Catie Clark

REGIONAL- Climate change has been impacting many different people across the globe. Given the small but non-trivial population of post-corporeal humans in the Ely area, the Timberjay reached out to some of those residents last week for their perspective on how global warming has affected those commonly known as ghosts.
We stopped by the former bowling alley on Camp St., long known for its post-corporeal human residents, and spoke with the late Zora Slabodnik, the local chapter president of the American Post-Corporeal Entity Union (APCEU). Slabodnik has been at the former bowling alley since her passing away in 1913.
“Of course,” Slabodnik remarked, “I still think of this place as the Ely Opera House. We used to go to variety shows featuring local talent when I was still living.” She also described some of the unique challenges with haunting the building.
“Monseignor Buh took up residence here after he died in 1922,” Slabodnik said. “He was the Catholic priest in town for 21 years and he’s always considered Ely his home; however, he suffers from displacement disfunction, a common affliction of many post-corporeal persons. He thinks he is currently still in Purgatory. No matter what we tell him, he just won’t believe that Dante and Vergil are not in residence.”
Other problems observed by Ely’s post-corporeal residents are directly tied to global warming. “One thing we’ve noticed is that our poltermice infestation is getting worse,” Slabodnik noted. Poltermice are those ghostly mice-shaped entities that living cats often stare at as they run across floors and up walls.
“The poltermice population is migrating northward as equatorial regions become too warm for them. Since my occupancy of the opera house, the poltermice population has tripled. The local animal shelter, Contented Critters, is too efficient at rounding up our mousers and adopting them out to forever homes. This is a big problem for us since there are no full-time mediums in Ely to exude ectoplasm and we have very limited reserves of ectoplasm on hand. The poltermice eat that stuff like you would not believe.”
Other global warming-related problems also plague the post-corporeal residents of Ely. Slabodnik described how these effects are causing a cascade of adverse consequences.
“Rising seas and catastrophic weather are destroying residences for both living and post-corporeal people,” Slabodnik explained. “At the same time, heat waves and other climate disasters are killing off the living at an accelerating rate. This is pushing the ghost population northward into places like Minnesota. But there is a housing shortage in the U.S. and the number of preferred old homes for the still-functioning dead is in decline. Climate-driven trends are increasing the ghost population everywhere. Locally, we’re running out of old Ely houses for them to stay in.”
The Ely APCEU tried to reach out to the former planning and zoning (P&Z) administrator for the city about the need to preserve old homes. “When we tried to talk with him at City Hall, he kept on looking right through us,” Slabodnik recalled. “When he paid a visit to the old opera house, we approached him about the matter but for some reason he ran screaming out of the building, despite telling our poltergeist to stay in his room.”
When the Timberjay asked if the Ely APCEU planned to reach out to the city’s new P&Z administrator, Slabodnik replied, “Maybe in a few months. He’s new to town and not used to the place yet. We don’t want to spook him.”
Slabodnik commented that any newly-dead persons are welcome at local APCEU meetings, every Friday night at midnight, at the old opera house, 43 E. Camp St. Use the former door in the middle of the south façade that used to enter the downstairs.