Scary stories for kids: I made my dad take me to see Ghostbusters three times

By Diane A. Rodgers, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies and Media & Communication, Sheffield Hallam University

“Three parapsychologists lose their university funding” sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, rather than a premise for one of the most successful films of the 1980s. Nonetheless, this is how the story of Ghostbusters (1984) begins, with a trio of unlikely professors.

Peter Venkman (Bill Murray) cares more about flirting than research, Ray Stantz (Dan Aykroyd) bounces around like an excitable puppy, while nerdy Egon Spengler’s (Harold Ramis) hobby is to “collect spores, moulds and fungus”. It’s no wonder the credibility of their research is called into question, after they attest…

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