(From left) Jack Arkham, Chris Sizemore, Lee Harrah, Kevin Michael Pauley and Dave Humphreys make up the Ghostbusters West Virginia Division, which will be at Shocka-Con this weekend.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Standing outside the Beni Kedem Shrine Center on Quarrier Street Monday evening, the Ghostbusters West Virginia Division waited for a photographer to arrive.
They’ll be at ShockaCon, the area’s horror/sci-fi convention, when it returns to Charleston this weekend, but people on the street, maybe on their way home from work or headed to the mall, got an early peek at the group. Cars slowed down. The passengers inside gawked. About a half dozen vehicles pulled into the parking lot to ask questions or take a picture.
Grinning wildly, the group’s members took out the wands from their proton packs or struck a pose. They didn’t mind at all.
“This stuff happens all the time,” Kevin Michael Pauley, the founder of the chapter said. “What cracks me up is when we do hospital visits. While there are kids who know who we are, the parents, the doctors and the nurses go berserk.”
Once, he said, a nurse chased them down the hall to snap a picture of them with her phone.
“This is a lot of fun,” Ghostbuster Lee Harrah said. “I do a lot of different things in this town, but man, I love the look on the kids’ faces when we come out like this.”
The rest of the group agreed.
Pauley started it after his son told him he should dress up as a Ghostbuster for Halloween a few years ago…