Three scientists get thrown out of their university and go into business catching ghosts. Then the city fills up with ghosts, two ordinary New Yorkers are possessed by the servants of an ancient god called Gozer, and everything comes down to one Art Deco apartment building on Central Park West. That's Ghostbusters, released on the 8th of June, 1984, directed by Ivan Reitman and written by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, starring Bill Murray, Aykroyd, Ramis, Sigourney Weaver, Rick Moranis, Annie Potts and Ernie Hudson. This walk follows the story through the real New York where it was filmed. Midtown covers the team's rise and the ghosts running loose. Then we head to the Upper West Side, step back in time to see how the cellist Dana Barrett and her neighbor Louis Tully got caught up in it, and finish at the building the film called Spook Central, with one last flashback in the park across the street. Along the way you'll hear what was really New York and what was Los Angeles or special effects. This is an unofficial fan walk, not made with or endorsed by the filmmakers or the studio. It's one of our self-guided walking tours, about 4.3 kilometers from the New York Public Library to Tavern on the Green.

Before you set off

Allow about an hour and a quarter, with around an hour of walking. The route is flat city sidewalk the whole way, so any comfortable shoes will do. The 5 Av or 42 St-Bryant Park subway stations are right next to the library where you start. At the end, the 72 St station on the B and C lines and the 66 St-Lincoln Center station on the 1 line are both a few blocks away. Times Square and Rockefeller Center are crowded most of the day, so an early start gives you more room to stand and look. Tavern on the Green is a working restaurant and 55 Central Park West is a private home, so for both, enjoy them from outside unless you've booked a table. Spoilers ahead for the whole film. It's a comedy, so nothing here is grim, and it suits families as well as film fans.

New York Public Library

Stand on the Fifth Avenue steps of the New York Public Library and look at the two marble lions on either side of you. They were designed by Edward Clark Potter and carved by the Piccirilli Brothers from pink Tennessee marble. In the 1930s, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia named them Patience and Fortitude, for the qualities New Yorkers needed to get through the Depression. The building behind them is the Beaux-Arts main library, dedicated on the 23rd of May, 1911.

This is where Ghostbusters begins. The film opens on these lions and these steps, and then moves inside, to the library's reading room. A librarian goes about her work among the shelves. Then, down in the stacks, she meets the first apparition of the film.

That first ghost sets the whole story going. Soon the three scientists are thrown out of their university and starting a ghost-catching business of their own.

Here's the first piece of movie magic. The lions and the steps are real, and so is the reading room. But the stacks where the librarian meets the ghost weren't filmed in this building. That scene was shot in the basement of the Los Angeles Central Library, on the other side of the country.

Look across Fifth Avenue before you leave. At 489 Fifth Avenue is the building that played a bank in the film, where Ray, one of the three, walks out after mortgaging his house. The bank's name on screen was fictional signage.

With the money raised and a business to start, the film jumps ahead to the good times. From the library, walk north up Fifth Avenue to the Channel Gardens, between 49th and 50th Streets, and turn left along the gardens toward the sunken plaza of Rockefeller Center. About ten minutes.

Rockefeller Center

Prometheus above the plaza at Rockefeller Center, New York

You're at Rockefeller Center, above the lower plaza and the rink. Look for the gilded figure flying above the plaza. That's Prometheus, by Paul Manship, made in 1934. It's cast bronze covered in gold, 18 feet tall and weighing 8 tons. The inscription behind it paraphrases the ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus.

In the film, this is part of the success montage. Business is booming, and the team is on the job all over the city. They're shown at work right here, around the plaza and the rink, with Prometheus shining over them. The scientists nobody wanted are now the people everybody calls.

The film loves real New York. Much of it is just the team in their gear, moving through famous places full of ordinary people. The city plays itself, and that's why the ghosts feel believable.

Enjoy this moment, because it's the high point. The trouble that ends the good times is coming. Every ghost the team catches goes into a storage system they call the containment grid. And an official is about to shut it down.

When that happens, the ghosts come straight back out into Midtown, and one of them turns up just around the corner. Walk west along 49th Street to Sixth Avenue and look across at the tall tower on the far side, at number 1221. About four or five minutes.

1221 Sixth Ave (McGraw-Hill)

You're facing 1221 Sixth Avenue, a tall office tower once known as the McGraw-Hill Building. Today it's simply known by its address. Look at the plaza in front of it.

In the film, the containment grid has just been shut down. Every ghost the team has trapped is released at once, and they pour out across New York. All over the city, strange things start to happen.

And this is where one of them lands. Outside this tower, a hot dog vendor has a cart, and Slimer, one of the escaped ghosts, is in it, helping himself. It's a quick, silly moment, and that's the point. The film shows the escaped ghosts turning up in the most ordinary places, in the middle of everyday life.

Stand on the plaza and picture it: office workers, passers-by, and a ghost in the hot dogs. That's the comedy of Ghostbusters in one shot. The supernatural shows up, and New York barely looks up from its lunch.

But the escaped ghosts are only half the trouble. Something bigger is gathering. Across town, two people have already been taken over by the servants of Gozer. One is called the Gatekeeper, the other the Keymaster, and they're trying to find each other. The Keymaster is out on the streets right now, close to here.

Walk south down Sixth Avenue to 47th Street, then turn right and head west to Duffy Square, the northern end of Times Square, where a bronze statue stands below a big set of red glass steps. About four minutes.