The Thrift-Shop Cosplayer: Cosplay: Ghostbuster (2012)

The all-female Ghostbuster movie trailer came out this past week, so this seems like a great time to mention my Janine-inspired Ghostbusters cosplay.

Before I actively started going to cons, I found other strange and fun venues to test out cosplay. Not too long after my Jubilee outfit, a crazy rumor started going viral around the internet claiming that Bill Murray was crashing parties around the country. This lead a fake online news source to announce an "official" Bill Murray Party Crashing Tour.

A local, independent book store, which often hosted comedy and literature events near where I was living at the time, decided to throw one of these "official" parties. Everyone was invited to come in costume.

I'll admit, this isn't one of my more laborious costumes; I put this together the day before the party. If I was going to a full convention, I would have painted the gun and made other changes. But for a one-time evening event and costume contest, I felt pretty good about it!

For those who don't remember, Janine is the secretary for the Ghostbusters in the original 1984 film. She's dry and sarcastic, and in the cartoon and comic-book, she even gets to suit up and take out some ghosts. I found a discount wig for $5.00 that matched her hair color and went from there.

From the 2016 Ghostbusters trailer

I wanted something cheap that might signal some iconic Ghostbuster gear: the ghost-trap and the Proton Pack, so I headed to the thriftshop and the 99 Cents Only store.

At Goodwill, I found a watergun ($1.50) that looked like it could be the end of a proton pack. I had a tube for a Camelback waterbottle that I attached to the end via electrical tape, and I struck the other end in a backpack I had in my closet. I picked up a few sets of glow-stick necklaces from the 99 Cent Store and stuck them in the mesh pouch of the backpack. While it doesn't show up in any of the pictures because of the camera flash, but during the night-time party, I achieved some nice "supernatural-science" glow.

For the trap, I took an Amazon shipping box, some yellow paper, and more black electrical tape to make a version of the trap that I could attach to my "utility" belt (a hiking water-bottle belt; given that this party was taking place outside, in the desert, in August, the water-bottle holder on one side was practical, and I could use the other as a holster for the Proton Pack's gun).

I matched a black button-collar polo shift and Bermuda black shorts to give the illusion of a jumpsuit (plus, Janine is stylish; I think she'd prefer a black uniform to throw-up-shade light brown), and hoop earrings and boots to capture that "stylish" Janine touch (that's more inspiration from the cartoon than the movie). My final touch was a "No Ghost" logo that I printed on cardstock and stuck to my polo with sticky velcro.

When all was said and done, I had a pretty decent last-minute, little-effort cosplay for the Bill Murray Crashpad.