Supernatural: I’m Afraid of No Ghosts!

Give me angels and demons, ghosts though I’ll pass. This week’s episode of Supernatural was filled with laughs and scares as the Winchester brothers find themselves reunited with Chuck at a Supernatural convention where he is the special guest speaker as the writer of the series. We also get to spend some time with number one fan Becky, who texted Sam that prompted the brothers to rush over believing that this was a life or death situation.

The series continues to poke fun at itself with the multitude of Sam and Dean wannabes littering the hotel as they participate in a fictitious ghost hunt that turns out to be very real. This place used to be an orphanage where the caretaker, Leticia Gore, murdered four boys, including her own son. When the real ghost of Leticia Gore attacks one of the Dean-wannabes, the Winchesters investigate and encounter one of the ghouls. The creepy thing about it is that the spirit appears looking grey except for the blood coming out of his scalped head. Meanwhile another pair of Sam and Dean try to follow the real Sam and Dean, believing that this is all still part of the game. They meet another ghost boy who leads them to an old map of the grounds. The real Winchesters convince the wannabes to band together as the other pair was reluctant to let go of their find. The four men head out to the cemetery to salt the bones of Leticia Gore, only to meet the ghost who nearly kills the two role-players (note: the Sams and Deans at the convention are LARPing, live action role playing).

The real trouble begins when they get back to the hotel, realizing that it wasn’t Leticia who scalped her son but the three other orphans who were bloodthirsty little monsters. Now that the elder ghost was gone there would be no one to stop their fun. The three little boy ghosts were scary as hell and I was seriously spooked out by their demented smiles. In fact I’m still trying to erase the memory from my brain.

The wannabe Winchesters save the day though as they make it out of the hotel to salt the bones of the dead boys just before the real Dean and Sam are scalped. Meanwhile, I kept wishing Sam’s demon powers would come out so he could kick ass! But no, the inhumanly strong ghost boy was about to run a knife through his head.

The best parts of this episode had to be all the Sams and Deans role-playing their little hearts out. The “Dean” who saved the day said it best that his regular life sucked, while the Winchesters, even though they were just book characters (no one knows that Supernatural is real in this world) got to save the world every day. The back-story is that Chuck is the author of a successful series that basically chronicles the lives of Sam and Dean; his readers are unaware that any of it was real.

Moral of the episode: geeks are heroes too.

As an added bonus super-fan Becky informs Sam that she knows who has the colt because it was in the books and bam, they have their next lead.

It was an interesting experience for the Winchesters to have people impersonate them. At first it was frustrating and annoying because they didn’t know how serious reality actually was. In the end it allowed them to appreciate their lives, each other, and other people. While their circumstances have been dangerous and often unpleasant, they also didn’t have the boring mundane existence that a lot of their fans had. It’s all perspective.

My last thought is what happened to Leticia Gore’s son? I don’t think his body was salted. It seems that the hotel will have at least one ghost still roaming its halls.

Season 5, Episode 9: The Real Ghostbusters (originally aired November 12, 2009)

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Thursdays at 9/8C on The CW

Photographs courtesy of The CW and David Gray