study the hole. The probe is sent in but something grabs it, and when Ray takes hold of the line he is pulled inside. The team widens the hole, but Ray is gone. They follow the tiny ghosts to another hole, where Ray is thrown out in a state of temporary insanity. The stress has also turned his hair white.
As Ray recovers, Egon realizes the size of a hole determines the size of the ghost that comes through it. Facing a giant hole, the team opens fire, which only makes it bigger. Ray suggests throwing a hole into the hole. Egon agrees, and they create a portable hole to place in front of the giant one to shrink the ghost. The mansion begins to shake violently, and the Ghostbusters retreat after Egon warns of a small chance of an interdimensional imbalance.
They reach Ecto-1 and drive off the property as the mansion collapses. The P.K.E. Meter still registers a ghost. The giant hole has not closed but is merely covered by rubble, and it grows to fifty feet across. Winston finds a tiny hole and tucks it into his pocket, and Egon tells him to throw it into the big hole to implode it. Winston races to the giant ghost and throws the hole into its mouth. The ghost gags and implodes, and a large explosion devastates the remains of the mansion. Charles and his wife arrive and are stunned at the sight. The Ghostbusters walk past and tell them the bill will arrive in the mail. Charles, irate, tells his wife to call the Real Ghostbusters next time. She replies that she thought those were the Real Ghostbusters.
Characters and entities
Charles Von Limburger is the episode's client, heir to the world's largest cheese fortune and the maker of Limburger brand cheese. His voice performance is based on that of actor Peter Lorre. He owns the haunted mansion outside Arkham, having moved in only three weeks before the events of the episode. His closing demand that his wife "call the Real Ghostbusters next time" drives the episode's punchline. He is voiced by a guest actor.
Madame Limburger is Charles's wife, identified as the older woman who opens the episode by calling the Ghostbusters. She delivers the final line, noting that she believed the team who just destroyed her home were in fact the Real Ghostbusters. She is voiced by Helen Lambros.
The Hole Ghosts are the episode's primary supernatural threat. They exist in a pocket dimension on the other side of holes in the mansion's walls. Their physical size when they emerge into the real world scales directly with the size of the hole they pass through. They cannot be trapped or blasted in the conventional way; doing so only enlarges the holes. Egon's solution is to use a portable hole as a countermeasure, shrinking the largest manifestation until it can be imploded. The Hole Ghosts were later used as a background easter egg in IDW Publishing's Ghostbusters vol. 2 #16.3
Egon's Probe is a specialized piece of monitoring equipment assembled on-site by Egon and Winston to gather data from inside one of the dimensional holes. When something in the hole grabs the probe, Ray takes hold of the line and is pulled inside, leading to the episode's central crisis.
Production and references
David Gerrold wrote the episode as a tribute to H.P. Lovecraft, and in his introduction to the episode in The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection he notes that it includes many Lovecraftian references.1 In the same set, Dan Riba confirmed that he designed the melting man ghost seen at the start of the episode.1 Gerrold also wrote "Adventures in Slime and Space" for the series.
The title nods to the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang, the historical band of Old West outlaws. The case is set in Arkham, a fictional Massachusetts town from Lovecraft's "Lovecraft Country," making it Egon and Peter's second visit there after "The Collect Call of Cathulhu," where they first traveled to Miskatonic University. Ray mentions having once played against the school's football team, the Slugs.
Charles Von Limburger's voice is based on that of actor Peter Lorre. The episode is dense with pop-culture asides: Peter jokes about Dracula, and when Ray emerges from the hole he babbles references to The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, and I Love Lucy. Foreign dubs kept these lines except the German version, which replaced I Love Lucy with Mickey Mouse. Ray's exclamation after returning, "I think, but I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree," paraphrases the opening lines of Joyce Kilmer's 1913 poem "Trees." Charles's closing demand that his wife "call the Real Ghostbusters next time" is likely a wink at Filmation's Ghost Busters, the rival series whose name forced this show to be branded as "The Real Ghostbusters."
Slimer does not appear in this episode, though Peter alludes to him when Charles complains about getting no sleep.
Animation errors
During the first quake, when Peter takes cover under the dresser, Winston appears in Ray's place, showing him twice in the shot instead of the correct four-person grouping.
Cast
Production details
- Written by: David Gerrold
- First aired: October 21, 1987
- Season: 2
- Air-date episode number: 041
- DVD episode number: 078
- Production number: 76065
- Boxset: The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, Vol. 3, Disc 3
In air-date order, the episode follows "Venkman's Ghost Repellers" and precedes "Ghost Busted." In the DVD running order it falls between "Dairy Farm" and "Baby Spookums."
References
