Each holiday season, I like to look back on a different classic cartoon centered on that holiday. For some reason or another, I don't really feel like it's the holiday season until I watch a particular movie or cartoon special, and nothing makes me feel more like I've gone back to my childhood than classic Saturday morning cartoons from yesteryear.
Each year, I try to find a fairly popular yet often-forgotten cartoon to cover. It all started with "A Cartoon Christmas," then expanded into "Creepy Cartoons" for Halloween, and I've even done a Thanksgiving one or two. I'm still workshopping a catchy title for that series, however...
When it comes to the spooky holiday, I have already written about Garfield's Halloween Adventure, the 1983 Disney Channel compilation A Disney Halloween, and Disney's 1952 animated short Trick or Treat.
This year I wanted something with a little more proton-pack punch, if you wheeeeeel (say that in your own Dusty Rhodes voice).
If Garfield's Halloween special starts cute and then takes a left turn into pirate-ghost terror, The Real Ghostbusters did the opposite of easing you in. It opened the firehouse doors on Halloween night, let a pumpkin-headed spirit of the holiday loose in New York City, and then asked a Saturday-morning audience of young children to sit through a scary story about time stopping so October 31st would never end.
Watch the Entire Episode, courtesy of Saturdays of Yesterday, on YouTube!
The Real Ghostbusters premiered on ABC on September 13, 1986, two years after Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters became a pop-culture earthquake in theaters. Columbia and DiC Entertainment had a genuine problem on their hands. The movie was funny, filthy in spots, and full of adult asides, so a Saturday-morning cartoon could not simply photocopy the original.
What they did instead still impresses any fan of either series.
They kept several key elements: the same four guys, the firehouse, the Ecto-1, the proton packs, and even Slimer (albeit much more cuddly).
Then they built a weekly monster-of-the-week cartoon that was genuinely supernatural without becoming as cheap and hokey as a Scooby-Doo episode.
Lorenzo Music voiced Peter Venkman, who, if you're a fan of Garfield, should ring a very loud bell. Music was already Garfield when Real Ghostbusters started, and he brought the same sarcastic, lazy cadence to Peter that he brought to the lasagna-loving cat. Lorenzo Music voiced many characters over the years, including Tummi Gummi on Gummi Bears, and various roles in Disney Afternoon classics TaleSpin and Darkwing Duck.
Bill Murray, who played Peter Venkman in the Ghostbusters films, complained that his cartoon character sounded too much like Garfield, and Lorenzo Music was replaced at the start of Season Three.
His replacement was none other than Dave Coulier, best known as Uncle Joey on Full House.
Ironically, Bill Murray later voiced Garfield in the 2004 live-action Garfield movie.
The great Frank Welker voiced both Ray Stantz and Slimer. Welker voiced Fred since the start of Scooby-Doo in 1969, and later took over the role of Scooby-Doo himself. Coincidentally, Welker would take over the role of Garfield in 2007 and has voiced the fat cat since.
Egon was portrayed by Maurice LaMarche, already building the deadpan scientist voice that would follow him for decades. LaMarche may also be best known to kids of the '90s as the voice of The Brain from Kids' WB's iconic Pinky and the Brain, among many others.
Winston was voiced by none other than Arsenio Hall. The Real Ghostbusters came a few years before The Arsenio Hall Show made him a certified late-night star, but he was already well known through films and TV. Hall was replaced by Buster Jones in 1988 through the end of the series (and into the follow-up Extreme Ghostbusters).
The show ran in one form or another from 1986 to 1991. For a lot of kids who were slightly too young for the 1984 movie in theaters, this was THEIR version of Ghostbusters. The toys were everywhere, and the theme song was inescapable.
And once a year, when the leaves turned glorious shades of orange and red, and the grocery stores put out the bags of fun-size candy, ABC and syndication packages would dust off the Halloween episodes.
"When Halloween Was Forever" is the first of those. It is the 8th episode from Season One, originally airing Saturday, November 1, 1986, on ABC.
I have to chuckle when I think about it. They make a Halloween episode and then air it the day after Halloween. However, if "Halloween was Forever," the day after Halloween would be a good day to begin "forever." It kind of makes sense.
In syndication years later, it became an October staple, which is where most of us first saw it.
The episode credits J. Michael Straczynski with writing, years before he wrote for the hit series Babylon 5.
The score, like so much of the first season, came from the Haim Saban and Shuki Levy factory that also supplied Inspector Gadget, He-Man, and a pile of other '80s toons. If a certain synthesized song in this episode makes you think of another Saturday-morning show, it's no accident. It's similar to how Step by Step, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, and Full House all have very similar theme songs (all were written by Jesse Frederick and Bennett Salvay).
The title, "When Halloween Was Forever," does a little work, sounding like a fairy tale looking backward, as if there really was a night that refused to end and we are only now telling the story. Somewhat genius storytelling for a children's show, and it allows for some subconscious thinking, even for us youngsters watching back in the '80s.
The villain in this episode is Samhain (pronounced Sam-hane). In Celtic tradition, Samhain marks the end of harvest season and the thinning of the veil between the living and the dead. It is one of the historical roots of what is now known as Halloween.
The cartoon, being a cartoon and all, turns the festival into a living, breathing being. In this case, it's a towering, pumpkin-headed spirit of the night who wants his holiday to last until the end of time. Fairly understandable, although like any monster, he goes about it the wrong way.
Samhain is voiced by William E. Martin. Martin gives the pumpkin-headed spirit a formal, almost theatrical growl, which works out quite well. Samhain does not sound like a regular class-5 floater. Rather, he sounds like something older than the firehouse or the City itself.
The episode opens as a UBN News van arrives and parks near Ecto-1. Reporter Cynthia Crawford tells viewers it's just hours before Halloween Eve; she adds that the Ghostbusters are "fittingly on the job."
Inside the building, the classic theme music hits as bright neon lights flash, and the Ghostbusters trap another ghost. The Ghostbusters are exhausted, having fought ghosts all day, as Cynthia informs viewers they've been fighting another in one of many increasing hauntings hitting the city as Halloween gets closer and closer.
Peter does a quick sidewalk interview and insists everything is under control, which is exactly how you know it is not.
Back at headquarters, the Ghostbusters discuss the current workload, and Ray complains cases are getting harder and harder the closer Halloween gets. Egon has been buried in research, and Venkman enlists Slimer to get attention.
Peter threatens Egon that he'll tell the green little goblin that there is a cupcake in Egon's socks, and Egon caves. He tells the gang he's noticed the PKE readings have been increasing, but have really spiked since two weeks earlier, when seventh-century ruins from Ireland arrived at a New York museum.
Ray immediately fills us in with a little history lesson (and an explainer for the rest of the story) that Halloween got its start in seventh-century Ireland. He connects the artifacts that just arrived to the days when days got shorter, nights got longer, and things got scarier.
Egon finishes the story and says that Irish and Scottish immigrants brought it to America, and we began calling it Halloween. Egon suggests that the ruins and Halloween are connected to something that really happened long ago, and those ruins are why everything has been going so wrong lately.
Winston wants to go check them out, but Peter would rather stay at the firehouse.
The show cuts to the museum as two goblins sneak in, chanting the name "Samhain." They draw an infinity symbol on an ancient relic, releasing the spirit of Halloween. He flies off to gather (what the episode later calls) his midnight army. As Samhain flies off, everything he touches comes to life.
As he flies, he awakens the face of a clock, a gargoyle, and apples that attack a man's face amid a Halloween party while he bobs for apples.
The goblins run away, headed deep into the city to make trouble.
The goblins are classic '80s cartoon henchmen and remind me of miniature versions of the ogres in Gummi Bears. They are ugly, short, and provide enough slapstick and just enough creepy to be kid-friendly.
Meanwhile, back at the firehouse, Winston asks Egon and Ray what they have been building, and Egon answers, "a Spectral Differentializer." Oh, I make several of those in my spare time...
Ray thought it was a toaster. Rather than ask for an explanation, Winston turns back to his game of checkers with Slimer.
At the door, Janine hands out candy to trick-or-treaters. She opens the door to the goblins from the museum and thinks they have wonderful, authentic costumes. Instead, they blow a strong wind in her face and send Janine flying. The holiday has gone from cute to a big problem.
The Ghostbusters run off after the goblins while Egon says the PKE meter is off the scale in a city-wide manifestation. Ray says nobody has called anything in all night because the phone lines must be dead... or possessed.
They head off into the night in a New York that is suddenly overflowing with ghosts.
Samhain stands atop a skyscraper, surrounded by circling spooks, chanting and asking for all ghosts to come to him.
Back at the firehouse, Slimer tries to ignore the chanting requests, but is drawn by the incantation. Unfortunately for Slimer, Samhain smells the humans on him and calls him a traitor to his own kind. He gives him the choice every evil villain gives his reluctant sidekick: join him or pay the price.
Slimer is dragged into the crowd of spirits, and for a few minutes, it looks like the Ghostbusters have lost their lovable green roommate.
Out in the streets, the Ghostbusters collect ghosts one at a time, but discover time is beginning to slow down. After a clown reports the news and they set a few more ghost traps, the four ghost-stoppers run into the final boss (of this episode).
Samhain asks why they are harming his "little ones," but Peter brags, and old Sammy responds with bolts of black lightning and introduces himself, prompting Ray to remind us that Halloween began as the feast of Samhain, a creature of the night no one could stop. Samhain seems pleased to be remembered after being trapped in stone for several centuries.
Unfortunately, he announces he has no plans to leave. He has stopped time, and Halloween will last forever.
Egon shines a flashlight on him, and the light appears to hurt the evil creature. He recoils and flees, and Egon decides they need to turn on all of the lights in the city... just as the power goes out. Egon comes up with a new plan, asks the guys for a distraction, and runs off.
Back to Egon, who starts arranging giant construction spotlights while Ray, Winston, and Peter collect ghosts as they make their way closer and closer to Samhain. On the rooftop, they find Slimer is being held as a hostage. The Ghostbusters beg Slimer to leave Samhain and return to them, but he seems under a spell... until Ray yells, "Pizza!"
Slimer, being Slimer, makes a break for it and slobbers all over his friends.
Down on the streets below, Egon has rigged the spotlights to his proton pack (remember the power is out), and the spotlights stun Samhain. The proton blasters and a well-timed trap from Winston do the rest.
Back at the firehouse, they dump the trap into the Containment Unit. As they peer in through the viewing glass, Samhain sits calmly, waiting for the next several thousand years to pass until he gets another chance to escape.
The lights go out, and the Ghostbusters are frightened as a floating jack-o'-lantern comes down the basement steps.
It turns out to just be Slimer wearing a pumpkin as the credits begin to roll.
This was still very early Real Ghostbusters, before the later seasons sanded off the edges and the Slimer-and-kids hour took over the brand. The four personalities similar to the films are locked in and clear in this episode.
Peter is the skeptic who thinks Halloween is kid stuff until a pumpkin-headed monster proves otherwise. Lorenzo Music makes every line sound as if it was muttered from a La-Z-Boy recliner. It's the same spirit he gave to Garfield, and I cannot hear Peter in this episode without hearing the Garfield Halloween Adventure.
If you grew up in the late '80s, those two voices were the same part of every Halloween season.
Ray is the believer. He knows the Celtic backstory and is delighted, in the way only Ray was, that even when the story is trying to kill him, it's exciting. Welker's version of Ray is warm while somehow making Slimer, a hungry, sweet-toothed, slimy green ghost, a kind and lovable character.
Egon is why the episode works as more than just a monster romp. I read somewhere that Maurice LaMarche plays him as a man annoyed that the universe keeps confirming his worst hypotheses, and I think that's perfect. "Sometimes I think the universe just waits for me to get cocky" is an Egon line from this era that could have been written yesterday.
Winston is basically the audience. Arsenio Hall doesn't get as many quips and one-liners as Peter, but he asks the practical questions and keeps the team pointed in the right direction. In a story about a mythical Halloween spirit, you need someone who still sounds like a blue-collar working guy from New York who talks straight and doesn't have time for nonsense.
That type of New Yorker is mostly long gone, by the way.
Samhain himself is the reason people still talk about this episode. The design turns Halloween iconography into a person: a pumpkin head, a skeletal presence, a voice that belongs in a haunted house. He is not a ghost the team can just hose down in the first act. He is the entire holiday.
What I like most, writing this in the same series as Garfield and Disney Halloween episodes, is that the show didn't invent a random pumpkin demon and call it a day. They took a real festival, inflated it into a personality, and gave that personality a goal that makes sense emotionally.
Samhain is not trying to rule the world. He is trying to keep the one night that belongs to him from being over.
Halloween has always had that double life. During the day and evening, it's all about children, and costumes and candy. After dark, however, it becomes more adult and dark. More sinister. The suspicion is that the veil between good and evil, and between this life and the spiritual, is very, very thin.
The stopped clocks are the episode's best visual metaphor. Halloween is a night we try to stretch on purpose. Kids want one more house and one more handful of candy. Most adults want one more hour of watching their children enjoy the holiday... or one more drink at the costume party.
Time is the enemy of any holiday. If you stop time, the holiday wins and we can enjoy it a little bit longer.
In watching the episode today in 2026, nobody is going to confuse first-season DiC animation with a theatrical Disney film. The budget was what it was, but that's half the charm. The episode is full of old-school holiday atmosphere. New York is all jack-o'-lanterns, brownstone silhouettes, and a dark sky full of colorful goblins.
The first season also had a habit of dropping in songs from the official Real Ghostbusters soundtrack album. This episode features several recognizable earworms that connect the film and cartoon in a way that will leave you humming hours later.
Samhain did come back, however.
In 1987 (October 31 to be exact), the episode "Halloween II 1/2" shows two of Samhain's goblins slip into a firehouse Halloween party and free him from the Containment Unit. He turns the Ghostbusters headquarters into a fortress. He grabs the Junior Ghostbusters and throws up a shield only spirits can cross. Light is no longer enough to stun him, and the team has to collapse the firehouse by targeting a keystone.
It's a sequel in the old-fashioned sense of same villain, higher stakes, and now kids are in danger.
The third Halloween episode, "The Halloween Door," from two years later, in 1989, doesn't use Samhain at all. By then, the show had several cast tweaks and was using the name Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters.
Taken together, all three episodes are an accidental argument about how Halloween cartoons grew up in the late '80s. The first is a myth, the second is literally a home invasion, and the third is basically a moral lesson.
The cartoon series holds up next to the movie, even though the former was built for Saturday morning and the toy aisle. It understands that Ghostbusters only works if the scary thing is actually a little bit scary.
I was only two years old when this episode first aired, so I obviously did not catch the ABC premiere. I met The Real Ghostbusters the way a lot of late-'80s and early-'90s kids did: through afternoon syndication, toy commercials, a VHS tape from the library.
These days the episode lives on official Ghostbusters animated collections and rotates through whatever streaming window currently has the Sony catalog. It is a little over twenty minutes, and you can easily pop it on after dinner and still have time to leave the lights on.
What I notice now, watching it as a parent, is how carefully it aims the fear. Samhain is imposing, and the stopped clocks are unsettling. Slimer getting sucked into a ghost army is a genuine "I don't think I like this feeling" moment for a kid. Nobody gets hurt in a way that lingers, and the team wins with an oversized flashlight and a rather lame pizza joke about a friendly ghost.
If you are building a Creepy Cartoons stack this season, park this one between Garfield's boat ride to the haunted island and Disney's Skeleton Dance.
Just keep a flashlight handy. Egon would insist.
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