Shanbahac is a unique possessor ghost who inhabits only plants. He is also an eradicator. 2000 years ago, Shanbahac wiped out an entire South American civilization then went dormant. In 1997 A.D., Shanbahac was discovered in Brazil and procured by a graduate student named Sajid in New York for his doctoral thesis. The entity revived once the student opened it in a lab on the third floor of a Biology Department building. Shanbahac quickly settled into a nearby habitat and transformed the plants into monstrosities under his control. He then swallowed up the student and bound him into a large pod, the entity's method of slowly killing human victims. [2] Around lunchtime, the Ghostbusters were summoned to the college.
Eduardo Rivera managed to blast Shanbahac's plant host but the entity escaped and hid itself in the lab coat of a Professor Brenner, the first victim's mentor. Meanwhile, the Ghostbusters fled the collapsing building with the pod victim. Unable to get a residual reading on the P.K.E. Meter, the team regrouped at the Firehouse. Roland Jackson rigged up a blaster to emit subzero liquid oxygen and Egon Spengler analyzed a recovered sample and identified it as a rare hybrid found only in the Amazon basin. [3] Roland and Garrett Miller then rigged a life support system to circumvent the pod while Kylie Griffin researched South American horticultural demons. Professor Brenner returned home to 123 Central Park West and was overwhelmed by Shanbahac. Unfortunately, Kylie thought his call was a prank and hung up. Roland cross referenced the caller ID with an online reverse directory to locate Brenner. Kylie then mistakenly concluded the entity was Kuja, a benevolent protector of the rainforest and tried to communicate with it in vain. She and Garrett pursued Shanbahac to Central Park.
Roland and Eduardo learned the entity was Shanbahac and raced to stop Kylie from freezing him into dormancy, dooming the lives of the human victims. Garrett was bound to a pod during the battle. Eduardo attempted to choke the plants with a fire extinguisher, which only angered the entity. Kylie then realized if she shot the plant with liquid oxygen at room temperature, the resulting chemical reaction would yield the desired effect. The host was now unsuitable for Shanbahac and it left, revealing its true ghost form. The Ghostbusters then easily confined and trapped the entity. The hold on the victims was lifted and they were all returned to normal.
Powers and Abilities
Shanbahac, by physical standards, in his corporeal form is very weak, but when he gets into the soil he gains incredible strength. His primary form is a red plant with a star fish mouth flaps, while his stronger form is a more aggressive and bigger version of his seed form.
When he possesses a plant it begins to change and falls under his control. If the plant body is about to be destroyed, he jumps off the body and runs, and is able to turn humans into pods as some form of feeding. The victim becomes symbiotically connected with the plant matter, which made removal very dangerous, and if Shanbahac goes dormant the pod people stay that way for 2000 years.
He has burrowing capabilities as well as gliding, and like all horticultural entities, he has the ability to regenerate his missing body parts, in this case: vines. His true ghost form is a smaller version of the possessed seed form he assumed and only has levitation capabilities.