The Ghost Bacillus

The microbe that haunts the lab.

On a dark Halloween night, one lonesome grad student sat hunched over the lab bench working tirelessly to meet an important deadline. During a brief centrifuging step, they aimlessly stared out the second floor lab window; raindrops pummeled the sidewalk. The relentless humming of the centrifuge and the sound of the rain put them in a slight trance. The student winced at the thought of the long walk to the parking lot in this torrential downpour without an umbrella (which they forgot in their car). Maybe I should spend the night in my office.

Suddenly, the fluorescent lights began to flicker. The student raced back to the lab bench in a panic to check that the centrifuge was still running, but the instrument had turned off, and the screens were black. Dammit. The room went black as the power shut off completely.

Hopelessly fumbling in the dark, the student removed their samples from the centrifuge and reracked them for storage. No way I’m getting any more work done tonight with the power out.

As they removed their lab coat and prepared for the long walk in the rain, the student remembered they had cultures still growing in the incubator. Thankfully, today was the last day of growth, so the power outage wouldn’t affect them. The student opened the incubator door to retrieve them, when a wave of fear hit them from head to toe.

What’s that yellow stuff growing on my plates? My samples aren’t supposed to be yellow!

The student’s train of thought was interrupted by the lab door opening. The night janitor had opened it to collect the lab trash. They exchanged hellos, neither wanting to address why the student was in the lab so late at night.

“Whatcha got there?”

”Looks like my plates are contaminated. Take a look,” the student responded.

“Huh. Looks like the ghost Bacillus."

“The what?”

“Y’know, the ghost Bacillus. Years ago, some grad student was growin’ gobs and gobs of Bacillus culture for their project. But a few pesky bacteria escaped into the air vents. Some say it only haunts grad students in their final semester.”

“But I thought that was just a rumor to scare people into maintaining good sterile technique?”

“Nope. I saw it myself. They tried everything to get rid of it, but it always came back. It crept into shake flasks, Petri plates, test tubes—you name it, it had Bacillus on it. Eventually they fumigated the building to completely remove it. I thought it was finally gone, but here you are starin’ right at it.”

The grad student sighed. It was no question. The plate was definitely contaminated, and they had to throw it out. They tossed the samples into the bright-red biohazard bag, knotted it, and walked to the room next door for sterilization. The two night owls said goodbye to each other as the student closed the door behind them.

In the autoclave room, they loaded the biohazard bag into a plastic bin and shoved the whole thing deep in the autoclave to make sure the high heat and pressure would fully kill any bacteria. While the autoclave ran, they walked back to their desk and put their head down for a midnight nap.

The alarm on the autoclave woke them up about an hour later.

Does it always make that noise?

The student walked into the autoclave room to retrieve their waste and put it into the trash bin to be taken away the next day. Right as they approached the autoclave door, they heard a strange whistling. Yellow steam started to flood out of the autoclave as the door lowers. Rising, rising, rising to the ceiling before spreading out across the entire room. Pockets of air began to form in the cloud of steam and slowly morphed into an eerie message:

I’M BACK.