Title: “Invisible No Longer!”: Ghosts Unionize for Safer Haunting Conditions

A week before Halloween, nearly all of the ghosts and ghouls across the United States and Canada decided to unionize, throwing the continued existence of thousands of haunted houses and other spooky areas into jeopardy. The newly-formed Ghosts and Haunters Organization United in Labor and Solidarity (GHOULS) went on strike immediately after their creation, drumming up fear as to whether or not much beloved haunted houses (or, as the GHOULS calls them, “long-standing institutions of spectral exploitation”) will be open on Halloween.

The organization, which represents more than 5,000,000 ghosts, ghouls, and other such spectral entities, was formed remarkably quickly; clearly, tensions had been brewing between ghosts and humans for a considerable amount of time. 

Their leader, Joe Ghoull, gave a public statement using an Ouija board mere minutes after the founding. In the address, he decried the “centuries-long oppression of Spiritkind” and the “increasingly dangerous and unfair haunting conditions” faced by spectral entities. The strike was announced at the end of his speech, accompanied by the rallying call that has quickly become their calling card: “Rattle! Rattle! We’ll win the battle!” 

The list of benefits demanded by the GHOULS, deemed by some as sweeping and extreme, is an attempt to make up for centuries of injustice. Their primary demand is the eight-hour workday, in alignment with labor laws in both the United States and Canada. The cry heard round the world has been: “eight hours to haunt, eight to rest in peace, and eight to wander aimlessly.” Currently, ghosts are only given free time at their employer’s discretion, with little breaks and no PTO. 

The Spectator reached out to the striking ghosts for comment. On the topic of work hours, the ghost of Robert Owen, who fought for the eight-hour workday in the United States when he was alive, contacted us. “It is unreasonable,” he wrote in blood on the wall, “for ghosts to be deprived of the right to leisure simply because we are undead. They wish for us to rest in peace when we die, but they make us toil in pain after our funerals.” 

The Spectator also reached out to owners of haunted houses and received responses immediately. “Frankly, I think it’s stupid that ghosts are demanding time for rest,” Samuel Rockefeller, the great-great-grandson of the famous oil tycoon, said to us in an interview. “They literally don’t need to sleep or eat, nor do they have anything better to do than haunt. And what’s with the timing? A strike before Halloween? That’s like the reindeer calling in sick on Christmas Eve!” 

Another major demand is the stop to underage haunting. Currently, new ghosts are required to find a location to haunt immediately, no matter their age or time since death. Mother Bones, a leader in the Organization, is leading the charge to abolish the “ghoulish practice.” She said in a statement a day after the strike started, “It is not right that young ghost girls are made to stand ominously at the end of hallways in schools. Ghost children should not be relegated to a daily monotony of creepily calling out to visitors in dangerous old houses. Children should not have to haunt for their incorporeal supper!” 

HauntCorp, the biggest maintainer of haunted houses in the U.S., put out a public statement in response to the strike. The email, dressed up in corporate language, was sent to all major news sites. It read, “While we take the safety and happiness of our spectral employees very seriously, we would like to make clear that ghosts, by nature, are not entitled to the same benefits afforded to humans. We at HauntCorp take issues of exploitation seriously, but we are not afraid to say that young spectral affiliates should be treated the same as all other affiliates. Ghost children, unlike real children, do not age, so, frankly, this demand for protection is unnecessary and frivolous. There are jobs only they can do, and we expect them to perform them.” 

The last major demand of the GHOULS is the restoration and preservation of graveyards and other burial sites. It is a well-known and undeniable fact that many graveyards have significantly deteriorated or been destroyed entirely. Though ghosts do not strictly need to rest, if they choose to, they return to their graves. The GHOULS want a complete reversal of this trend; they want not only for currently existing graveyards to be restored, but also for displaced ghost communities to be given new graveyards, complete with re-burials to sanctify the location, funeral processions, and all. 

This issue is a pain point for many ghosts. Casper III, unrelated to the fictional character, lamented to our reporter about the pains many ghosts like him face. “My grave was paved over so they could build a Wal-Mart! Where am I supposed to go after long days of haunting? Where is my family supposed to leave flowers? The parking lot? It’s unfair! Just because we have died does not mean we lose our humanity!” he cried. 

The strike is still ongoing, with no end on the horizon. It appears that neither side is going to budge on their positions, but experts agree that the GHOULS have the upper hand. Without them, the haunted houses cannot operate. 

Though the employers have tried to bring in non-union ghosts, which the Organization calls “spectral scabs,” the success has been varied. It is difficult to make up for the experience and skill of the union ghosts with new hires, and there are simply not enough willing ghosts to fully staff a haunted house. To this day, the fight for ghostly labor rights continues past death, and only time will tell which side comes out on top.