Dealing With The “Lab Ghosts”

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If you do research in a lab, you will be fairly familiar with lab ghosts. Every time an experiment goes wrong, it’s because of the ghost that haunts my building. It’s not because of me and my mistake. No….never! lol. But for those that have ghosts in their lab, here’s a list of how to stop them from causing trouble. If you have goblins or trolls, this guide will not be able to help. That’s a very different problem lol. This guide will only protect you from lab ghosts and nothing else.

  1. Bring in offerings.
Assorted Fruits on Baskets

I often bring in cookies to make sure that my lab equipment works that day. I mean, my graduation depends on my equipment working. The lab ghost of my building often causes things to go terribly wrong unless I bring them something fun and delicious.

2. Bargain with the ghost.

Photo of Two People Shakehands

If you are constantly getting upset over your machines failing, make a bargain with the lab ghost. I find that ghosts really mess things up when you decide to stay and do work at night. Maybe tell the ghost that you will only work early during the day and leave before it gets too late. I had to agree to not work nights in my lab with my ghost. Every once in a while I have to go in late but that was part of the agreement. Haven’t really had a problem since.

3. Scare the ghost away

Get yourself a ghost in a bottle (here‘s a link to some). It is guaranteed to scare away any ghost that tries to mess up your experiments. I have one on my desk after all of my experiments started to fail. Like., I was getting terrible results before I received one of these as a gift. My data has never looked better now that my ghost in a bottle is here to protect me.

4. Sage your office.

Ceramic Plate with White Sage Smudge Stick

You have probably heard about burning sage to cleanse the area of ghost. 100% true. I just use sage scented spray (here). It works just as well, and afterwards, you’ll definitely feel like a ghost has left the area. Spray it near your experiments when you desperately need good results. This will make you happy, your adviser happy, as well as the peer reviewer for your paper happy. Good results make everyone happy, unless they are so perfect that it looks like you made them up. Then no one is happy.

5. Sacrifice an Undergrad’s experiment.

Person Holding Laboratory Flask

This one should be the last thing you do. I understand that undergrads are just not as cool as grad student, but remember you were one prior to grad school. Also, they may have a very good experiment, and losing that to a ghost could be very detrimental to a lot of people. If it comes down to it, sacrifice their experiment. Try and convince the ghost that your experiment is less important and boring. The ghost will start messing with the undergrad’s after this. According to the Law of Haunting, section 34.6.7 paragraph 4 “Ghosts can only haunt one experiment at a time.” You won’t have to worry about failed experiments ever again.

If you truly believe your lab is haunted, follow these guidelines. I promise you that you can convince the ghost to leave you alone. I have had quite a bit of success with these methods and so will you. For other ways to make sure your experiments go well, check out my other blogs (here). I’m sure you’ll be a research master in no time.