Every year we did one “project.” As soon as I walked out of the theater from seeing Ghostbusters (1984), I knew exactly how the rest of the year would be spent. I called Don and said, “Go see this movie, then tell me what you think.” A few days later we got into action to build packs and gear. In the days before the internet, we had to go the extra mile to do our research. To know what we were trying to build, we appointed Edward to sneak a 35mm camera (with one thousand speed film) into the theater to take pictures of the OMNI cover and other possible sources. He sat through the movie four times in a row to capture what was needed. We ended up doing things the hard way: building the units out of wood and covering them with aluminum. I used a ton of spare parts from old cash register equipment I had recycled. The overall look of the gear was good, but the materials made them fairly heavy. The whole project was finished in six months and debuted at WindyCon in December. They weren’t screen accurate: our goal was to build a version of the packs, not the exact packs themselves. We wanted our Ghostbusters, not the Ghostbusters.

This is how I met Bob. We showed the packed to Mark Hyde, and Bob came along. One thing I vividly remember about conventions from that era was that some unscripted events just happened. Don, Rob, and I were walking through the main lobby of the Hyatt, and off in the distance we spotted the green ghost, “Slimer,” and chased him around for a while.

We passed a guy playing the piano, who broke his set to play “chase” music— great fun.