If you were hoping for a haunted Halloween at the historic Hotel San Carlos in downtown Phoenix, your plans may have come a little early. The hotel’s ghosts went on strike Thursday night, citing frustrations with tourists walking through their incorporeal bodies and the smells of food they cannot eat emanating from ground-level restaurant Rice Paper.

Leone Jensen, the leader of the strike and a key ghost figure at the hotel, said pay is “not a concern” due to the ghosts’ lack of physical manifestation and need for material objects.

“Honestly, if they could just try a little harder to pitch us as creepy once in a while, I’d probably be happy,” Jensen said. “But it’s a thankless existence. How many nights have I stood looking forlorn at the foot of someone’s bed and had them not even wake up?”

The group’s demands included reinstatement of the ghost tours and occasional mentions as guests are checked in and out at reception. Casper the Friendly Ghost also made a brief appearance as a celebrity endorsement of the strike.

The phantoms have gathered outside the hotel at the intersection of Monroe Street and Central Avenue to protest their mistreatment by hotel staff and guests. However, due to the absence of physical form, they cannot build or hold signs, requiring them to send their message with ethereal shouts and howls.

“We understand some people see it as a crude way of protesting,” Jensen said. “You try living eternally without a body, then you can come back and talk to me.”

Downtown Phoenix resident Ben Schee said he could hear the ghosts’ wails from CityScape two blocks away, though he wasn’t sure what the noise was.

“Oh, that’s ghosts?” Schee said. “I just thought I was hearing one of those experimental bands at Valley Bar playing really loud.”

Robert Melikian, manager of the day-to-day operations of the hotel, said he wasn’t concerned about the angry mob of spirits outside the San Carlos doors.

“It’s close to Halloween, you know,” he said. “We shut down the ghost tours a while ago, but this kind of publicity coming at this time is more of a blessing than a curse.”

The ghosts often surface with complaints, he said, and usually calm down once they’ve been given a chance to terrify a guest. While nothing has previously happened on the scale of a strike, Melikian is confident that given time and a few good scares of passersby, the spirits will be satiated.

“The thing you have to understand about ghosts is that they basically only have one thing they can do, and that’s moan and scare people,” he said. “Give them time, they’ll come around.”

Jensen disagreed.

“The most frustrating thing is that they don’t treat us like whole, complete humans,” she said. “I mean, technically—physically—we’re not, sure. But we still have complex needs and wants and personalities.”

Witnesses to Thursday night’s protests had mixed responses. Handel Windsorshutlet, who is staying in the hotel, said he was confused about the purpose of the strike.

“Is this some kind of performance art?” Windsorshutlet asked. “I’m sorry, is this — are these computer generations?”

Windsorshutlet tried waving a hand through Jensen’s side. When she turned to stare at him with dead, hollow eyes, he grinned and continued into the hotel lobby.

While Jensen found reactions troubling at first, she said that once people came to understand the nature of the protest, the strike would ultimately be successful.

“The hotel will need to meet our terms. I am sure business will be driven away by our presence out here,” she said. “And if not, we can always just moan louder so the guests can’t sleep.”

“It’s not like we have anything else to do, anyway,” she added bitterly.