Upon arrival, we were greeted by a rather pompous manager. Apparently, he had dealt with the guys before. I missed most of the conversation because I was ogling the Doritos vending machine in the lobby. Not a machine that sold various snacks, including the delicious corn chips, but a contraption that only offered Doritos. It was gnarly!

Anyway, we chased Slimer throughout the hotel, using our PKE Meters to guide us.

The PKE Meter is a neat little device that detects paranormal anomalies. The indicators resemble a bar graph and spike in the center as you near a target. The rectangular bars are usually green, but will become red if in the vicinity of a hidden spook, or blue if near a cursed artifact. We found 42 of these treasures scattered about the city, including a Stay Puft doll, a portrait of Eleanor Twitty, an archangel’s gallbladder, a set of singing slim jars, possessed bell-bottom jeans, and a Swiss death clock. The strangest object was a shiny disc with the Ghostbusters logo on it. Seemed kind of futuristic. We tried putting it in our VCR, but nothing happened. Now we need a new VCR.

The PKE Meter also provides valuable information on individual paranormal entities. Scanning an unknown spirit will expand Tobin’s Spirit Guide, a handy catalog that lists weaknesses, attacks, categories and histories. This data allows us to tailor a strategy for each individual creature.

Peter and I eventually found Slimer in the hotel ballroom. Wouldn’t you know it; the green glutton was having a snack, courtesy of the Rodriguez bar mitzvah.

Now I am all for sharing, but you don’t touch another person’s food. That is just common courtesy. I would rather give up a kidney than a bite of a buffalo chicken sandwich.

Things got a little rough, but we were able to shackle Slimer in the end. Unfortunately, the ballroom had seen better days, much to the chagrin of the weasel-like manager.

This was the mere beginning of our eerie adventure that took us to a handful of locales, including Times Square, The New York Public Library and Central Park.

Actually, adventure is a mild description. Joy ride through hell would be more appropriate.

We battled spooks of all shapes and sizes. Some were merely deceased bellhops, construction workers and cooks, but others were the size of buildings. I nearly soiled my pants when Stay Puft started rampaging through the city. What’s more, we actually fought something called the Spiderwitch. Never learned about that one in public school.

Of course, none of these otherworldly beasts was a match for our impressive technology.

The Proton Pack is a pretty badass piece of equipment, but the good doctors decided to outfit it with a few enhancements to increase its versatility.

The ghost-freezing Stasis Stream and the rapid-fire Overload Pulse are pretty neat additions, but are far less useful than the slime add-on, which is used to close paranormal portals, open blocked doorways, and create slime tethers. Slime tethers are thin, green ropes that can pull items closer together. For instance, if I were to attach one end to a spook, and the other to a wall, that spirit would slam against the barrier.

With that said, the explosive Boson Darts rule all.

Stay Puft was foolish enough to test the might of the Boson Darts, and his big posterior got knocked off the side of a building.

I was a little disappointed to see that the veterans had lost some of their skills. Or at least, they seemed to be a bit rusty. I was constantly reviving them, which often left me open to attack. This was really frustrating because I would save them, but then get incapacitated by an attacking spirit. Even worse, the veterans often took their sweet time to revive a fallen comrade. I was the novice, so I didn’t say anything, but the other guys seemed like shells of their former selves.

All things considered, my first job was pretty exciting. Sometimes, things got so crazy, that time itself felt like it was slowing down. I can’t be sure, but on a couple of occasions, I think time actually did come to a halt. Weird.

Strange temporal occurrences aside, I had a ton of fun. I went to another dimension, met Eleanor Twitty, and fought some Union and Confederate ghosts at the Civil War exhibit at the Museum. Really, what else could a guy ask for? Well, some sleep sounds good. That was the strangest seven and a half hours of my life.

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