Ghostbusters Codexery

Ghost Trap

The portable box the Ghostbusters use to catch a ghost once a proton stream has it pinned.

The ghost trap is one of the three signature pieces of Ghostbusters equipment, alongside the proton pack and the P.K.E. meter. Introduced in the 1984 film and carried through every later Ghostbusters story, it is the device used to capture a ghost that the proton packs have subdued, so that it can be taken back to the firehouse and emptied into the containment unit.

Background

Traps are everywhere in the later films. In Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Egon Spengler captures one of Gozer's Terror Dogs in Ivo Shandor's mine outside Summerville and hides the trap under the floorboards of his farmhouse before he dies; his granddaughter Phoebe finds it, and when she, Gary Grooberson and Podcast tamper with it they release Vinz Clortho. The children later discover that Egon's 'farm' is really an array of ghost traps buried across a dirt field, which Callie activates to capture Gozer.

In Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire the brass orb containing Garraka turns out to be an ancient apotropaic trap made by the Firemasters, and in the finale Ray Stantz and the veteran Ghostbusters reconfigure the whole containment unit to work as one enormous ghost trap. Between the films the Ecto-1 gained a Remote Trap Vehicle, a trap mounted on a radio-controlled car that can be steered and triggered from a distance.

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