As an adult on the wrong side of his 30s, figuring out what should make me afraid is harder than you’d think. Open any social media app and there’s doom speak everywhere: AI destroying humanity, nuclear war, economic collapse, high-fructose corn syrup, take your pick.
As a kid growing up in the ‘90s, terror had a specific name: Zeke the Plumber from Salute Your Shorts. Though he only appeared once in the Season 1 episode “The Ghost Story,” the idea of a toilet plunger-wielding maniac reading my mind and turning my subconscious against me stuck with me for longer than I’d care to admit.
Salute Your Shorts had no business going that hard, but it did. Rewatching “The Ghost Story” takes me right back to that hazy time before my consciousness was fully cooked. Today, it feels pretty tame. Back in 1991, Zeke was a schoolyard legend and pure nightmare fuel.
Zeke The Plumber And His Haunted Plunger
The premise of this Salute Your Shorts episode is straightforward. Bobby Budnick (Danny Cooksey) is prompted to tell a ghost story, and he conjures up the tale of Zeke the Plumber.
Zeke was a veteran turned custodian who roamed Camp Anawanna. During his combat days in the Philippines, Zeke had his nose bitten off by a parrot. His diminished sense of smell led to a deadly combination of a gas leak and a lit match.
Now a tortured spirit trapped in limbo, Zeke the Plumber wanders the campgrounds searching for his missing toilet plunger. According to Bobby’s story, anyone who touches it will have their dreams haunted by his wandering spirit.
A Face That Haunted Childhood Dreams
It wasn’t Bobby Budnick’s story that scared so many Nickelodeon fans. It was Zeke himself.
A burn victim wearing a rubber mask with a scarred and bandaged nose, Zeke the Plumber stared straight into your soul. His eyes were empty, his movements methodical, and his laugh downright menacing. He tormented the Anawanna kids by preying on their insecurities, plunging toilets with gleeful malice while cackling into the void.
The Narrative Inconsistencies Are Even More Terrifying As An Adult
Rewatching “The Ghost Story” years later, a new kind of horror appears: narrative inconsistency. Telly (Venus DeMilo Thomas) and Michael (Erik MacArthur) are each haunted by Zeke the Plumber, but neither knows the other has been targeted during their initial encounters. Somehow, the ghoul looks exactly the same to both of them in their dreams. Later, when their grumpy counselor, Kevin “Ug” Lee (Kirk Baily), dresses as Zeke to spook Bobby, his costume is identical to what both campers imagined.
Of course, Salute Your Shorts was made for kids, and I wasn’t exactly a continuity expert back then. None of that mattered at the time. Zeke the Plumber was coming for me, my classmates, and nobody, not even my parents, could protect us from that blank, suffocating stare.
Thankfully, Zeke the Plumber is the least of my worries these days. But revisiting “The Ghost Story” brought all that old fear flooding back. Now older and wiser, I can finally face the thing that haunted me most and laugh about it. The healing process from a decades-old trauma can finally begin.
Select episodes of Salute Your Shorts are streaming on Paramount+, including this terrifying one.
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