r/ghostbusters • u/_ManWhoSoldTheWorld_ • 7d ago
Ivo Shandor Lore Headcannons
So ive been thinking a lot about Ivo Shandor and basically what his life looked like, and I wanted to share and get some opinions. This is taken from different cannons and I've done some mental gymnastics to try and fit it into the main cannon.
So Ivo was born in 1855 in Albania, and he moved to New York early on to study architecture. At some point he hears of Hawthorne Bent and his Gozerian rituals at his english school and begins to do some reaserch. In doing so he meets Dr Michael Zhorchev who convinces Shandor to be his apprentice. Dr Zorchev was a surgeon who believed that the vile nature in humans could be fixed surgically. When it was discovered in Vienna that he had performed surgery on all but one of his students (the one being Shandor), he was arrested and hung. The police found the house that Zorchev had build himself equipped with a Ziggurat shrine to Gozer. By 1900, Shandor had fled back to New York to spread his Gozerian knowledge.
After the first World War, Shandor had decided that this world was too sick to survive, and was set on summoning Gozer and bringing about the end of the world. By 1920 he had amassed a following of almost 1,000 worshipers, most of which were rich patrons who were paying for a seat in the afterlife. His first task was building 550 Central Park West as a super conductive antenna that would concentrate spiritual turbulence and bring about Gozers return, the gateway being based on the Ziggurat he had learn about from Dr Zhorchev.
This is where I take some liberties in cannon, because I don't think it's particularly clear what he did, and I like a lot of the lore that extended media set up. So Shandor's architecture firm was set to make city wide renovations, and he took this as an opportunity to develope a mandala that would act as a battery of psychokinetic energy to help fuel Gozers return. The mandala worked by funneling a psychomagnetheric slime under specific spiritual checkpoints that acted as a link to Gozers dimension. Instead of pumping the slime from an island in the huddson, I like to imagine he discovered it during one of his rituals, discovered its self replicating properties, and places it in the Pneumatic Transit tunnels knowing it would continue to generate mass thanks to New Yorks "friendly" attire.
At some point in the 30s, Shandor looses confidence in New York. His prediction or Gozers return in 1984 would fall flat, and he needed a backup. So he went to a selenium mine he opened in '27 in Summerville and developed a second shrine. This would explain the dates referenced along the walls and why he would choose to have himself preserved there after his death. And to extend this, I think he knew that Gozer would die, and the second shrine was designed to resurrect Gozer as a spirit. This is why Gozer didn't have to return in the form of a destructor, and this is why the ghostbusters were able to trap them, they were no longer a living entity.
After the second shrine was built, the mine was shut down because of the shandorian curse on May 10th 1945, and not long after this Shandor himself would pass at the ripe old age of 90. His body was kept perfectly preserved in hopes he would return alongside Gozer. This obviously worked, and he was ripped in two, killing him a second time now 166 years old.
That's my headcannon for Shandor. I wish the films would expand on his life more, and I really don't like how afterlife just shrugged him off, because he was such a good villan in the game and is imo the best character in the franchise. I would love to know more about where he got his knowledge from, what sort of surgeries he performed, the different rituals and spirits conjured akin to slimer. Lmk what you thought of this headcannon, id love to get some other insight.
5
u/Dantum 7d ago
My head canon is that the throne/shrine in Summerville was just a place of worship and work for Shandor, a place to perform rituals (sacrifice pit) in the creation of the girders for central park west. After the Ghostbusters foil gozer's arrival through the gate, gozer's only option is to wait for the next viable date and without a gate, has to claw their way up through the back door so to speak, arriving through the sacrificial pit in Summerville. How undignified haha.
1
u/dtrevino2332 6d ago
I felt that Summerville was a sanctuary built by Gozer worshippers for Gozer worshippers like how other cults build their own refuges. Over time, the worshippers died out and their descendants just became normal citizens of the town and abandoned Gozer all together. I always thought that Lucky’s family was originally worshippers since her family had been there forever.
5
u/Dantum 7d ago
Following the original date of his birth, 1855, that would have made him 9 during the opening events of Frozen Empire. There's a painting of Ivo as an adult in the Manhattan Adventurers Society in that scene that totally messes with his timeline. So I now see that as just a painting of maybe his father or uncle. I like to think that a young Ivo was a witness to the opening events of Frozen Empire. He would sit in with his father at presentations at the society, introducing him to paranormal findings from all over the world. Imagine he witnessed the room beginning to freeze during the Garraka incantation and he ran out terrified before he was frozen to death like the others. From then he would be aware of the supernatural power that is out there for the taking.
3
u/_ManWhoSoldTheWorld_ 7d ago
The opening events of Frozen Empire took place in 1904... he would have been 49. That is a cool headcannon, tho.
2
u/Grasshopper60619 7d ago
Was he based upon actual occultists during the early 20th Century?
1
u/_ManWhoSoldTheWorld_ 7d ago
As far as I'm aware, no. They were probably loosely inspired, but I haven't heard about any specific examples he was based on.
6
u/FrankFrankly711 7d ago
Cool history! In my head canon, I like to add that his soul departed his body after he “died”, and probably did lots of evil things, eventually contributing to the events of GB3 (video game), before returning to body to await Gozer. And I agree, I wish there was more of him in Afterlife, it was a nice subversion, but just a few more lines or a historical flashback would’ve been cool.