Homeowner2Hobo: The Dire Plight of a Ghosthead in Need

A fellow Ghosthead, and a dear personal friend of mine, is going through a dire situation that no human being should have to be in. Read on to learn more...

Nora Salisbury has been a dear personal friend of mine since late 1997, when we, along with her partner, the late, great Doreen Mulman, met in the Ghostbusters message boards and bonded over our love of the then-new Extreme Ghostbusters series.


Shortly thereafter, Nora and Doreen would create the Ghostbusters Fan Forum, which ran from December 4, 1997 to October 31, 2008.


I had the honor of meeting Nora and Doreen back in July of 1998 when my father and I visited relatives in California.


Unfortunately, life has not been too kind to Nora. Doreen passed away on March 14, 2014, and it's all been downhill from there. Numerous financial mistakes, and a system designed to screw over the poor at every opportunity, has led to her having a half dozen different residences over the past 12 years. After losing the house she inherited from her late father in July 2025, due to some kind of reverse mortgage nonsense, she moved into an Extended Stay hotel. While living there, the Social Security Administration decided to "pause" her monthly check due to the money she received from the sale of the house.

The Extended Stay hotel was not meant to be a permanent residence. Nora was only living there while she was looking for a new house to buy with the money she received from the sale of her parent's house. Unfortunately, because her monthly Social Security disability check was "paused", it could not count as "income", so no one wanted to sell a house to her, even though she had enough money in the bank to pay for one. Renting was not an option because, as she tells me, most places in California wanted her income to be triple that of the rent.

As you could surmise, with NO money coming in from Social Security, the funds she had in the bank eventually ran out. Nora could no longer afford to live in the Extended Stay hotel, but she had no new house or apartment to move in to. To avoid being completely homeless, Nora used what little money she had left to buy a trailer that she hitched to the back of her car, as seen in the photo at the head of this article.

As of this writing, Nora is virtually homeless. She's living in a barely-functional trailer, and she may not even be able to sustain that for much longer given that the Social Security Administration will NOT reinstate her benefits! Currently, she has nearly zero income, which makes it difficult to buy food and gas. If she doesn't "move around", she risks her "home" being towed to an impound lot from which she would not be able to recover it. She already has a lot of her personal belongings sitting in a storage facility to which she owes thousands of dollars, so she'll never have any of that stuff again. It will, one day, be auctioned off to the highest bidder.

In an effort to document her dire situation, and hope that some public awareness will bring forth some help, Nora has posted a series of videos to Youtube entitled "Homeowner2Hobo". Embedded below are the three videos that have been posted as of now. In this first one, which runs for 20 minutes and was posted on August 18th, Nora shows off her trailer and then later explains the financial fumbles that put her here.


The next day, Nora posted a 7-minute update, which showed a tiny bit of promise that the Social Security Administration might help her out of the situation they put her in.


Sadly, that promise was dashed by August 22nd, when Nora posted this 10-minute update in which she informs us that the Social Security Administration is continuing to screw her over. WARNING: This video is really heartbreaking to watch.


I'm sure that Nora will post more updates to her Youtube channel, for as long as she continues to be able to charge up her phone in the trailer given that half the power doesn't work, so be sure to subscribe to that for updates. (I'm not going to update this post unless, by some miracle, Nora's situation vastly improves.)

If you'd like to help out Nora, she has set up A PAYPAL DONATION LINK. I've already donated some money. Now it's your turn now.  The various Ghostbusters fan groups around the world like to fundraise for charity... well, here is a charity! One of our own needs help. I'd like to see the fan groups step up to the plate and help.

If you're out there in California and can help Nora in some way, whether it's dealing with Social Security or affordable housing, or some thing else, please reach out to her at homeowner2hobo@gmail.com or through Facebook messaging. If you live in or around the Ventura County area, and have an animal that you need taken care of, Nora offers her services through the Rover app. Check out her profile for more information.

Finally, you can also help out by simply spreading word of Nora's plight. Feel free to share links to this article or Nora's Youtube account.

Nora's situation really hits home for me, and not just because she's a dear friend of mine. I could be in her situation at any given moment. I'm perpetually one death away from being homeless because my disability check is not enough to pay the rent on the place where I'm living, much less for any better places here on Long Island. I was actually on the verge of being homeless for the entirety of 2016 due to this. I had the great fortune of having a relative subsidize my rent for the entire year until I could get someone to move in with me and share the expense. That relative is old and will not be around for too much longer, so I can't rely on him as a "safety net". Unlike Nora, I don't even have a car to which I could hitch a trailer to... though no one should be forced to live in a mobile trailer.

DISCLAIMER: Any views, thoughts, and opinions expressed by Nora in her videos are solely that of Nora and do not reflect the views, opinions, policies, or position of Paul Rudoff and Spook Central.