Scratch

Scratch, or also named Scratch McGee, is the titular deuteragonist from The Ghost and Molly McGee. He is a fussy, short-tempered, but funny and kind ghost who befriended Molly McGee when she arrives in Brighton.

Appearance[]

Scratch is a light blue ghost. He has green teeth, a large light blue nose, yellow-green eyes with small black pupils and a purple tongue. He has wrinkles on his forehead, inner cheeks and under his eyes. Scratch's body is translucent and typically appears lumpy but he is able to change in shape and size when he wants to, for example when attempting to scare Molly and her family. His color appears more translucent while he is invisible, meaning he is only visible to the people he chooses. He has been shown to be able to give himself legs and manifest bugs onto his body.

Personality[]

Scratch is a grumpy, anti-heroic ghost whose joy comes from spreading misery. When one of his spells backfired, he finds himself forever cursed in Molly's presence. He is described by Molly to be lazy, grumpy, and hungry. Additionally, before the McGee family arrived in Brighton, he was largely a loner and greatly values his privacy, showing tremendous embarrassment and ire whenever Molly cuts into his personal time. Despite being bound to her for all eternity, Scratch remains determined to scare Molly and her family away for good.

Later on, in the series, however, he seems to start to warm up to Molly and her family, showing a softer, almost parental stance towards the McGee family, stating he's a "McGee adjacent" and returning their affection.

Regarding him always being hungry, he is indeed a massive glutton that will drastically do anything just to grab himself lots of treats and stuff his stomach full, even it means being underhanded such as stealing. It is revealed in "Festival of Lights" that he has a soft spot for fried foods in general.

While it may not look like it, deep down Scratch is very insecure and self conscious about what others think of him, especially those he cares about. For this reason, he often lies and tells half truths about himself.

In "Not So Honest Abe", he lies to Molly about knowing Abraham Lincoln because he didn't want Molly to find out how he is ¨a loser in the Ghost World¨. It's hinted that he is embarrassed of his unpopularity among other ghosts.

Another example of his insecurities is in "Friend-Off", where he admitted to Libby that he was rude to her because he was afraid that Molly would rather hang out with Libby than with him. This shows that Scratch suffers from some abandonment issues, probably due to his friendless background.

Abilities[]

As a ghost, Scratch possesses a myriad of supernatural powers.

Levitation: He can float off the ground and fly fast enough to nearly keep up with a jet airplane.
Telekinesis: He can move people and objects without touching them. Upon meeting Molly for the first time, he used this ability to force her to leave his attic.
Intangibility: He can move through solid objects.
Ectoplasmic Constructs: He can form items out of ectoplasm, such as a pencil and notepad.
Invisibility: He can render himself invisible to most others, except to animals and other ghosts.
- Selective Invisibility: He can choose who is able to see him, shown when he interacts with the McGees while invisible to others, and when he reluctantly agrees to reveal himself to Libby.
Shapeshifting: Being made of ectoplasm, he can manipulate his body into any shape he desires. He mainly uses this ability to appear scarier, form extra arms, and can turn into a fully functioning human leg. Also, he has demonstrated this power when he turned into a bat in ”Mazel Tov, Libby!”. He can also shapeshift into a flame of fire as shown in "Lock, Stock, and Peril".
Elasticity: His body and limbs can be stretched seemingly without limit. Molly exploits this by using his arm to pull him towards her.
Regeneration: His body is made of a seemingly limitless supply of ectoplasmic goo. This is first seen when he angrily covered Molly and her family in ectoplasm, showing no ill effects afterwards.
Curse inducement: Through shapeshifting and speaking in a theatrical manner, he is capable of casting a variety of curses on people. He can curse anyone to be haunted by him for an eternity. However, this had the opposite effect on Molly, who saw it as an opportunity to have an eternal best friend. Apparently, he's also capable of doing other curses such as preventing someone from saying certain words until midnight (like when he made it so Molly couldn't say "no" and he couldn't say "yes" just to settle a bet on who'd be better off with this limitation), but it wasn't until after both found out the downside of that particular curse that Scratch realized it is possible to switch the effect of the "Yes/No" curse until it wears off.
- Luck Bestowal: He cursed a penny in "The Lucky Penny" and transferred Molly's good luck into it so that anyone who possessed it would have good luck for the rest of the day, after facing the consequences he reverts the curse.
Possession/Overshadowing: He can possess and control people and inanimate objects to varying degrees. On Molly's first day at school, he possessed Andrea to convince the other students to accept Molly and Libby and not bully them. Later, he took control of the Lemmings' equipment to help them win the state championship.
Invulnerability: As he is already dead, he cannot be hurt or killed by conventional means and poisonous substances have no effect on him. On Molly's camping trip in episode “Howlin' Harriet”, he consumed several poison berries with no harmful effects.
Portal creation: He can create and travel through portals to the ghost world.
4th Wall Awareness: Seen only in musical numbers, Scratch is somewhat aware he is a fictional character. He attempted to personally rewind the online video the show's intro song was being played on, without success, then later asks the audience if his tongue is burned at the end of his number in "Festival of Lights". This is played for a joke and not genuine as this mindset resets only seconds later.
Teleportation: He can move instantaneously from one location to another in a puff of mist. This is first seen in “First Day Frights” when he puffed to open the door and puffed on stage when Molly tried taking Andrea to the nurse’s office, but didn’t go as planned. Also, he can poof items he wants and poof them away whenever he wants like in episode “Getting the Band(shell) Back Together” when he poofs himself a pair of star shaped sunglasses to make him cool and poof them away.
Enhanced strength: Despite being a ghost, Scratch is deceptively strong. While helping rebuild the Brighton Bandshell, he was able to lift and carry three concrete blocks and an old man at the same time.
Transmutation: Seen during his gladiator fight with Libby, Scratch turns a portrait of Molly and himself into a ghostly broadsword. It is unknown if he can do this in real life.
Swordsmanship: In "Friend-Off," Scratch demonstrates some skill with a sword, and manages to defend himself against Libby armed with a giant weaponized friendship bracelet. While this particular skill is mostly used in a fantasy sequence, it is shown in a way that hints that his swordsmanship might be genuine, as he had held his own until he needed to stop and catch his breath, and then continue the fight.
Size Alteration: Scratch can adjust his size at will. He mainly uses this to remain undetected and enter his dollhouse.
Duplication: He can create multiple versions of himself. In "Scratch the Surface," he demonstrates this skill when he was singing with Molly about keeping his secret from Libby, creating up to six clones of himself.
Absorbency: According to Molly in "Festival of Lights", ghosts don't even go to the bathroom, and yet no matter how much Scratch eats (and he can eat so much that a large stack of latkes seem to be his limit), the food inside of him always manages to disappear sooner or later, leaving him able to return to his usual default size, albeit with a larger "belly" for a while.
Chairman Enhances-With the cloak he able to use to scare off Frightmares off and great order of ghost world since being the current leader.
Ghost Manifestation: As the Chairman, Scratch can create ghosts that don't exist, like the ghost shark from the movie in "All Shark No Bite".

Weaknesses[]

Animals can see him even if he’s invisible and sometimes attack and injure him, as shown in "Mama's Gotta Hustle".
His ghostly ability to scare humans doesn't work on everyone and Molly is one example.
Although able to pass through solid objects, he ends up getting electrocuted when he passes through an electric fence and becomes inebriated in the process.
Scratch tires quickly, seen during his fight with Libby.
He cannot render others intangible along with himself. He has tried and failed to do this with Molly at least twice.
In "Friend-Off" it's revealed that Scratch's invisibility doesn't work very well on cameras, as a selfie with him and Libby together shows his otherwise invisible self as a glowing, smiling blur. While this seems to be the case for digital cameras, this problem might also apply to old fashioned film snapshots.
In so far, despite being smarter then Geoff, Scratch is shown to not be very bright, especially when he's casting curses, as he tends to jump right into casting one without thinking the consequences all the way through, such as binding himself to Molly forever (or until she leaves the house for good) in an effort to get rid of her, or when the "Yes/No" curse kept him from accepting a once-in-an-afterlife promotion from the Ghost Council. He has to see the loophole in the curse to get around it (ex. when he cast the "Yes/No" curse, he specifically worded it "Until Midnight, one of us can only say 'no' and the other can only say 'yes'". Since he didn't use specific names while casting it, but was pointing instead, he was able to switch the effect of the curse around until it wore off), but without a loophole or an escape clause filled out to a tee, he's stuck with it (ex. He has to be wherever Molly is whenever she calls for him unless she leaves the house forever... or is at least forced to leave via eviction).
His ability to be solid while shapeshifting is limited, so he cannot use his body as a blockade like he thought he could in "Getting the Band(shell) Back Together", though so far only the McGee family took advantage of that very weakness, for (as Scratch himself pointed out) walking through others is "considered very rude in the Ghost World".
He can be afflicted by ailments and illnesses, such as in "Festival of Lights" when he hurt his tongue for eating too much deep-fried food.
- In "Innocent Until Proven Ghostly", it is revealed that he has a carob allergy despite being dead, which causes him to swell up enough to fill every room in the house and get stuck there until the swelling goes down.
- In "Scaring is Caring", it is revealed that Scratch (and possibly other ghosts) is prone to lose is ability to frighten others when he has too much joy in his system, as the resulting illness makes him adorable against his will as well as mess up a few of his fright-related ghost powers and makes him sneeze/barf rainbows and bubbles. The only cure is for him to be exposed to something he's afraid of, which is apparently the sight of Molly being in life-threatening danger.
As shown in "Ready, Set, Snow!", Scratch is vulnerable to extreme temperatures.
He is shown several times to be really lazy and tries different ways to get out of work and responsibility with quite a few attempts backfiring on him in some way.

History[]

Scratch haunted a house in Brighton alone, spreading misery all throughout the town before the McGee family moved into the house. His cause of death and/or past is currently unknown. Whatever happened, he has no memory of his life before he was a ghost, yet assumes it wasn't much different then things are for him now. When he was alive, Scratch was best friends with a human girl before she ended up moving away, sharing a soda with him before her departure.

In "The Curse", as the McGees arrive in their new forever home and Molly McGee goes towards the attic to begin preparing her new bedroom, sweeping some spiderwebs off a corner of the room. Scratch sees this and stops her, telling her that "ghost webs are vintage.", Molly, seemingly unfazed about seeing a ghost, gets excited as she had never met one before and immediately pulls him into a ghost hug. This annoys Scratch even more and so he curses her: "I curse you, Molly McGee! Wherever you go, whatever you do, for the rest of your days, I'll be there, haunting you, tormenting you, turning your every waking moment into an unending nightmare!", however, the curse backfires, making Scratch and Molly bonded forever until she or her family leave their home forever and thus Molly determines him to be her best friend. Angered, Scratch tries to scare Molly's parents out of the house, but to no avail as Molly quickly shuts him down with a snack. It wasn't until Molly, as a suggestion from her Grandma Nin, offered him her old dollhouse to reside in that he agreed to accept the McGee's living there "on a trial basis", hinting he's still determined to break his curse, though he did call a truce when Nin suggested leaving him food and drink to keep him happy, and he unwittingly bonds with Molly by admitting he likes tacos and strawberry soda.

In the following segment, "First Day Frights", he sees an opportunity to scare Molly out of the house forever (thus breaking the curse) by playing on her social anxiety, but his efforts were not necessarily needed to give Molly "the worst first day in the history of first days" as she flubs things herself by mispronouncing the name of the most popular girl in school named Andrea Davenport, twice. Just when it seems that Molly's as good as packed, however, he hears someone call her "the worst of the worst"-- something he has been called in the ghost world on a regular basis-- triggering feelings of guilt in him for the first time in his (after)life and causing him to, quite reluctantly, possess said popular girl, Andrea, to not only make people think she doesn't care about how her name is said anymore, but also undo the outcast effect she put on both Molly and Libby (who got shunned for the same reason as Molly since first grade). After school, Molly confronts Scratch about it in a sing-song manner, and while he denied it and claimed they'd both end up in jail if he didn't help, she constantly teased him with the fact that he actually cares about her as only a true friend would.

In "Mazel Tov, Libby!", he had (in a fit of literal minded mischief) brought bats to Libby's Bat Mitzvah to liven it up, though after Molly finally let them out of the closet to get rid of the unwanted guests, Scratch soon found himself regretting the idea when the bats attack him as well.

In "The Turnip Twist", he uses Geoff to sabotage the Turnip Festival in Brighton (which is hosted by Molly), to make its misery level higher, but he was not really happy about it as he started worrying about Pete McGee, Molly's dad, getting sad because of it.

In "All Systems No", he curses Molly and himself to be able to only say "Yes" (Molly) or "No" (Scratch) for one day, but then they flip the curse to stop a swarm of bees attacking their home.

In "Talent Show", he's at first excited to see Libby perform on stage, as she sings terribly, bringing more misery, but then he becomes shocked, as it turns out Libby is good at slam poetry singing.

In "Scratch the Surface", after he and Molly have a crazy weekend together (which somehow involved a mop and a fish), he had to stop her from telling Libby about it, as he has to be kept secret so he'd be able to scare people. Afterwards, upon seeing that Molly was getting stress hives from lying about it instead, he (finally) explains to her the downsides of being a ghost, most notably the fact the Ghost Council will punish him if he isn't scary enough. In her desperation to keep her friendship with both him and Libby, Molly comes up with the crazy scheme of pretending to be her own Canadian cousin to categorize her friendships as an alternative to telling the truth, which Scratch (feeling it'll keep him out of the Flow of Failed Phantoms) encouraged, and he found ways to help up the charade like creating the illusion of her eating a burger covered in maple syrup (which she hates) when he really ate it himself. In due time, Molly got sick of lying to Libby and tried to run and hide from her, but when that didn't work and Libby thought their friendship was over, Molly once again asks Scratch permission to tell the truth about him... this time politely... and he finally caves in on the condition that Libby is the only one outside the family that knows the truth.

In "Friend-Off", he argues with Libby (who now knows about him) about who's a better friend for Molly, but ends up befriending Libby after saving Molly together. While they were officially bonding-- mainly over how hard it is to keep up with their shared best friend-- Libby stated that Molly brought bats to her bat mitzvah, and Scratch (embarrassed by that memory and not wanting to spoil the new bond by admitting it was really HIS idea) went along with that conclusion.

In "Festival of Lights", he and the McGee family join Libby and her mother at the Stein-Torres' family bookshop, Book Marks the Spot, for a celebration of the final night of Hanukkah, only for the event to be interrupted by a town-wide blackout. Although the generator only had enough fuel for an hour, the bookshop's lights and heat kept going for the full eight hours the blackout took place in, and after the first hour, Scratch was just announcing himself officially bored when the smell of the holiday's traditional food-- which Libby explains is all deep fried in oil-- changed his mind. Later on, he joined Molly, Darryl, and Libby on a gambling spree with "gold coins" during a game of dreidel, but after Libby won the jackpot by spinning gimel and revealed the "coins" were actually made of chocolate, Scratch-- who thought they were real gold-- was devastated by the revelation. Another thing that gave Scratch an emotional ride was when Libby introduced the McGee family to her family's tradition of the Miracle Box, in which everyone is supposed to fill by writing down a miracle that happened to them that year (which Scratch gladly did, thinking that nobody would see it) and then have them read out loud and have everyone guess who wrote what! Upon learning all the rules, Scratch did everything to delay his secret miracle from being read, and even shrunk down into the box when his was one of the last two in there, but despite his efforts, his miracle got read by Pete anyway: "I used to haunt a house, now I haunt a home". Libby and the McGee family were all touched by that sweet statement, and reluctantly pulled him into a group hug, during which he muttered in embarrassment "this is why (he) don't say nice things". By the time the power came back on all over Brighton, Scratch had a full belly from all the latkes and a smile on his face, as he declared Hanukkah one of the tastiest holidays ever.

In "Saving Christmas", when Molly, eager to celebrate her family's first Christmas in Brighton, asks how things could get better, Scratch knowingly answered by stating that the holiday's Snowflake Festival includes a cookie contest that has every holiday cookie flavor from gingerbread to snickerdoodles... unfortunately, because a short circuit burned all the Christmas Decorations that the festival needs, and because there were budget cuts keeping said decorations from being replaced, the Snowflake Festival was cancelled and, with it, Christmas was ruined, and the only hope to fix it was if the Davenport family-- the only family in town rich enough to pay for everything on such short notice-- gives a generous contribution, but much to the disappointment of everyone (including his own daughter, Andrea) Mr. Davenport refuses to pay; a concept that saddened Molly enough to crush her Christmas spirit, which Scratch wouldn't stand for, prompting the ghost to bring the story "A Christmas Carol" to life in an effort to scare the scrooge out of Mr. Davenport, no matter what it takes. His efforts do manage to somewhat convince Mr. Davenport to cooperate by making him realize he should spend more time with his daughter after forcing him to see how miserable Andrea has been feeling, hence saving the Christmas of Brighton.

In "Citizen McGee", he helped Molly when she was accidently elected Mayor for life. After that, they decided to find the real mayor, Brunson. Molly and Scratch decided to use Scratch's ghost powers to get Brunson to be Mayor again.

In "Home is Where the Haunt Is", after the McGee's failed to buy the house, they were forced to move out, making Scratch very depressed. He does everything he could to scare off buyers but a family didn’t mind that Scratch was in the house. Scratch was now really sadder than ever. Luckily, the town of Brighton helped the McGees, (thanks to Andrea), and now Scratch was happy to be back with Molly.

In "The Jig is Up", Scratch is called upon the Council when they alerted him that joy in Brighton has increased while misery is decrease and sent Jinx to find and eliminate the cause of the Joy. Throughout the episode, Scratch prevent Jinx from seeing Molly as she was the one who is causing joy in Brighton and nearly succeeded, until Jinx encountered Molly and tried to end her, only for scratch to get in the way. Unfortunately, it turns out that her mission was a setup as she revealed that she was sent to bring Scratch back to the Council for punishment for breaking one of the major rules of the ghost world; befriending a human, which resulted in Scratch and Jinx returning to the ghost world to be sent to The Flow of Failed Phantoms.

In "Molly Vs. The Ghost World", Scratch is taken to the Council as Jinx revealed that Scratch as broken the rule befriending a human, which called for a trial of his past action. During the trial, different ghosts that scratch encountered gave their testimony, including Sonia Davis and Howlin' Harriet. As Scratch was found guilty and sentence to the Flow of Failed Phantoms, Molly and Geoff arrived (while Molly became a Wraith in order to enter the portal to the ghost world) and even after both of them gave a impassioned speech about their friendship, Scratch and Molly were both sentences to join together in the flow. However, because Molly's joy was so powerful, it not only freed her, Scratch and Geoff from the Flow, but all of the ghosts who were sent there for their failures. After Molly destroyed the Chairman with her joy, she and Scratch returned to the living world.