The Ghost Extinguisher: Frank Gelett Burgess

by Gelett Burgess

This short story must have been the inspiration for the popular movie "Ghost Busters" (1984). The humorist-author here tells the tale of a scientist-philosopher who invents devices to capture ghosts and sets up a business of eradicating them from haunted houses. If you've seen the movie, you will recognize the resemblance in this excerpt:

"My assistants with the extinguishers stood firm, and although almost unnerved by the sight, they summoned their courage, and directed simultaneous streams of formaldybrom into the struggling mass of fantoms. As soon as my mind returned, I busied myself with the huge tanks I had prepared for use as receivers. These were fitted with a mechanism similar to that employed in portable forges, by which the heavy vapor was sucked off. Luckily the night was calm, and I was enabled to fill a dozen cylinders with the precipitated ghosts. The segregation of individual forms was, of course, impossible, so that men and horses were mingled in a horrible mixture of fricasseed spirits. I intended subsequently to empty the soup into a large reservoir and allow the separate specters to reform according to the laws of spiritual cohesion."

The ghost-capturing business was going well until one customer refused to pay after his ghosts were safely incarcerated in canisters. The ghost wrangler decided to get revenge, but unfortunately for him, things didn't go as he planned.

The story was published in Cosmopolitan Magazine, April, 1905.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Short Stories, Humor, Horror

24 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1905

About the author

Frank Gelett Burgess was an artist, art critic, poet, author and humorist. An important figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary renaissance of the 1890s, particularly through his iconoclastic little magazine, The Lark, he is best known as a writer of nonsense verse, such as "The Purple Cow", and for introducing French modern art to the United States in an essay titled "The Wild Men of Paris." He was the author of the popular Goops books, and he coined the term "blurb."

Reviews

[Denise · Rating 4 out of 5]

You know the story of a team of men dealing with a plague of ghosts by capturing them with special guns and storing them until they get too much to handle? This is something like the old “Ghostbusters” movie from 1984, but this story actually goes all the way back to 1905.

San Francisco has a growing ghost problem arising out of an increasingly high murder rate. The narrator comes into contact with one Hoku Yamanochi whose “ghost powder” is able to turn the spirit into material. It can then be sucked into a container and kept. The end of the story is remarkably similar to the movie.

Please read the rest of the review here.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

GHOST-EXTINGUISHER!

Hurray for the original story that inspired the classic Ghostbusters movie.

[Can · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was fun to read the piece which ultimately became the inspiration for The Ghostbusters.

[Matthew Moes]

I read the project gutenberg.org / feedbooks.com edition

[for-much-deliberation ... · Rating 4 out of 5]

A scientist invents a machine to capture ghosts and opens a ghost eradication business. He intends to capture the ghost and 'reform' them somehow, then a client finds out his intentions...