A Spirited Defense

Howdy again. I'm about to go on a little trip with my new buddy Mr. Ghost for a couple weeks, but I had a special request to reveal the anti-ghost devices I used in preparation for my first face-to-face meeting with an entity from the other side. I didn't think anybody would be interested in this sort of mundane information, but apparently one person was. And since I aim to please, I'll fill you all in on the items I used as Ghost Defense.

Since I never met a ghost before and knew of nobody who had, my best option for research on how to defend against ghosts was to watch lots of scary movies. Therefore my inspiration for anti-spirit items comes mostly from Hollywood. Hollywood wouldn't lead me astray, would it?

So the items I brought to my interview with Mr. Ghost were:

1.

One of those backpack particle accelerators, from "Ghostbusters".

This thing didn't work. It lit up and threw a few sparks, but Mr. Ghost just laughed at it. That's what I get for buying my backpack particle accelerator from a less-than-reputable web site. Plus, I should have know that this was a bad idea - "Ghostbusters" wasn't scary at all! (Although to be honest, "Ghostbusters 2" was plenty scary, but only because it's frightening to have so many funny people in one movie and not be able to produce a single good laugh in the whole damn thing, fer cryin' out loud.)

2.

Shark cage. This was from one of the scariest movies I ever saw, "Jaws". It didn't work in the movie, and it just caused Mr. Ghost to look at me funny when he saw me sitting in it.

3.

Ripley's big walking thing with the giant hands, from another really scary movie, "Aliens". Mr. Ghost wasn't intimidated by this, but he did seem impressed that I actually found one of these that really worked. It was hard fitting into the shark cage while I was wearing it, though.

So the lesson of these last two items was that I needed to find items that were not only used in scary movies but also that were in used scary movies that involved the undead. Which brings me to...

4.

Chainsaw. A veritable must-have for all modern-day undead fighters. Check it out in "Evil Dead 2", an absolute Classic of American Cinema. Unfortunately chainsaws work best against zombies, and ghosts more or less ignore them. But Mr. Ghost gave me props for at least getting back on the right track.

5.


That cute little old lady from "Poltergeist". Sadly, she wasn't available, but I brought her picture along anyway because she was so cool in that movie. Mr. Ghost, by the way, agreed - she was cool. He wasn't scared of the picture, but he was glad I brought it along just for stirring up some happy ghost memories.

So none of these items were worth a darn for keeping a ghost at bay. Fortunately for me, Mr. Ghost is a pretty laid back kinda ghost, and really didn't want to disembowel me or otherwise do me bodily harm, so I really didn't need to bring along any defense paraphernalia.

Oh, except I unfortunately did make use of one thing I brought along :

6.

But you really, really don't want to know the details. Suffice it to say that Mr. Ghost can be pretty darn scary when he wants to be.

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I'll be back to reveal more Secrets of the Universe in a couple weeks!