Note: In the movies and the cartoon, Winston's last name is spelled 'Zeddmore'. There was a Tops trading card in the 1970's that spelled his name as 'Zeddemore', with the extra 'e' in the middle.

background:

Winston is strongly Christian and thinks 'Jesus is neat'. He has a girlfriend. When he was younger, he worked on his father's construction crew. A rift grew between himself and his father when he joined the Ghostbusters, it was worked out later when they were captured by the Keeper of Lost Objects and his father saw that ghosts were real. Winston may be going to night school to earn his college degree. Even thought he started out as an employee of the Ghostbusters he may be a full partner before 1-2 years have gone by.

There is lots of magic in his background. He had a magician ancestor who defeated the Undying One, a powerful demon, hundreds of years ago in Africa. His grandmother used to tell him stories of Santeria (SP), magic, and Africa. His family were the keepers of the key to the Keeper of Lost Objects kingdom — the two parts of the key were given to the Keeper by Winston and his father to save the guys and set the Keeper free.

He had at least one tour of Viet Nam in the army as a helicopter pilot. He worked in a garage as a mechanic. He also worked at his father's construction company, and walked the girders on tall buildings.

He likes the Panthers, a baseball team that never wins.

He is very level headed and down to earth. He keeps the other guys from going off the deep end with their experiments.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

background:

He was raised by his parents until they died (accident, illness, robbery, or violent crime, we're never told). He went to live with his Aunt Lois, a very wealthy widow.

Aunt Lois loves Ray dearly but is ditzy and doesn’t understand him. Aunt Lois also lives in the family ancestral home in New York. It's a rather large town house filled with family heirlooms from Russia.

Ray also has an Uncle Andrew who is a Laird in Scotland. After his Uncle's death, Ray inherited both the castle and title, along with the ghosts. After getting rid of the ghosts, with the help of the other Ghostbusters, Ray gave the castle to the townspeople.

Ray was rather shy as a child and spent a lot of time reading instead of playing with other children. He cultivated a love of comic books, horror movies, and paranormal digest magazines that has stayed with him into adulthood. Ray's a bit of a nerd as a child, and seemed to have more adult friends rather than children his own age.

After the death of his parents he was sent to live with his Aunt & Uncle on their farm in Morrisville, in upstate New York. He's still shy and an outsider. His best friends seem to have been the animals he'd constantly drag home, or was helping; both feral and tame animals. The people in Morrisville considered him quiet but odd because of all his strange pets.

Ray grew up to be socially and physically inept, and no one in Morrisville ever thought he'd amount to anything. He graduated from high school and went to Columbia University where he met Egon and Peter.

Peter and Egon turn out to be the best thing in the world for Ray. They are his best friends and brothers in all but blood, in spite of, or maybe because of their different backgrounds and personalities.

Some of Ray's hobbies are: the study of magic, prestidigitation, and building anything he can think of.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

background:

Peter was raised tough in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn. He went to Woodstock at age 12, where he took drugs. His parents divorced when he was about 12-14. His father is a con artist. Not much is known about his mother except she had to work hard and was alone a lot. His father neglected him; missed a lot of Christmases.

Peter is basically a skeptic and unbeliever in the supernatural. He sounds like a used car salesman or game show host. He got into the paranormal as a scam rather than a belief system. He’s a good psychologist but a better con artist.

His father is a con artist and Peter both loves and hates him. He knows he can never fully trust his dad because he tells so many lies -- his dad might actually believe some of them himself.

Peter has great regret where his mother is concerned. He knows she worked too hard trying to raise her wild son and was alone too much of the time. He loves his mother very much. He speaks of his mother as both living and reading movie magazines, and as if she were dead. She may have died some time during the show but it wasn’t shown on the series.

Peter may have been involved with gang activity when he was a teenager.

He has relatives in Iowa, on a farm. This is possibly where his father is originally from. After the incident with the Hob, he tells the guys that he's sending his father home to the farm, and it doesn't seem logical that those would be his mother's people.

He belonged to a fraternity in college: Tri Cuppa Brew. He once ran his underwear up the flagpole while he was still wearing them, which is still remembered and talked about in the fraternity. He played football and possibly other sports and was a big man on campus. He might've had a football scholarship, but it is unknown how he paid for his college tuition and fees. It's believed that he did have some sort of job or jobs in college to help pay for his education.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

EGON SPENGLER

background:

Egon comes from a family of scientists and scholars, with a few dabblers in magic and sorcery on the side. The whole family is considered above average in intelligence and is fairly wealthy.

Egon looks exactly like his mother and his Uncle Cyrus. It is possible that his Mother is a Spengler cousin since he so strongly resembles both her and his Uncle, and it's unknown what his father looked like. His father is only mentioned once in entire series.

There is a possibility that his father:

A) died when he was very young and Egon doesn’t like to talk about it.

B) does not like or believe in the Ghostbusters and has disowned his son.

C) his father was in some way cruel to Egon and so he never speaks of him.

At one point, Uncle Cyrus comes to Ghostbuster Headquarters to take Egon back to Ohio with him to work in Spengler Labs. A long time ago, Egon had promised his uncle that he would help him out if he was needed. Since Uncle Cyrus doesn't believe in ghosts, and never sees one since his glasses are broken early in his stay, he believes he's doing the right thing in taking Egon away from his work with the Ghostbusters. Egon is unhappy working for his Uncle, but he has made a promise and he's honor bound to keep it. The guys visit with a tale that they need Egon for one last bust, and talk Uncle Cyrus into going back to New York City with them. Uncle Cyrus finally sees a ghost, comes to know that Egon loves his life with the Ghostbusters, and releases him from his promise.

Egon has real magicians and sorcerers in his background.

Egon was raised to be a genius. His parents would not speak to him for an entire week one time when he brought home an 'A-' on a report card. As a child, he had the largest ant farm in the state of Ohio. He likes the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team. He collects spores, molds, and fungi—possibly to keep the women away. He also likes to go to scientific movies: "Life of a Spore", etcetera.

Egon’s mother is a very much a New York mother and has a tendency to baby him. She gives him, and everyone else, the Spengler family recipe when they have colds.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

background:

Janine has had a typical New York upbringing. She's never been anyplace else, never had many options in life. She comes from a large family who all look alike and have bad manners.

She has a big crush on Egon, which is not reciprocated in kind. Although later in the series Egon seems to come to like her, and even dates her a couple of times and goes to her parents' home to meet them and the rest of the family.

As the show progresses, she becomes more uptown, meaning she must be taking classes in diction and speech as well as manners. Her dress style improves. She may be taking night classes or college courses.

In one episode, she comes under the spell of a Makeoverus Lotsabucks who changes her appearance. She becomes taller and thinner, her eyes change color, etcetera. She does all this because she wants to be more sophisticated, more like someone Egon would want to date. At the end of this episode, Janine and Egon are seen watching the sun rise, and, perhaps, talking about their relationship.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

background:

He haunted the Sedgwick Hotel in Manhattan for 80 years, off and on. The coming of Gozer started his manifestations again. He was the first ghost captured by the Ghostbusters. He slimed Peter the first time they saw each other.

When the containment unit blew up, Slimer was the only ghost who stayed at the firehouse. He let himself be known to the Ghostbusters one at a time. They all accepted him, except Peter, who wanted to blast him. Ray decided to call him Slimer to annoy Peter.

Slimer is a class 5, free roaming apparition, classification unknown. He’s green in color.

Slimer loves Peter with a passion. Peter did not reciprocate the affection for a long time, at least publicly, and only wanted to get rid of him.

There is the possibility that Slimer is the ghost of some long-dead fat man who had an obsession with eating to compensate for a life of loneliness, where no one loved him. He has an almost constant compulsion to eat anything and everything, even though he is only a torso with arms and a head, and there is nothing below the waist. He does like all kinds of sweets and junk food, and frequently goes through the neighborhood garbage cans. Once, when Egon and Slimer's essences changed places, Egon commented that everything tasted like chicken.

[Winston Zeddmore]  [Ray Stantz]  [Peter Venkman]
[Egon Spengler]  [Janine Melnitz]  [Slimer]

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