The Real Ghostbusters/Nightmare Fuel

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • The Grundle, possibly the most terrifying foe from the entire franchise, who is a cross between a vampire, a goblin, and a child molester that kidnaps children in the middle of the night and turns them into more Grundles.
  • Similarly, the Boogieman. Holy crap.
    • The really scary part? The Boogieman WASN'T a ghost. He was a demon, which meant the Ghostbusters couldn't stop him with their equipment. And Egon was very terrified of him. Which makes his eventual triumph a Moment of Awesome.
  • The Sandman wasn't particularly scary in-and-of himself, nor was his plan to put the world to sleep horrifying...but his horrible, horrible voice sure is.
    • Never mind how the... things he unleashed on NYC looked like Hieronymous Bosch had dropped acid.
    • Theres also Fridge Horror. The Sandman genuinely wants to protect humanity from itself, but what would happen if a natural disaster occurred while everyone was asleep? Answer: countless innocents could be injured or killed and no one would be in a position to come to their aid. And if he put all the Ghostbusters to sleep, no one would be left to stop later paranormal attacks.
  • The episode where the ghost-obliterating robot accidentally creates some extremely powerful ghosts from the dispersed PKE. The results were... bad.
  • A parody of Citizen Kane wound up being extremely creepy, with comparatively low-key hauntings plaguing the Ghostbusters all throughout.
  • The ghosts in general are monstrous and particularly inhuman.
  • Cthulhu is extremely horrifying. This show is one of the few to be able to make a Cthulhu live up to the hype of how terrifying he's supposed to be. What's scarier is that he's nearly unstoppable, even with their modern weapons.
  • The Old One from Russian About was another Lovecraft pastiche. The only thing Venkman could do when he saw it was scram.
  • The Eiffel Tower sequence in The Ghostbusters In Paris had an army of disturbing ghosts, camera angles designed to keep the viewer from seeing them, John Carpenter-esque music, and all the characters saying a version of "Run. Run!"
    • THAT. MELTING. FACE.
  • The ghost that feeds on electricity in Ain't NASA-sarily so.
  • Egon's horrifying scream of pain when he gets hit by the de-stabiliser beam in Egon's Ghost.
  • Mee-Krah from Standing Room Only. An almost completely unstoppable Eldritch Abomination who mercilessly devours smaller ghosts (who choose imprisonment in the containment unit rather than fall victim to him), leaves deserts in his wake, and nearly smashes and melts New York to ruins, all the while emitting a monstrous growling noise. Needless to say, this was one episode that subverted the Lighter and Softer theme of the later seasons.
    • There's something very unsettling about seeing ghosts spooky-looking in their own right quivering with sheer terror at the thought of Mee-Krah. Worse, the Ghostbusters throw everything they've got at it and can't even slow it down until the end.
  • As the title says, The Thing in Mrs. Faversham's Attic. A force that can possess mere objects, effectively bend reality to its will and full of rage over being confined in that attic for seventy years.
    • This episode's also notable for having almost no comedic elements whatsoever: there's a bit of Cringe Comedy with Slimer trying to trick the entity by impersonating Mrs. Faversham's late father, but otherwise it's about as straight a horror story as an H.P. Lovecraft tale.
  • Victor the Happy Ghost; the reveal of his true nature is bone-chilling. And here it is.
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