One of the goofiest ghosts ever faced by the Ghostbusters seemed like it would be an easy grab for the professional specter-chasers, though after it proves to be more formidable than a literal god, this ghost shows that it is too threatening to appear in the movies. The most powerful weapons the Ghostbusters have against ghosts and even supernatural elder beings is their proton packs. When the Ghostbusters cross the streams of energy blasted from the proton packs, they create a force that is so powerful that it has the potential to either break them down to the molecular level or defeat even the strongest of threats. However, when the Ghostbusters face off against this goofy villain, the ghost doesn’t even give them a chance to unleash their greatest attack, making it immensely threatening.
In The Real Ghostbusters #53 by John Freeman, Brian Williamson, and Dave Harwood, there is a Ghostbusters story called “Winston’s Diary: A Day in the Life of Winston Zeddemore” which is, as it seems, a diary entry written from the point of view of the Ghostbuster Winston. In the diary entry, Winston describes the Ghostbusters’ encounter with the goofiest, most radical ghost the team has ever come across, a skateboarding specter known as the Wheel Ghost who took over an abandoned building-turned-skatepark.
The Wheel Ghost was classified as a Class 2 Free-Roamer, meaning that it isn’t the most threatening ghost on the surface. However, what makes this specter so scary is its speed, and the intelligence it has when using it to fend off the spirit hunters. The skateboarding ghost zooms around the Ghostbusters without them being able to catch it on their monitors until after it had come and gone, and when it did so the ghost broke nearly all of their proton packs before they had the chance to use them against the undead skater. This ghost was not only able to destroy the one weapon the Ghostbusters needed to secure a ghost for capture, but it was aware enough to know what to attack to ensure its own supernatural survival. That level of foresight was not shown by the eldritch god Gozer in the first Ghostbusters film, and since Gozer didn’t destroy the proton packs, the god’s fate was sealed. If this skater ghost was in the movie, the Ghostbusters would have been vanquished before they even had a chance at success.
While the skater ghost in this issue starts off strong in his battle against the Ghostbusters, it doesn’t follow through, leading to a pretty embarrassing defeat. It is clear that this particular specter was more interested in fun mischief than world-ending villainy as it destroyed every proton pack but one. The Ghostbusters elected that Peter, the one with the remaining pack, hop on a skateboard himself to chase down and capture the skater ghost. The ridiculous plan works and the ghost is vanquished mostly due to its own fun-loving nature, but if the ghost was more serious about taking out the Ghostbusters, it proved that it could easily do so.
The Wheel Ghost destroys the Ghostbusters most powerful weapons in a flash, leaving only one left so he could play with the ghost hunters a little longer. While the ghost is more of a prankster-punk than a poltergeist, it proved it has the Ghostbusters, making this goofy spirit way too powerful to appear in the movies.
