The Ghost Hunter’s Guide to Music Part 2: Five Songs Not to Hunt Ghosts To.

1.

NOW (That’s What I Call Music). A collection of hits from a year/given period of time, compressed into one, easy-to-ignore form.

EFFECT ON GHOST HUNTERS: We recently watched a low-budget “Saw” rip-off entitled “Are You Scared?” about a moralistic serial killer who gets kids into deadly traps. In the opening scene, a girl walks over broken glass, and sticks her face into an aquarium of sulphuric acid. This album is like doing that with your ears.

EFFECT ON GHOSTS: If I were a ghost, and determining which intrepid ghost hunter to kill/scare/soul-eat, I’d definitely pick the one listening to Katy Perry.

HAUNTED HISTORY: In the original cut of the opening scene from “Are You Scared?” the killer was going to have the girl listening to “NOW” as well, but the writers/producers/whoever makes such things didn’t want him to be TOO evil, jeez.

2.

HALLOWEEN GHOST SOUNDS (an album.)

The CD of ghosts “booo-ing,” cats yeowling, and doors opening creakily, even though only suburbanites with nice homes buy this stuff. It’s a favorite among parents who are either way too into Halloween, or don’t want to buy candy but saw this for 1.99 next to Cheez-Its that still have promotions to win two tickets to “Revenge of the Sith.”

EFFECT ON GHOST HUNTERS: Imagine if, in “Apocalpyse Now,” when the U.S. dropped the napalm on the Vietnamese, instead of listening to Wagner, they were blasting “Uncle Doody’s Big MP3 of Fart Noises.” This would look (and feel) worse.

EFFECT ON GHOSTS: What if the entire cast of this current season of American Idol were squatting in your house? You can’t get them to leave, no matter what. They just sit around all day, eating your food, pounding on walls, possessing your wife, worshipping Satan-pig Gods, etc. Your wife and family are falling apart, so you need a plan – so you buy the biggest pair of ear muffs they’ll sell to civilians and you think real hard, and then, it hits you:

You’ll scare the American Idol people away by playing the CDs of their highlights!

At this point, your wife will ask Taylor Hicks to swallow your soul.

HAUNTED HISTORY: there’s nothing haunted about an album of Halloween sounds. That’s… kinda the point.

3.

MICHAEL JACKSON – THRILLER

EFFECT ON GHOST HUNTERS: Top secret classified NSA project XLIII-Alpha B was set off in 1991 to render all US enemies harmless in combat… only, when someone was typing on their state-of-the-art Texas Instruments computer, they clicked past “Enemies” to “Everybody in America.” (Alphabetical Order, long an arch villain in America, rears his/her ugly head again.) So when an American hears Thriller, they immediately go into the dance. There is no stopping it. It’s like the word of God, but in dance form.

EFFECT ON GHOSTS: Ghosts see this song like bulls see red. They find it a little racist. Play Thriller on a ghost hunt, and you might as well wear a tank top that says “GHOSTS SUCK FOR ETERNITY” and have a picture of Casper with genitalia drawn on his face. Trust us, it’s not worth it.

HAUNTED HISTORY: This song was so good, Vincent Price came back from the dead to give some backing vocals. Charlemagne tried to do the same for Snoop’s “What’s With the Guillotine-izzle, Saxon-izzle?” only to leave due to a dispute over creative control, and a beef between Snoop and Charlemagne’s boy, Hitler.

JOHN NOTE: This was written before Michael’s passing, so if anyone’s offended, we apologize, for as much as an apology on the internet is worth.

GREG NOTE: Sure.

JOHN NOTE: Greg, that didn’t help.

GREG NOTE: Huh?

JOHN NOTE: … make sure not to send it back to Greg after making the 1^st “John Note.”

GREG NOTE: You did it again.

JOHN NOTE: Damnit. I did it again.

4.

The Rolling Stones

EFFECT ON GHOST HUNTERS: Ever since President Reagan passed the Ridiculous Purple Shirt Act of 1983 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ed36UQX8kXQ every public gathering in America has to begin with “Start Me Up,” by Federal law. You should have been issued a copy of the song when you were born, along with a New York Yankees hat in a color that the Yankees do not wear, a dislike of the French despite them fighting alongside American troops in two World Wars, and an unshakable belief that a food having “Zero Trans Fats” means it’s good for you. (“Doritos Spicy Nacho will help me get MUSCULAR!”)

EFFECT ON GHOSTS: The Stones are perhaps the only people alive that even the most self-assured ghost would have ghost envy of. Face it, ghosts: the Stones make much better corpses than you guys ever will. Even you, Big Zombie. (ZOMBIE PICTURE)

HAUNTED HISTORY: The Stones were the original inspiration for “Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home” but test audiences couldn’t imagine a future the Stones were not in. Also, the Humpback whales had a lot less demands. (and yeah, smart guy, this relates to “Haunted History” because, in “Star Trek 4”, Chekov’s wig is haunted. Go watch the movie again, and pay particular attention at the 1:02:35 mark… if you dare.)

5.

GWAR

EFFECT ON GHOST HUNTERS: You’ve just arrived at Glasgow Castle, to hunt one of the most famous haunted places on Earth. Your team suits up, you’re excited by the prospect of battling/investigating the spirits of time… and your boom mic operator comes out in this:

Hopefully, the ghosts wouldn’t laugh TOO hard before they killed you all.

EFFECT ON GHOSTS: Similar to the effects of laughing gas, only without the gas.

HAUNTED HISTORY: Gwar has always existed. They come from a land beyond time and space, where things like morality, God, love, and the ability to tune’s one instrument do not exist.

JOHN: No, I’m not sure that’s correct.