I am positively obsessed with the movie Ghostbusters. So, naturally, when the movie eventually became the cartoon The Real Ghostbusters, I was glued to the television every damn Saturday when it came on.

And then one day…out of nowhere…what the hell is THIS? I had just turned on the cartoon and…did that guy named “Clark Ashton” just say “Necronomicon”? He sure as hell did! And thus begins “The Collect Call of Cathulhu,” truly the best episode of The Real Ghostbusters EVER for its metric tonne of Lovecraftian references.

Below you’ll find the entire episode split into three separate YouTube videos. Keep your eyes and ears peeled for shoggoths, spawn of Cthulhu, Weird Tales, the Book of Dzyan (mispronounced as “The Book of DYzan”), the Pnakotic Manuscripts, and many other HPL/”Cthulhu Mythos” references. The episode was written by Michael Reaves, who may be familiar to Lovecraft afficionados for his work co-editing the HPL-meets-Sherlock-Holmes anthology Shadows Over Baker Street, a generally sub-par collection which every cephalophile must nonetheless have in his/her/its library for Neil Gaiman’s amazing story “A Study in Emerald” (available as a downloadable PDF at the preceding link).

Anyway, on with the Ghostbusters VS. Cthulhu action!

Needless to say, this episode of The Real Ghostbusters has been lurking in the back of my mind as I’ve been writing “City of Pillars.” Particularly perceptive readers may spot quite a few references to this cartoon in the story…especially the next two chapters, which I’ll have online this Friday. In the meantime, I hope this bit of eldritch humour has whetted your appetite for Lovecraftian monsters destroying New York (or, well, attempting to) while I’m still beating these goddamned words together!