BOO
The Great Campus Unlock. A Halloween map of every empty lab, dark professor office, and vast locked room on campus — with one question stapled to each pin: why is this closed if nobody's in it?
Email the office. Wait 48 hours. If nobody answers — the lights were already off at 3 PM — that's kind of a good sign, right? They're offline. The room is dark. Drop the office's direct line into the form below and the space joins the BOO list for October 31.
Field reports from a very quiet campus
Empty at 5 PM is normal. Empty at 3 PM is a listing.
📻 KUOI 89.3 FM
Bruce M. Pitman Center, 709 Deakin. Walked in: 100% empty, every office dark. Not the first time. Public line: (208) 885-7825.
📰 The Argonaut
Student newsroom, same hallway, same hour — completely empty. The paper that covers campus life was itself off the clock.
🔬 IREC / IRIC innovation floor
Our most prestigious research building: roughly 90% of the desks empty during normal hours. Millions of dollars of quiet.
🐄 The Kibbie Dome
We asked for an indoor barnyard dance party with university cows. Not allowed. The biggest room on campus stays a ghost town.
🏚️ Red Barn at the Arboretum
Declined for "historical or security reasons." Historic building, unlocked for nobody, used by no one.
🎪 The 1912 Center
Almost 100% empty most days — but renting it stalls on one line item: paying security. Meanwhile the hall sits there, dark and dusting.
📻 KZUU 90.7 FM
Student radio lives in the CUB. Walked the hallway: studios dark, request line unanswered — the transmitter does all the work. Pull the office line from the directory first.
📰 The Daily Evergreen
The paper that covers campus life: desks bare mid-afternoon, layout-night energy missing. The Evergreen goes quiet too.
🐾 Animal Health Building
West campus vet labs: clinical skills suites and long halls that go silent after the last appointment block. Half the building is out in the field anyway.
"Why is so much of the university empty?"
The honest answer is that this is a national problem wearing a local costume: churches have always been empty most days, community centers rattle, theaters go dark between runs, meeting rooms sit booked-and-unused, research labs hold a whole floor with one person in it. Buildings work about nine hours and sleep fifteen — the other fifteen are a land-use argument with a candy wrapper on it. GHOSTO maps the dead hours. BOO is what happens when we knock.
How to BOO a lab in four moves
🗺️ Find it
Every lab, professor-office hall, and vast empty room is pinned on the campus atlas below — Moscow or Pullman, your call. Click the pin.
✉️ Email them
Use the copy-paste script: "Can a supervised group use your space for Halloween?" One email, 48 hours on the clock.
👻 Read the silence
No reply. Auto-reply. Lights off at 3 PM. Kind of a good sign, right? Offline + empty = candidate. That's the whole theory.
📞 Submit the phone
Drop the office's direct line into the form. The map grows a candy-pink pin and treaters can ring the door on Oct 31.
U of Idaho + WSU — every lab, office & empty hall
Green = labs · purple = professor offices · gold = big empty spaces · orange = field reports · pink = listed by you. Tap a pin for the story, the script, and the phone.
🎃 BOO Layers
📍 Moscow + Pullman campuses · live pins
Positions from OpenStreetMap. Missed a building? Pin it yourself — or email host@ghosto.org.
The BOO list
Spaces people have tried to open for October 31 — with the reply status, honestly stamped. Only a "yes" goes green. Silence stays purple.
List a space for Halloween
Professor offices, laboratories, theaters, halls — if it's yours to open, or it's sitting dark and nobody will answer for it, it belongs here.
Listed. The silence is on record.
Your space joined the BOO list — pink pin on the map, phone ready to ring. If they reply "yes," flip it green by re-submitting with that answer.
The BOO Contract
Unlocked means unlocked
BOO doesn't pick locks, prop doors, or "just slip in." The owner or campus security opens the building. One guard, one lap, doors open — that's the entire ask.
Labs stay supervised
No chemicals, no samples, no touching the glowy equipment. A lab demo happens with a licensed adult, goggles on, and nothing poured.
Public numbers only
We publish office and direct lines from the university directory. Private personal cells stay private — check the box or don't check the box.
Costumes & chaperones
Kids stay with adults. Groups in labs keep a named keeper with keys the whole time. No climbing in the dome — the cows already tried.
Leave it emptier
Trash out, chairs back, doors re-locked, keys with the keeper. The goal is a building that's used, not a building that's cursed.
Silence ≠ permission
No reply lists a space as dark — a candidate, a question, an honest gap in the record. Only an actual "yes" ever shows up as open.
Dear Office of the President 🎃
(Yes — President Scott T. Green. Hi. We can see you from the empty buildings.)
This page is a free utilization audit with candy. Every pin is either public data or one of your own rooms standing there with the lights off. The request is modest: October 31, 6–9 PM, doors unlocked, one patrol officer doing one lap. Trick-or-treat the labs, hand out the candy, and we'll publish the results — every space stamped answered or dark, whichever it is.
Free public space should get at least one free trial before we start charging security fees to rooms that sit empty the other six days of the week. An occupied building is the best security system ever invented — bodies, not badges.
Questions, approvals, or furious disagreement: host@ghosto.org — we answer faster than the campus does. 👻
Dear Office of the President 🎃
(Yes — President Kirk Schulz. Hi. We can see you from the empty buildings, seven miles east of Moscow.)
This page is a free utilization audit with candy, now covering the Pullman campus too. Every WSU pin is either public data or one of your own rooms standing there with the lights off. The request is modest: October 31, 6–9 PM, doors unlocked, one patrol officer doing one lap. Trick-or-treat the labs, hand out the candy, and we'll publish the results — every space stamped answered or dark, whichever it is.
Free public space should get at least one free trial before we start charging security fees to rooms that sit empty the other six days of the week. An occupied building is the best security system ever invented — bodies, not badges. Cougs know this: a full stadium is safe, an empty one is just concrete.
Questions, approvals, or furious disagreement: host@ghosto.org — we answer faster than the campus does. 👻