Spook Central On Hiatus / Spook Central Halloween Treat - Making Ghostbusters PDF eBook

Last updated on November 11, 2012. Please check the blog post "Updates on Paul since November 16th and onward" for further updates.

Spook Central On Hiatus
Hey Everyone. Paul here writing in from the Red Cross emergency shelter at Nassau Community College on storm-ravaged Long Island, New York. If you're not already aware, my family was evacuated from our little house in East Rockaway on the morning of October 29th when the water from the canal across the street was already up to the top step on the porch... and the storm hadn't even come yet!

With the help of my friends, and new Spook Central staff members, Doreen Mulman, Raffaele Ruffaldi, and Matthew Jordan, I have been working on getting the site to be somewhat updated in my absence. I can only do so much from a tiny little iPod Touch. The special Halloween treat is now on the site, and I'm working on getting Matt to continue updating the Spook Central Facebook page, so that we can continue to bring you some new Ghostbusters news and multimedia. It'll be a while before I'll have a permanent place to live again and personal belongings again (the flood waters destroyed damn near everything, including my desktop computer) so this will be the last Spook Central blog post for a while. Keep following Spook Central on Facebook for updates (hopefully).

Now here's new Spook Central staff member Matthew Jordan (aka DevilManOzzy from the Ghostbusters Wiki) to tell you more about what I've been going through, and to give you the link to the special Halloween treat...

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Updates on Paul
Filling in today on Paul's behalf is Matthew Jordan. We have some good news and some bad news.


The Bad News
The bad news came in the form of Hurricane Sandy, which flooded Paul's house. The image above shows the waters coming up to his steps on the 29th. Here is the timeline of events from Paul's postings on Facebook:

-10-29-2012: "Here on Long Island, New York, Hurricane Sandy is already starting to cause trouble. Photo taken on Mon. 10-29-2012 at approx. 8:50 AM Eastern. I will probably have to evacuate before it gets even worse than last year with Hurricane Irene. So if I'm not online for a few days, and can't answer e-mails, this is why. If I'm home, have electricity and computer access on Wednesday, I'll try to post the special Halloween Treat I have in store for all of you on Spook Central. It not, it'll be a belated treat."

-11-03-2012: "Hi everyone. Been at the Nassau Community College emergency shelter since Monday morning. Had to walk across the street to the Nassau Coliseum to grab Cablevision's Optimum wifi signal just so I can send this with my iPod Touch. It's freezing cold out here. Anyway, I checked out the home in East Rockaway yesterday and it's a mess. Got four or five feet of water in the house. Beds, dressers, TVs, everything destroyed. Fridge was lying on it's back. Kitchen countertop exploded. Computer may or may not be ruined. When I'm back on my feet somewhat, I'll upload photos. For now, Spook Central is on hiatus. Ironically, the outside of house had very little damage. This nearly 100 year old house will not go down so easily. Stay well everyone and know that I'm safe."

UPDATE - JULY 17, 2013

I have finally decided to make public all of the photos I took on that first visit back to the house after the storm. You can view them in the Fri. November 2, 2012 Facebook gallery.

Also, I managed to retrieve the two photos below from an LG cameraphone. They were taken on Mon. October 29, 2012. The first image, taken at 10:15 AM ET, shows the view from the Able Ride bus that came to evacuate us and another lady in the town named Maureen. This image, taken right after Maureen came aboard the bus, shows the water-flooded street Maureen lives on in the Bay Park area of East Rockaway.

This second image, taken at 11:25 AM ET, was my first attempt at photographing the inside of the Red Cross emergency shelter at Nassau Community College. I took the iPod Touch photo seen further up this page about an hour later.

-From Doreen Mulman on 11-04-2012: "My good friend, Paul Rudoff of Spook Central, has been living in a shelter at Nassau Community College since Monday. His home in East Rockaway, NY was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy. Although his house is standing, it is flooded and everything inside is destroyed. Anyone who wants to help out Paul, can donate money via PayPal."

Pretty much, Paul lost everything, but the house itself. As noted by Doreen, Paul is taking donations on his Paypal. If you have any money to help, this is the time to send it. Paul has been a active ghosthead in this community, sharing his love for Ghostbusters since 1996. If there had ever been a time to help someone in need, it would be now.

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Update from Paul (on 11-10-2012):
I went back to the house yesterday to retrieve some items, and the house is actually in worse condition than Friday of last week. The front door lock has corroded inside, making it unusable. The key won't even fit inside anymore. The fire department had to break a screen off a window and jimmy it open in order to get inside. The lock on the back door, even though it's damaged and will need to be replaced, is usable, so that's our entrypoint for the time being. There is a lot of mold on the side of my computer desk and the bookcase I have sitting next to it.

I definitely know that my computer is kaput, as not only were there splashes of water on the monitor, but when I shown a flashlight on it, I could see two different tones of color in the screen face. I think what I'm seeing is water in the bottom half and no water in the top half.

The shelf on the bookcase I had my Ghostbuster TV and movie scripts collapsed! I didn't have the time to see if the scripts themselves fell into water or if the shelf broke after the water left the area. I'll know for sure when we have to go back and start throwing everything out. I hope they're still good as those scripts still need to be scanned in and preserved as PDFs.

Right now we're playing a waiting game with FEMA. We need them to send an inspector to the house to see the damaged personal belongings, so they can give us money to eventually rebuy everything. At the same time, the landlord wants us to clear out the stuff so he can get repairmen in there to start repairs. I don't know how they can do repairs when most of East Rockaway still doesn't have power - and ironically, we got a LIPA bill in the mail for $126 - but the longer he has to wait, the longer we have to wait. He even said that if we miss this window of opportunity to get repairmen in there now, we may have to wait months until he can get repairmen again.

FEMA has approved us for a hotel stay and a temporary rental, but isn't setting anything up for us. They expect us, with little to no resources on hand, to book a room in one of only TWO hotels in Nassau County that's on their huge list, and later on they want us to find a new place to rent - even though we'd still be obliged to pay rent for the damaged house. Mind you, my family doesn't have a car, are using prepaid cell phones with limited minutes (once used up, the phone is a paperweight), and doesn't have a ton of money on hand or in the bank. We're not even sure what's going on with the hotel. Some say we need a consent letter, some say we don't; some say we'll have a 28 day stay, some say it'll just be 14 days. Nobody knows what the hell they're doing. I thought FEMA, by the very nature of their "business", had experience handling these sort of things. If things were set up properly, they'd set up the hotel and housing arrangements automatically for those in need, and not just say, "Here's some money, now go fend for yourself."

In all likelihood, we may be at the Red Cross emergency shelter for a while. The concept of heat may be a foreign concept to them (they've actually had the air conditioner on here), but we get three meals a day (even if it may be small portions or the same bagels for breakfast everyday), we get medical care and medicines (they order in our prescriptions at no cost to us), a cot to sleep on (not ideal, but it beats not having anything), and communal showers in the college locker rooms (again, not ideal, but its a shower). What we give up in privacy is made up by not having to worry about our personal needs. We don't think we're gonna have it so "good" at the hotel - and that's assuming that doesn't get screwed up.

While I can't speak too highly of FEMA at the moment, I want to give big THANK YOU to all of the Red Cross volunteers from all over the world (there are folks here from Mexico) who selflessly donated their time and energies to help all of us Long Islanders, and everyone in the Tri-State Area , coping with the devastation from Dr. Doofenschmirtz's Hurricaninator :-)

Anyway, the quicker FEMA gets their butts moving and inspects our damaged stuff, the faster the landlord can repair the place and we can move back in. It'll still be a few weeks or longer, but things will move quicker once FEMA makes this next step. You'd think FEMA would want to do everything in their power to help people get back in their homes quicker?!?

You know, I had optimistically guessed that 80% of my family's belongings were destroyed, but now I gave to wonder if the amount will be a bit higher. I won't have a real bead on things until the salvageable and destroyed stuff is separated and I have that visual comparison between the two.

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Thanks to the following for lending some support thus far:

First of all, thanks goes out to Dan Schoening (Dapper Dan) for IDW Ghostbusters Ongoing #9 RIB Variant Cover up for Auction on eBay. All proceeds from this auction will go directly to Paul and his family.

Tristan Jones (T-Rex Jones) has also pledged to drawing a new cover for Paul, and auctioning off a separate one to raise money for the Paul. Click here to read more about it.

We also like to thank the webmasters at Proton Charging, Ghostbusters Mania, and Ghostbusters News; plus Sites by Doreen and Ghostbusters Wiki (support staff sites).

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The Good News
The good news is that as part of the Ghostbusters PDF eBook Preservation Project, we are releasing one of the most sought-after Ghostbusters books, that at times is above $100: Making Ghostbusters by Don Shay. A copy of the book had the binding cut in order to scan the pages. You have Mrmichaelt to thank for that. I then cleaned the pages and organized the pdf, and Raffaele Ruffaldi uploaded the pdf to Spook Central. It is not perfect as it is huge (poster size as Paul put it) but due to limitations right now, we're releasing it as is. The book can be found with all the other GB1 books here.

Also, the script is being released as a stand alone pdf as well. The script pdf has the full script minus footnotes on the sides. However, the cover page was made up, as there was no cover for the script provided in the book. The script is also on the book page for the time being.

Added to the Spook Central Facebook page is a gallery containing collages of the black and white pictures that covered two pages in the book.

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For the complete list of Spook Central's Halloween Treat posts from years past, click here. Thanks to Miss Kate for the "Halloween Treat" title banner that appears at the top of this post.