Still a Work In Progress...
"Are you troubled by strange noises in the middle of the night? Do you experience feelings of dread in your basement or attic? Have you or your family ever seen a spook, spectre, or ghost? If the answer is "yes," then don't wait another minute!
Pick up the phone and call! Skilled professionals on call 24 hours a day to serve ALL of your supernatural elimination needs!
We're ready to believe you!"
"At the client's free request, and without inducement other than dire need of services, the undersigned franchise of Ghostbusters International hereby undertakes to perform such services pertaining to the bizarre and supernatural as said undersigned client shall indicate verbally or in writing, and the undersigned client shall promptly pay the franchised agent of Ghostbusters International the agreed-upon sum upon performance of the service.
In pursuit of said service action, the franchised agent may create, cause, invoke, prompt, induce or accidentally perform reasonable actions which cause unreasonable damage to the client's home, furnishings, property, chattels, vehicles, records, papers, family, friends, and/or self, including injury, maiming, dismemberment, death, or loss of confidence or sex drive, for which the client agrees to hold said franchised agent blameless, harmless, irreproachable, without guilt, or intent to perform injury, and without any liability whatsoever, now and at any future date, forever."
--Standard 'Release From Damages' Contract of Ghostbusters International.
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CORELINE INFORMATION PACKET:
GHOSTBUSTERS INTERNATIONAL
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For-Hire, Independent Paranormal Investigation, Elimination and Containment.
-Central Offices: New York City, New York (14 N Moore St, New York, NY 10013)
-Regional Offices: Multiple locations throughout the world including all fifty U.S. states, Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico, United Kingdom, Japan, Germany, China, Australia, and Russia.
-Majority Stockholders: Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, Raymond Stantz, Winston Zeddemore, Janine Melnitz and Louis Tully.
-Information:
The Vanishing and the influx of supernatural forces into Earth caused more than a few problems. Murder victims coming back for revenge. Specters representing the bad parts of holidays trying to take over. The occasional zombie. Demons, ghouls...
Keeping them under control is a 24/7 job, and there's never enough people to do it.
The business is booming. Chances for constant research are appearing. The reputation has been built large, becoming one of the top names around. And the money flows.
The Ghostbusters provide various services. The capture (and occasional extermination) of ghosts is understandably their primary method of business, alongside providing information on the paranormal. It has also been hired on multiple investigations and court cases as unbiased experts to test the mental stability, acuity, and power level of paranormal witnesses.
(This is because of a rule of law that has gotten many names, but the street has labeled "The Anita Blake Rule": essentially, the ghost of a murder suspect looks at first sight like it should easily provide an iron-clad testimony, but the reality is that personal bias and lack of knowledge can influence it as much as a living person. It could say that someone performed the deed just because the murdered person believed this someone did it on his final moments, it could be so stupid that it cannot provide any truly useful information... and it's not really uncommon for ghouls to be psychotically vengeful, which makes their use either a seriously dangerous case of entrapment or an equally risky proposition for everybody inside of a courtroom. So it goes without saying that determining that a witness (or a client) won't go all "Grudge" if put on the witness stand is a very important function that has brought a lot of moolah).
CONTAINMENT DETAILS AND THE SHANDOR ISLAND INCIDENT:
The government agreed to provide the Ghostbusters with various contracts (cleaning up old prisons and public landmarks of ghosts and the like), with one condition: the branches could not perform permanent containment of their own.
What this means is that the branches do have Containment Units, but they would be cleared entirely on regular basis and the ghosts would be transported to government-run facilities, which would have multiple fail-safes in place to prevent breaches from occurring.
One of these containment facilities was located on Shandor Island, near the city of New York. Run by GENOM Corporation with oversight by SHIELD, it was the main repository for the ghosts captured all over the state.
The problem then became that GENOM had plans of its own, experimenting with ectoplasmic slime and mass cloning of an Alternate of Shinji Ikiryo (Shinji Ikari with Danny Phantom powers), among other vile things. When heroes attempted to save the kid, the devastation that occurred irreparably compromised the facility, so a new facility was built on upstate New York (specifically on Hudson Valley), without GENOM's involvement (although this facility was visited by the rogue Time Lord known as "The Exile").
RELATIONSHIP WITH FENTON WORKS
Amity Park, Minnesota. A location with very high paranormal activity. The Fenton family has made a name of itself by being very effective at fighting the local ghouls and it's pretty obvious that competition would create unnecessary chaos. Furthermore, their gadgetry was very useful.... even if loaded with bugs.
The stockholders and Jack Fenton made an agreement: Fenton Works would have exclusive franchise rights for Amity Park and the surrounding area (meaning that any Ghostbuster in Amity would be working for Jack Fenton) plus a very fat check for leasing of Fenton equipment and assistance in getting it mass-produced and sold... if Spengler could remove Jack's face from everything and perform some adjusting to the equipment to remove said bugs.
It took a while, but Fenton agreed. Presumably, there were pretty hilarious family shenanigans involved.
As a result, it is not unusual for Ghostbuster teams to carry at least one Fenton Thermos as a back-up trap or using Fenton Specter Deflectors as personal shields.
