On Monday, June 15th from 7 pm to 1am, the Arizona Ghostbusters teamed with the local GameStop and Salvation Army to help celebrate the release of Ghostbusters The Video Game. The GameStop store led the entire chain with the most pre-orders and the manager really wanted to host a special event for the game. The store and the Salvation were very excited to have us help them at the event. All of our teams put alot of work into the nights activities. The store provided many great raffle prizes including the GB wallets, belt buckles, wristbands as well as a copy of the video game and blu-ray. The store came up with several awesome kids games throughout the night and the Salvation Army provided free GB themed facepainting, popcorn, and sold "Pet Slimers" for donations. A large blow up screen was brought in so show the Ghostbusters films and a mobile game cave trailer was on had for free gaming. At our booth we had Stay-Puft Marshmallows, Crunch bars, and Twinkies. We also had our caricature posters, coloring sheets, and new info pamphlets. We helped run the raffles each half hour and kids games.

The turnout at the event was awesome and the crowd was very excited about the game. The game store promoted the event heavily in the weeks preceeding the release and our local papers featured the event on their calendars which helped bring many more in. It was great to see so many families and children out. Our team had a blast as well. We had one of our largest gatherings of our current team members plus several members suiting up for the first time. Several members of GBfans also showed up and some in gear as well who may hopefully join us in the future. By the end of the night over $300 was collected for the Salvation Army. There's nothing better than being able to use your hobby for a great cause. It was a great night for everyone who went and certainly reassurance Ghostbusters is still alive and strong in the heart and soul of many fans.

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On Saturday May 2nd the Arizona Ghostbusters helped out at the Phoenix Diabetes Expo. This was our second year at the Expo. The Expo is a free event for those individuals and families affected by diabetes to find out new information on treaments. Our goal was to help recruit new walkers for the Step Out to Fight Diabetes walks we participate in during the fall. We were given a booth as well so we could also share info about our team. We made contacts with many charities at last years expo and we did again this year. We handed out buttons at the event as well as "Diabetesbusters" stickers. Our helpers did a great job hosting the booth and got alot of walkers signed up. We'd like to thank the American Diabetes Association and expo lead Mary Mendola for allowing us to help out.

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On Saturday April 18th the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in the 2009 Take Steps For Crohn's and Colitis Walk. The walk was held at the University of Phoenix Stadium (aka Cardinal's Stadium). Outside of the stadium was a car show as well as many booths from local sponsors and games for the kids. Most of the local sports teams sent their mascots over as well to entertain everyone. We hosted our booth to collect onsite donations with our Marshmallow bags, Twinkies, and Crunch bars. We also handed out our posters and buttons. The walk itself was 4 laps around the inside of the stadium which equaled 2 miles. It was a great event and a good time for everyone.

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The Arizona Ghostbusters were recently reatured in the Phoenix New Times Up On The Sun Geek Beat blog entitled "Battle of the Spooks: AZ Ghostbusters vs. AZ Ghost Hunters." The purpose of the article was to help clarify what our team is about and not actual ghost hunting. We leave that to the Arizona Desert Ghost Hunters. Our team captain Matt Haynes answered a few questions for the blog.

The blog entry can be read at this link.

On Saturday March 28th the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in their first Stride and Ride for the Muscular Dystropy Association. The walk was held at Tempe Town Lake. The Arizona Ghostbusters were also joined by members of the 501st Dune Sea Garrison.

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On Tuesday March 10th, 2009, the Arizona Ghostbusters teamed up with the New York Pizza Department restaurant in Phoenix to help sell Shamrocks to benefit the MDA and Jerry's Kids. $1 and $5 Shamrocks were sold and used to help decorate inside the restaurant. For larger donations, hats, t-shirts and other items were available. We raised just over $200 in donations in a couple of hours. Both restaurant patrons and other shoppers in the mall stopped by. This was our first time working with the MDA and we hope to help them out at many future fundraisers.

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On Saturday February 28, 2009, the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in their second Phoenix Heart Walk benifiting the American Heart Association. The walk was 4 miles around Tempe Town Lake near the Arizona State University campus. We had one of our biggest turnouts of our members, friends and family. Luckily, despite the temperature being well above average, the weather was still perfect for the walk. With our donations collected at the Phoenix ComiCon, our booth at the Art Walk and other personal contributions, we raised $550 for the American Heart Association. We were surprised to run into one of our biggest little fans, Prescott, whom we first met at the ComiCon. He came with a friend sporting the kids GB costumes to show their support. It was a great and fun event.

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On Friday February 6th, 2009 the Arizona Ghostbusters hosted a fundraising booth at the 1st Friday Artwalk in downtown Phoenix. We raised over $200 for the upcoming Heart Walk on Februrary 28th. With our donations from the Phoenix Comicon we've collected over $500 so far. It was a busy night with good weather. The 1st Fridays are always great because we really get to interact with the general public and run into alot of familiar faces. We'd like to thank everyone who stopped by and made a donation.

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January 22nd thru 25th the Arizona Ghostbusters attended the 2009 Phoenix ComiCon in Mesa, AZ. It was a big and busy weekend for the team. The con started with the Zombie Walk and Zombie Beauty Pageant. We started by passing out the zombie walk information pamphlet to the crowds waiting to get in to prep for the zombie walk itself. After the Zombie Walk started we met the zombies at the halfway point in downtown Mesa to lead them back to the Zombie Beauty Pageant. At the Zombie Beauty Pageant we acted as “security” and as chaperones for the finalists. Some pics of the event are on the local band Calabrese blog located here.

Friday and Saturday we helped host Zombie Brain Eating contests in the gazebo outside. Due to the limited number of brains, raffles were held to determine who would be in the contest. 4 whole brain jello molds were made and each cut in half to have 8 contestants. It was quite entertaining and very messy. There are a lot of hopeful zombies out there for sure and they certainly proved there is always room for brains. A youtube video of the 2nd brain eating contest can be found here.

Saturday and Sunday we hosted a booth in the convention center courtyard. At our booth we gave away our new AZ GB buttons, stickers, and the preview poster of the Arizona Ghostbusters comic John has been working on. The poster was made by John and Todd. We had coloring pages available for kids to decorate our booth with. A TV was set up to show a slideshow if picstures from our various past events. Twinkies and Stay-Puft Marshmallow Bags were sold for donations as well as caricature drawings from John. We also hosted hourly raffles for GB related prizes including our AZ GB hats, t-shirts as well as the new comies, dvd sets, an Ecto-1 plate and even a 1/6 proton pack model. Over $300 was collected to go towards the upcoming Phoenix Heart Walk we’re participating in on February 28th. The booth was a big hit and a great way for us to get our mission out there.

Sunday we hosted a panel titled "25 Years of Ghostbustin". Each of our team took turns covering a topic of GB history and we covered the cartoons, comics, and all the latest game and 3rd movie news. It was a great con that has grown alot. Next year the Phoenix ComiCon will be moving to the huge downtown convention center and able to host alot more guests and booths. We have alot of fond memories from the weekend including meeting a really big young fan of Ghostbusters, Prescott.

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On Friday December 19th, 2008, the Arizona Ghostbusters had the great honor of attending the Snowball Express at the Anaheim Convention Center in California. Snowball express is an organization and event dedicated to creating new memories for families that have lost loved ones in the American Armed Forces during combat. The overall event covers several days including a day at Disneyland and Universal Studios. All travel, lodging, and entertainment expenses are covered for the families and everything is donated by the sponsors even down to the fuel for the airplanes. Over 1,000 participants were brought in from around the country for the event.
 

We were in invited to participate in the carnival day held at the convention center. Alot of the major sponsors of the event had booths set up with games and handouts. Oakley gave out special Snowball Express sunglasses and watches to the families for example. One of the largest booths was set up by a local Pirate costuming club in California. They had a band set up and several of the cast from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies with them. Other costumers walking around were Santa Claus, Geoge Washington, Elmo, Minnie Mouse, Hello Kitty, Snoopy, Snow White, Wildwing from the Anaheim Ducks, the Nesquik Bunny and even a Steven Spielberg and Jack Nicholson impersonators. Motorcycles and classic cars were also on display as well as R/C planes, facepainting, etc. A few celebrities including Nestor Carbonell (The Mayor in Dark Knight) and skater Bob Burnquist were also there.

The event started with the "Walk of Gratitude" outside the convention center. All of the volunteers lined up along the sidewalk and waved flags as families walked by into the center. The response we recieved was overwhelming and I believe we set a new record of the number of small children recognizing Ghostbusters. We handed our AZ logo stickers to all the children we took pictures with and were glad to see them all wearing them throughout the day. It was an amazing experience to be able to attend this event and see that the American spirit is still alive. These families losses are incalculable, but I'm glad we were part of something giving back to them. One memory I know our team will keep is when a small boy came up to us and said "Thank You."

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On Saturday December 6th the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in a holiday toy drive at local collectable toy store Toy Anxiety. This was the 3rd year the team has helped at the event and were joined by the local 501st and Rebel Legions. All toys collected were distributed between the local childrens' hospitals. The night before the toy drive, on December 5th, the team set up a booth at the downtown Phoenix 1st Friday Art Walk to collect donations to buy toys for the event. A truckload of toys was collected at the event. We'd like to thank Toy Anxiety for hosting the event and to everyone who stopped by and made a donation.

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On Saturday morning, November 8th, 2008, the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in the MS Walk On The Wild Side. The MS Walk was 5 miles through and around the Phoenix Zoo and Botanical Gardens. We were joined by members of the 501st Dune Sea Garrison of Stormtroopers and from the Mos Eisley Base Rebel Legion. We have been collecting donations since July and we held a booth at the 1st Friday Art Walk Friday the 7th to collect last minute donations. We raised just over $800 total towards MS research. The walk was lot of fun and we are glad to have been a part of it. We'd like to thank everyone who made donations as well as our fellow walk teams.

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On Monday night October 27, 2008 the Arizona Ghostbusters attended a screening of "Ghostbusters" at the local United Artists theater. The theater held a trivia contest before the movie with Ghostbusters related trivia questions. After the trivia the team came in and passed out twinkies and Stay-Puft Marshmallow bags to the audience. When the movie was over the team posed for some pictures with audience members. A large portion of the audience were in GB shirts which was great to see. Screenings like this are certainly hope Ghostbusters will be around for along time.

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On Saturday October 25th, 2008, the Arizona Ghostbusters attended the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival. The festival was held in it's new location at the Chandler Cinemas and expanded to four days. We set up a booth Saturday afternoon to collect donations for our MS Walk team but selling our Stay-Puft Marshmallow bags, Crunch bars, and Twinkies. As an added bonus our member John Yurcaba, a talented artist, offered caricature drawings for donations. These proved to be extremely popular. Later in the evening we returned to help judge the costume contest as we did last year. We had alot of fun and we'd like to thank the film festival and especially festival director Andrea Beesley-Brown for having us.

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On Saturday morning October 18, 2008 the Arizona Ghostbusters participated in the Step Out To Fight Diabetes Walk in Prescott, AZ. The organizers of this walk saw us at the Diabetes Expo and our previous Diabetes walks in Phoenix and asked us to participate in their walk. They were very excited about having us and had us do a local television spot and put us in their newsletter to promote the event. Unfortunately due to scheduling conflicts only Jeff and Neal were able to make the long drive up but our participation was still very much appreciated. The organizers gave us a great introduction stage before the walk started. It was a 4 mile walk around the local reservation and we found out you can walk uphill both directions. During the walk we passed out "Diabetesbusters" stickers. It was a great event in a beautiful location.

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On Saturday October 11th, 2008 the Arizona Ghostbusters attended the Relay For Life of the Southwest Valley in Goodyear, AZ. The event ran for 12 hours from 6 pm to 6am. The event was held at the local community park. Along the walk path each fundraising team set up a booth to sell various items such as food, shirts, and even face and pumpkin painting. Donations were collected by teams before the event and thru their booths at the event itself. At our booth we made our Stay-Puft Marshallow bags and also sold Crunch bars and Twinkies. One of the fundraising events was a basket raffle. Several of the main teams including ours assembled a basket. In ours we put a GB t-shirt, one of our logo hats, the dvd pack, some stickers and candy. We set up a TV at our table to play both movies and some cartoon episodes which often attracted groups and children to watch.

The event organizers were very excited about our participation in the event and honored us by putting our AZ GB logo on the back of the walk shirts and in the program for the event. It was a very emotional night at times as we've all lost someone to cancer. The highlight of the evening was the memorial luminarie walk.

Late in the evening they set up a large inflatable movie screen on the baseball diamond for everyone to play Rock Band. Since we usually play Rock Band at our team meetings it was only natural for us to join in. It was a long but fun night and I can say one of the few times it was cold. We're certainly looking forward to the next Relay. With the pre-relay donations and what all of our the teams collected currently over $7,000 was raised and the total should go higher after everything is counted.

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The Arizona Ghostbusters pulled double duty Saturday September 27, 2008. We had two events at almost exactly the same time at opposite ends of town. Matt H and Trey went to the MS Awareness Night held at a Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game in downtown Phoenix. A table was set up to recruit people for the upcoming MS Walk. The guys took donations for pictures with them for our MS walk team. We'd like to thank the local MS Society Chapter for allowing us to help out at the event.

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