A new generation of Ghostbusters are samaritans in disguise

Late one wintry Friday night, the Fort Collins Ghostbusters assume their identities. Kevin Henry and Austin Bernard, fully costumed, are now Dr. Henry and Dr. Bernard.  Along for tonight’s patrol is new Ghostbuster trainee Dayl Eccles, in full getup as well.

A local practitioner of “cosplay” (the Japanese pastime of dressing as a manga — a comic or cartoon — or anime character), Eccles feels comfortable in the khaki jumpsuit as the conspicuous cadre stands in the parking lot of the Fort Collins Wal-Mart Supercenter.

As Henry runs the lights and siren on the crew’s car, known as the Ectomobile, up walks a woman wearing a Ghostbusters sweatshirt, hand clasped over her mouth, as if she’s just seen, well, a ghost.

Her name is Mindy Czapla, and she proclaims herself a real-life ghost hunter, but she has never seen the Ectomobile.

“I have only been living here since June, but this has got me very excited!” she says.

After Wal-Mart, the Ghostbusters go on foot-patrol around Old Town. Even without the Ecto, they attract a good amount of attention. People throw up fists and heavy-metal hand signs, screaming “Ghostbusters, hell yeah!” to looks of sheer disbelief.

The final stop of the night for the Ghostbusters is the Sports Authority parking lot on the corner of College Avenue and Mulberry Street. It’s a nice place to wind down for the night with an Ecto display, lights flashing and Ray Parker, Jr.’s hit “Ghostbusters” blaring over the sound system.
 

A large group of teenage girls approaches, each wanting a picture with the Ghostbusters. Then a van full of guys from Wyoming pulls up, all laughing hysterically.  Another set of teenage girls beg for pics.

To the side, two preppy types are excitedly calling their friends and snapping camera-phone photos.

“You won’t believe this, dude!” one of them yells into his phone. His friend, Colorado State student Adam Unruh, is equally impressed.

“You gotta come to this party! My friends have to see you!” Unruh says. “They won’t believe me if you don’t come.

“I’ve seen the ‘Ghostbusters-mobile’ around campus,” he adds. “When my friends saw the lights flashing, we had to stop and see them. Then we saw they had their uniforms on. It’s just the coolest thing ever.”

While the commotion may startle the uninitiated, this is a regular scene for Kevin Henry, Ecto’s driver and one-half of the Fort Collins Ghostbusters, the city’s latest cult hit, which has garnered local urban-legend status with the decked-out Ecto — or, for the cinematically unacquainted, “Ghostbusters-mobile.”

As the children of the ’80s have grown into the adults of the present, the past 10 years especially have been witness to a new twist on the old-fashioned world of character-driven role play. This time, the fans are eschewing books, maps and 12-sided die in favor of custom-made costumes, authentic props and, when applicable, a much-desired, highly detailed vehicle. “Star Trek” fans have converted Winnebagos into Shuttle Crafts. “Knight Rider” fans have transformed junky IROCs into KITTs.  And the Fort Collins Ghostbusters made a Subaru Outback into the Ghostbusters’ primary mode of transportation, the Ectomobile.

And Henry is the walking embodiment of this particular “geek chic” lifestyle.

At Middle Park High School in Granby, Henry, now 23, was in band, student council and Knowledge Bowl — “a general nerd,” as he says, a past that hasn’t escaped him.

He graduated from Middle Park in 2002, and today he keeps hardcore gamers in line as the manager of Game On, an Internet gaming center inside Foothills Fashion Mall, where he works with fellow Ghostbuster, Austin Bernard, age 22. At night, the two don the requisit khaki jumpsuits, strap on the various ghost-busting accoutrements, and settle into the hulking white vehicle, like a geeky variation on the pimped-out lifestyle made famous in The Fast and the Furious.

The duo has cruised the streets of the Fort since September 2006, but the past few months have seen a rise in their profile.

“Now we get mostly looks of recognition,” says Henry, as he rolls through Old Town. “We were at Best Buy the other night, working on our sound system, and people were walking up saying they’d seen us, heard about us from their friends.”

As the Ecto coasts down College Avenue, it’s a sea of double takes and camera phones. Most passersby don’t know what to make of it, while others seem to contemplate whether the city has a paranormal problem.

In reality, it’s merely a “Halloween prank that got out of hand,” Henry says.

”seeing things,  running through your head …”

In the world of cinema, 1984 was one of those magical years in which one classic motion picture after another was released, films that still resonate with nostalgia for many in the mid-20s to mid-30s demographic.

While audience-pleasers like Gremlins, Footloose, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Sixteen Candles still hold up as favorites today, another standout was unleashed upon the public that summer. It was among the first “official” summer blockbusters, and it went on to become one of the most successful comedies of the decade.

That film was Ghostbusters.

Directed by Ivan Reitman, then hot off another ’80s classic, Stripes, and scripted by “Saturday Night Live” and National Lampoon alums Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, Ghostbusters was an original outing that clicked with audiences and critics alike, with it’s unique blend of straight-up horror and laugh-out-loud comedy.

Ghostbusters is the story of three ne’er-do-well paranormal scientists (Bill Murray as smart-aleck Peter Venkman, Dan Aykroyd as oafish Raymond Stantz and Harold Ramis as the über-geeky Egon Spengler). The trio isn’t taken seriously by the general public until a wave of intense spectral menaces sweep New York, cumulating in the return of a destructive, ancient Sumerian god named Gozer, as well as a Godzilla-sized monster made of marshmallows, in a plan to end the world.

Of course, the Ghostbusters save the day.

The film was popular enough to spawn a sequel, two cartoon series, a line of action figures from Kenner, and a popular, ghostly green drink for Hi-C, “Ecto-Cooler.” Even today, almost 25 years later, the movie is still fresh and hilarious, especially when its anarchical sense of humor, complete with a total debasement of all authority figures, is examined. And let’s not forget that incredibly catchy, and Oscar-nominated, theme song by Ray Parker, Jr.

“I was a huge fan when I was a kid,” Henry says.

Bernard’s memories are similarly fond.

“It was just a lot of fun to see those guys out there, catching ghosts. It’s just something that you wanted to be since you were little,” he says. “When you get this opportunity to do it, you go do it.”

Their childhood love of the films was the impetus behind the creation of Ecto. When Henry received a hand-me-down, white 1998 Subaru Outback, it was an almost immediate revelation for these self-proclaimed nerds.

“I remember going down and getting the user’s manual out, and there was an inch-long drawing of the car from the side,” Henry says. “We blew it up with a copier and used crayons to color in all the bits.”

But the first remodel attempt wasn’t successful.

“We used some pots and pans and some giant foam fins,” Henry admits. “It all came off the car at 40 miles per hour, before I could get to school.”

It wasn’t until a mutual friend, “a prop-builder guy who owns several of the original Michael Keaton Batman cowls,” prompted them to follow through with the project that they tried again, inspiring them to set a completion deadline of Halloween 2006. But, Bernard says, it wasn’t as easy as it seemed.

“A lot of our time was just spent across from each other, going, ‘How can we do this?’ and ‘How will this [piece] stay on?’”

To make deadline, Bernard and Austin, along with friend Vincent Bridgers, worked on the car day and night, eventually investing more than $1,400 in the project. That figure includes two sets of $400 light bars, as well as smaller-but-numerous PVC pipes, spray paint and electrical cables for the intricate light system, which was set up by friend Logan Rojas.

The final piece of the spectral puzzle was the famous Ghostbusters logo and signage for the Ecto. They took the job to Action Signs’ then-employee Melissa Crompton, one of the few people outside the Ghostbusters circle to make the Ectomobile a reality.

“I thought it was a pretty cool idea,” she says. “We had to tweak and tweak, but we had a lot of fun doing it,” adding that it was one of the most bizarre requests she’s ever received. “I’ve had some strange ones, but I definitely have to say it’s my favorite.”

The Fort Collins Ghostbusters became official on Sept. 23, 2006, more than a month before their Halloween deadline.


“bustin’ makes me feel good!”

For the next month, the Fort Collins Ghostbusters invested every free moment into making a huge splash that Halloween. Not only was the Ectomobile garnering attention, the crew was now making public appearances in full Ghostbusters regalia, many of their props constructed from cheap materials, using blueprints and instructions found on gbprops.com.

Then disaster struck.

Five days before Halloween, Henry was rear-ended by an ice truck in Old Town Fort Collins.

“When I heard about it, I was in Cheyenne,” Bernard says. “Kevin called me and said, ‘Uh ... I just got rear-ended.’ When I get home, it didn’t look nearly as bad as I had expected. The roof rack was in good condition still, so that was fortunate.”

But Henry wasn’t so relieved.

“The first thing that is going through my mind is, ‘How fast does insurance work?’ I’ve never really been in an accident before, you know. Is it even possible that I could have this thing replaced before Halloween?”

They couldn’t. While not a total bust, Halloween was still a bit of an embarrassment. The Ecto had a shattered back window and obvious rear damage. Luckily, when the insurance money finally came through, it was enough to rebuild the car exactly.

The guys purchased a newer-model Subaru, setting out with the goal of making it more efficient, not necessarily bigger and better. Investing another $6,000 for the upgrade and new graphics, this latest incarnation of the Ecto goes beyond a Halloween prank.

“There’s a huge fan base of guys who build cars into Ectomobiles, and there’s kind of the thrill to outdo these guys,” Henry says. “These people who have, you know, Super Soakers on top of Pathfinders, and we’re just like, ‘We can do better than that.’”

“When we started the MySpace page [myspace.com/coghostbusters], it took on a life of its own,” Bernard adds. “People now couldn’t wait to see it. It was nice to see them get something out of it.”

“who ya gonna call?”

When the Dec. 21 blizzard struck, Fort Collins’ Ghostbusters became true heroes.

Both Austin and Bernard were working at Game On in the mall that afternoon. Like most businesses, the mall shops closed early. Not wanting to be housebound, the two friends set out for an afternoon of sledding, but instead, found themselves towing and pulling stranded cars from the quickly rising snow banks.

“We showed up on Remington Street, and there was a RAV4 that was stuck,” Henry remembers. “We just showed up and, in like 30 seconds, we had them hooked up to the car, pulled them out, and then we disappeared.”

Most of the locals they helped probably didn’t have a keen cultural reference for the Ghostbusters.

“The fun thing is that most of the people we helped out were older folks,” Henry says. “For most people, I bet it didn’t hit them until they were driving home and they were like, ‘What was that?’”

Bernard doesn’t consider their acts heroic, just good deeds that anyone would do with the right resources.

“I don’t know if it’s any more heroic than anything that anyone else did,” he says. “It was nice because we have such an iconic car, everyone recognizes us, and the recognition for it is nice, but it was just the right thing to do.”

“The thing that I try to do in my life is lead by example,” Henry says. “Some people were like, ‘Can I pay you for this?’ and we’re like, ‘You know, the next time you see someone who’s stuck, help them out.’”