Troubled by ghosts? Pesky poltergeists causing trouble during dinner parties? Then you may be interested in buying your very own Ghostbusters uniform and proton pack.
Seems this fellow decided he wanted to be a Ghostbuster for Halloween last year and wanted his costume to be as accurate to the movie as possible. Luckily he happens to know a bunch of folks who are big into recreating movie props. With a little bit of their help and a lot of research and hard work on his part he put together the ultimate GB costume complete with a detailed Proton Pack that not only lights up, but plays back sound samples from the movie. How friggin’ cool is that?!? He didn’t stop there as in addition to the sound effects you can play back two incidental music tracks from the film as well as the full theme song. Plus there’s a recreation of the Mt500 hand-held radio used in the film that plays back samples of the radio chatter heard in the film. It’s enough to send a geek into spasms!
So what are we talking about here? This get-up incorporates these features:
The pack is constructed from metal, fiberglass, resin, and various other high-quality materials. This pack is exact in dimensions to the filming props, and all stickers are professionally printed on vinyl or reflective mylar, to accurately replicate the original prop. They are weatherproof. All hardware is real (clippard valves, Dale resistors, hoses, and brass fixtures) with the exception of two machined metal replicas and two resin elbows, painted with metallic-flaked enamel. They are near-indistinguishable from the originals. All mounted to an aluminum “motherboard (as the originals were) which is mounted to an Alice Pack (with correct-era shoulder and waist straps). The pack alone weighs 35 pounds, and runs on eight D-Cell batteries that feed the pack, wand, and belt “circuit board”. Now you know why Akroyd slouched!
Օ Full lights, accurate to the film. The pack features Four cyclotron lights that progress clockwise, a super-bright power meter behind thick blue plexi, and the wand has an amazing light system that sports two-mode bar meter (one for standby and one for active) as well as screen-accurate static and blinking lights and two superbright large leds in the wand tip. One orange and one white, that flicker randomly, simulating the wand’s ribbon burst! Don’t cross the streams, hehe. Lights are activated by the three toggle switches located on the wand, which easily slides off the custom machined metal brackets (just like in the film). One activates the pack lights/sound system (which automatically triggers the start up pack noise, as seen in the movie linked above), one activates the wand lights, and the third activates the belt lights, which cycle through their colors. This is not seen in the film, but I wanted to add something electronic to the belt prop.
Features a 12 volt sound system (with car amplifier) that produces thunderous sounds! These are: Proton Pack start-up, pack-hum (that loops continuously), two Neutrona Wand blast sound effects, two “incidental score” tracks, and the full theme song! I wore this to two Halloween parties last year, and the crowd response is simply phenomenal. You can literally startle the room when you switch the pack on. (the bottom of the Proton Pack acts as an effective subwoofer, and the audio projects outward between the pack’s back plate and the military harness for an unmuffled clear signal. The pack startup sound is automatically triggered when you switch on the pack, and the remaining six sounds are triggered by a hidden button located in the tubing at the wand’s end (you can palm the wire/button, and activate the sound effects at your leisure - great fun, especially the “incidental score” stuff!). No one has a pack that does all this.
Օ High quality professional/military flightsuit, accurate armpads, accurate patches (you may wish to provide your own name patch - I can give you the info that led me to mine), accurate belts, Mt500 Radio (gutted and modified with sounds from the film!!), and correct Paratrooper boots. You provide your own black t-shirt. All soft goods were dyed to match the film (a curious shade that appears gray or khaki depending upon light) and were only worn twice, and are still mint. The flightsuit fits up to a 44” waist before things would get too uncomfy. I’m 5’11” with a 38” waist (sigh) and it’s a wee baggy on me. Boots are 11, mens.
His minimum reserve on the auction is $2,000 and the current offer stands at $506 so it’s hard to say if he’s actually going to be able to sell this thing off, but he’s only trying to sell it so he can have some money for a down payment on a house. You can see a QuickTime movie of the pack in action here and read his build diary here.
I’m enough of a geek that if I were rich I’d buy the suit outright and I’ve always wished I had the skills to build stuff like this myself. Course if I had that kind of skill I’d have all sorts of movie replica costumes including the obligatory Stormtrooper suit.
Posted on 05/12/2004 at 12:42 AM 
Posted on 05/12/2004 at 12:45 AM 
Posted on 03/08/2008 at 03:40 PM 
Not too sure whether is this on topic but when you mentioned about Ghostbusters I thought of UFO and this story which I just read came to mind.
Anywho, Les, I sense that this is the sort of stuff that you like to read about:
Mexican military pilots film UFOs
The interesting thing as stated in the article is “Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don’t perpetuate frauds.”
Check out the link for a picture.
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040511.wufos0511/BNStory/Front/
Mexico City — Mexican air force pilots filmed 11 unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defence Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday.
A videotape made widely available to the news media Tuesday shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky.
The lights were filmed March 5 by pilots using infrared equipment. They appeared to be flying at an altitude of about 3,500 metres and allegedly surrounded the air force jet as it conducted routine anti-drug trafficking vigilance in Campeche. Only three of the objects showed up on the plane’s radar.
“Was I afraid? Yes,” said radar operator Lieutenant German Marin in a taped interview made public Tuesday.
“A little afraid because we were facing something that had never happened before.”
“I couldn’t say what it was ... but I think they’re completely real,” added Lt. Mario Adrian Vazquez, the infrared equipment operator.
Lt. Vazquez insisted there was no way to alter the recorded images.
The plane’s captain, Major Magdaleno Castanon, said the military jets chased the lights “and I believe they could feel we were pursuing them.”
When the jets stopped following the objects, they disappeared, he said.
A Defence Department spokesman confirmed Tuesday the videotape was filmed by members of the Mexican air force. The spokesman declined to comment further and spoke on customary condition of anonymity.
The video was first aired on national television Monday night then again at a news conference Tuesday by Jaime Maussan, a Mexican investigator who has dedicated the last 10 years to studying UFOs.
“This is historic news,” Mr. Maussan said.
“Hundreds of videos (of UFOs) exist, but none had the backing of the armed forces of any country.... The armed forces don’t perpetuate frauds.”
Mr. Maussan said Secretary of Defence Gen. Ricardo Vega Garcia gave him the video April 22.