Hello fellow ghosts. If you are reading this you have been accepted into the Harvard Haunting Ghost Academy, which isn't really an academy at all. This is it. This book is your whole education rolled into something you can carry around with you. Sadly all those horror movies and pee stained pants will not help you here.

This is sort of like a Monsters Inc for ghosts, except that here, you only have two options for a career. Haunt at least 1 billion different times, or live in hell for the rest of eternity. Yes, the academy has made sure that the options are very fair and understandable.

They also made sure I can not swear in this book, so fill in your own profanities where needed. Note: after the word understandable there is a big amount of space for all the profanities you need. And just so you know, in hell you don't get a break at all, whereas here you get to live with all the not-fun taxes like on earth, and a haunting can literally be slamming a few doors in a house till a child starts to cry. I know which one I would choose.

There are a few rules you need to follow, though, so brace yourself.
1. In order for a haunting to count, the whole family has to be suspicious with at least one or two people actually freaking out. Bonus points if you haunt people in very normal places that are never shown in movies to be scary (non-existent aisle 13 in Walmart, a McDonald's washroom, porta potty; the only thing that limits you here is your imagination)

2. If you really want to communicate to your ghost friends, and can't do it face to face because of being preoccupied with a haunting, you can use Snapchat. It's a safe house for all the ghosts, hence the symbol and why it sometimes picks up ghosts when trying certain filters. We're still working on the glitches, but humans haven't been too suspicious. The filters really keep them at bay.

3. You can only grab real life objects during a haunting. We don't need any Starbucks cups floating around New York or downtown Toronto in the middle of the day. Sadly you'll have to wait until your free time to visit a ghost friendly Starbucks to get your daily frappe or cake pop. Don't stress, ghost Starbucks have all the secret and newest drinks and treats you can think of.

4. No socializing with demons or Angels. Demons will bring you to hell and Angels might obliterate you. Yes, they have halo's and yes, they're supposed to be nice, but they also destroy evil which we sort of are. The most they can do is wound you, which will prolong your haunting sentence.

5. Again based on the first rule, you at least need the whole family suspicious and one or two people completely terrified, but you can go all over the spectrum. Maybe the house with the new baby just deserves a few broken light bulbs and slamming doors, but that kid from third grade who bullied you and called you a loser deserves a full poltergeist. Main rule: try not to kill anyone. Note the key word in the sentence. Try.

6. Bedsheets must stay on your person during all hauntings in case anyone sees your true form; unless, of course, you are going full poltergeist on them, then you can do whatever you want (JUST NO DEATH!)

7. If for any reason you can't complete anymore hauntings (only because of injuries or a white flag of surrender on your residence) you will be sent to hell (maybe a hospital first depending on injuries. But then again, the food there tastes terrible, so it's basically hell anyways? Stop complaining; at least we're not flying you in via air plane with a full course meal that you have to eat. That would be actual hell.)

8. Residence. Your house. Whatever you want to call it. Instead of paying normal taxes like humans, you keep or lose your house depending on how many hauntings you complete or fail to complete. If it gets really bad you can have room mates and share the tax. If you can not live up to your room mate expectations or hate the idea of living with other ghosts that never clean up no matter how maNY TIMES YOU TELL THEM, hell is the place for you.

9. Transitions between the human world and the ghost world are all over both worlds, making it easy for you to finish a haunting and go straight to Starbucks right after. You can not teleport in ghost world, but can in human world since no one knows you exist there. Ghost world is basically just a mirror or replica of human world except it is for ghosts and there are no cemeteries. Here you get more classy places to rest your body than six feet under or in a little cut out in some wall.

10. If you have any concerns, please send in emails, ask fellow ghosts, Google it, or send me or another official a snapchat. If you don't know usernames they are in the chat book (phone book) which every ghost has. Good luck with your hauntings and be cautious, because one family has a limited amount of at least one month intervals for them to rest from a haunting and for separate ghosts to haunt. Time travel doesn't exactly exist yet.

And finally:
11. If you do not follow all these guidelines we will personally send a team of bounty hunter demons to bring you into the pits of hell. Just know that when you're down there you do the jobs the demons have to do, and your bedsheets are lost forever. You may think the work you are doing down there is hard and tiresome, but there are worse jobs to do. We have hauntings and the demons have bounty hunters. You choose your own poison.

Again, if you have any concerns please feel free to contact me or my coworkers. Good luck with your hauntings and remember the trusted slogan:

"If they're not screaming you must be burning in hell."

We're still working on it.