In 1887, a man named Simon Quegg angrily exits a bar, gets into a horse and buggy, and declares that when he gets home to "Providence", he'll have the inn shut down. The proprietor offers Quegg accommodation, but Quegg refuses and declares that he'll get home by night or never at all. However, his horse's eyes flash red, and then he gets struck by lightning and a second rider arrives and chases him.
A hundred years later, the Ghostbusters and Slimer are going home from a job and stop at a diner for dinner. Ray orders Slimer's food and while he's feeding it to him, Quegg shows up and asks how long it is to Providence. Ray says it's eighty miles, but Quegg doesn't believe him and thinks it's only twenty. He then leaves, pursued by the dark rider, then Ray and Slimer run into the diner and explain the situation. The owner explains who Quegg is, and that his ghost visits whenever there's a storm and asks for directions home only to disbelieve any answer, but never does any harm. Ray then asks about the other rider, but the owner says that only some people saw him and whenever they did, they experienced disaster.
He shoos the Ghostbusters out, and Ray and Egon decide to help Quegg, the former because he feels sorry for Quegg and the latter out of curiosity. They track the PKE signal to a bridge, where Quegg appears again. Egon determines that Quegg and his horse and buggy are two separate ghosts, and the horse and buggy is more powerful so Quegg is too weak to leave the buggy. Ray tries to trap the horse and buggy, but then trades places with Quegg.
The remaining Ghostbusters convince Quegg to help them if they can help him get home in return. While Peter and Slimer interrogate Quegg in the firehouse, Winston checks the weather report, and Egon makes a machine to make an artificial storm so the horse and buggy will come back, hopefully still with Ray.
They go back to the bridge, and Egon and Slimer take off in the Ecto-2. Slimer starts using the device, but it runs out of control, which leads to Egon crashing Ecto-2 in the river. However, the device does succeed in creating a storm, so Ray appears in the buggy. Egon decides that the plan to trap the horse and buggy only failed because one proton pack wasn't strong enough, so they try to all fire at it in unison, but lightning strikes the proton packs, shorting them out.
Ray convinces Quegg to board the buggy again with him so they can face the other rider and hopefully break the cycle. Quegg and Ray then discover that the other rider is an evil copy of Quegg, so Quegg determines that he must face him alone. He shoves Ray off the buggy and then the two copies ram together, which makes them, and the storm, disappear. Quegg then briefly reappears and thanks Ray for helping him realise he was selfish and declares he knows the way home now.
This episode provides examples of
- Dark Is Evil: The evil copy of Quegg wears black clothes and rides a black horse.
- Ghostly Animals: Zigzagged — due to the red-glowing eyes, it's unclear if the horse is actually the ghost of a horse, or if it was always a supernatural entity.
- Hope Spot: The Ghostbusters try to trap the horse and buggy together... only for lightning to render their proton packs useless.
- The Noun Who Verbed: Inverted — the title involves a noun who didn't verb.
- Not So Stoic: Egon screams when he loses control of the helicopter and smiles widely and throws his arms up when Ray returns.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The evil horse entity has red eyes.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Ray says, "What are we missing?" when deciding to help Quegg, but Peter says, "A good night's sleep?"
- Say My Name:
- When Ray disappears, the others yell his name in unison.
- When Slimer lands on Peter, Peter angrily yells, "Slimer!".
- Seen It All: Downplayed — while the diner owner is scared of the dark rider due to the doom that follows his appearances, he's seen Quegg so many times that he's unfazed by his appearances and views Slimer as nothing more than a nuisance.
- Sleep Deprivation: Discussed when Peter cites sleep as something they'd miss by helping Quegg.
- Speak in Unison: When Ray disappears, the others yell his name in unison.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Downplayed — Quegg realises that the other rider is a version of himself.
- Unfinished Business: In order to go to the afterlife, Quegg had to first go home, and to do that, the two selves had to combine.
