Luff Kingdom had such advantages as a diverse ecology and clean environment, clement weather, organic market gardens, a solid and respectable public health plan, other generous welfare provisions, and an accomplished pianist who played at almost all kingdom fetes, variety shows and gala performances.

The pianist was called Arthur Grippe. He was of course very much adored by the tourists and media, who often shared high tea with him. He liked to take along his pet rat, who was called Stinkyone. Stinkyone would sit on Arthur's shoulder most of the time. Every so often this enterprising rat would dash down to the table to steal crumbs from Arthur's companion's cakes. Stinkyone was an amusing pet who took high pleasure from leaping onto journalist's heads to demonstrate the reason for his singular name. Arthur was very popular, even so, as he was such an accomplished artist.

Lifestyle and travel magazines, television shows and WebPages often featured lengthy articles about how lovely Luff kingdom was. These effusive accounts of the kingdom came from writers, journalists and all kinds of media authorities specialising in many different important subjects such as how to polish cufflinks or classifying hotel soap.

In order to produce these many features lots of assorted experts had to visit the delightful Luff kingdom. Order room service, and charge it to their expense accounts fees and tax write offs. So it easy to see why the kingdom was much loved by, and so often featured in, the popular media of the day.

Visiting media were treated like royalty, which sounds almost as nice as it actually is. Being treated like royalty in Luff kingdom was not quite the same as being treated like royalty anywhere else, though. That is because Luff Kingdom was very unusual. Luff had five kings!

Luff also had four royal princesses, one ordinary prince and fourteen princes of various additional kinds. Having so much royalty around all the time. The people of Luff were well used to and knew just exactly how to treat visitors so that they would have a lovely time but not stay forever. Royalty was always getting in the way and asking uncomfortable questions and requiring difficult things such as to be served high tea without cake. So you see royalty are very like tourists, except for the cake.

One peaceful and delightful day in the kingdom of Luff the five kings saw a ghost. You may think this was very odd, even in an unusual kingdom such as this was, but as it was nearing Halloween the five kings did not worry. Instead they whooped and danced about and ran to tell their loyal subjects. Halloween was coming!

Surely there would be a royal gala performance, and the annual pumpkin fair, and they could all have cake! The kingdom's pianist, Arthur, did not take his pet rat Stinkyone to fairs and galas. At such times Stinkyone would, in the way of rats, run along the keyboard pretending the pianist's hands were cheese. Sometimes Stinkyone would liven these affairs by jumping on his owner's shoulder during complicated piano solos and squeaking discordantly. Even a brilliant artiste and responsible pet carer like Arthur has limits, and so Stinkyone stayed home with Arthur's governess during kingdom celebrations and everyone ate cake in safety.

You can see why the five kings really looked forward to Halloween. A few ghosts were easy to put up with when one could eat cake and be revered by the loyal citizens whilst listening to sweet music and wearing ones shirt untucked.

The ghost wasn't happy. He booed and rattled his many chains and called his friends. What will we do? the ghosts asked each other. It is no fun to be ignored when everyone else was having a wonderful time. Halloween is a special time for ghosts, and as far as the ghosts were concerned all the fuss was supposed to be in their honour!

Ghosts do not like to be upstaged by cake and untucked shirts. Halloween had been a huge annual Disappointment to the poor creatures of the night since the kingdom's top sartorial geniuses had discovered that by untucking ones shirt at Halloween one could avoid having to talk to ghosts. This distressed both the ghosts and the fashion conscious very much.

Before the secret of untidy shirts was discovered ghosts were able to compel the residents of Luff to converse with them till dawn every Halloween, without ever once having a care for the fact that people in Luff need to sleep. Luffian's usually get up at 7am every morning to prepare for a full and busy productive and delightful day unless they are kings. Kings and other royals get up at 6.30 am in Luff.

The ghosts thought it bad enough that they were only allowed to chat with fleshly Beings once a year, and so they really thought it was actually terrible when folk began to cheat them by de-tucking shirts. It was the very end. It had been bad enough when the new music and other teen fads encouraged the youth of Luff kingdom to get about skateboarding, scooting and roller-blading looking unkempt with flowing T-shirts that were much too big and not designed to tuck in at all. Even Luffian's who usually chose to wear pinafores or cat-suits or other shirtless garb made sure to wear shirts around the time of Halloween, just to frustrate the ghosts.

After waiting 12 months to chat with the fleshly ones the ghosts were devastated. This unconscionable deprivation of ghostly civil liberties had been going on for nearly a decade.

For shame, for shame! Moaned Tilda, who was one of the more excitable ghosts. Tilda was very fond of saying for shame!
"For shame!" She moaned "shame, shame, shame.."

This was especially amusing to the other ghosts as Tilda knew no shame personally, she was the absolute worst gossip anyone alive or undead had ever known!
But of course no-one could hear Tilda when their shirts were shamelessly loose and not primly pushed into their skirts, trousers shorts or other apparel.

 The ghosts held a conference. Halloween was very soon and no-one would be able to hear their chains rattle, no-one would listen to ghostly wails, wracking sobs, screams, screeches and moans and monologues?

Blithely the ghost had been practicing a piercing screech for a decade and was really anxious to try it out. How could he when no-one would listen?

Old Ghost Stoneleaf had been hoping to find someone to chat with about land snails and their significance in dating fossils such as himself.

All the ghosts agreed. Something had to be done. This was a significant summit of ghouls. Never before had the creatures of night been in such complete charity with each other.

Even Ghost Lavell and Zombie Rowmel were of the same mind, and they hadn't achieved consensus about anything since they divorced three centuries earlier and had a bitter and acrimonious custody dispute over their pet skull. In the end the skull had to be given custody of itself and full ghost status as the former couple were too busy feuding to care for it and take it for walks. Tilda said that it was terrible shame that Ghost Lavell and Zombie Rowmel had tried to live in the same brain, it couldn't work and she did tell them so. Everyone knows a brain needs a left and right hemisphere and as they were both left. That is what Tilda said, anyway. Tilda always did like to cluck and mutter about how she told folk so.

Suddenly one of the ghosts yelled that had an idea. All the other creatures were quite surprised, as skull had been utterly silent for centuries. When he had nodded agreement about the problem everyone had assumed skull didn't mean he personally actually wanted to talk with humans. To be honest almost all the ghosts had assumed skull couldn't think, and many would have bet their best chains he couldn't talk, either. Even though many creatures who cannot think can talk.

"We deserve our fun, we are quite harmless and good natured, you know, except for The chocolate stealing teeth grinder, and hes a monster really and not strictly a creature of the night, he prefers dawn!"

"Yes!"

"Yes!"

Chorused the ghosts

"We deserve our fun!" They yelled

"We want our time in the moonlight!" Boomed stoneleaf.

"Lend us your ears!" screeched Blithely.

"We demand equal strawberry milkshake!!" shouted Puppet-Ghost Millie, who seemed confused.

The chocolate stealing teeth grinder good naturedly agreed . He had privately always thought that it was silly to call a sunny smiling chap like himself a creature of the night.

"I have a plan" skull announced. "We can still act, they can still see us, "

"Fortunately the fleshly beings have not discovered that by not bathing for four nights they can avoid seeing us!" skull shuddered.

Of course some of Luff's grubbier loyal citizens had discovered it. Fortunately very few people listen properly to ten year old boys when they are coated with grime and those who do rarely understand them until they are scrubbed and their hair is combed. Most of the children forgot all about the secret of Halloween after they had spent a few thousands hours playing video games. It had taken the genius of Tilda to think of programming forgetfulness into the games. Tilda was a mother, and always thought those joystick game things could be used for mind control. She did tell everyone so when video games were invented.

"We will steal their crowns" announced skull.

This caused Millie to faint. Skull's deep voice had frightened her. Millie had delicate nerves since an unfortunate incident 50 years earlier in which an eight year old girl mistook Millie for a doll and styled her hair with nail scissors. Tilda had always said haunting girls was too dangerous for highly strung ghosts.

"What fun!" exclaimed the ghosts

"there are five crowns you know, said one "plenty for everyone.

"twenty" corrected another. Formal crowns, gala day crowns, spare crowns, and daily crowns.

"and the fleshly beings have lots and lots of princely crowns, one actual princely crown and fourteen sundries!"

"those are coronets" corrected another

I thought coronets were for dukes" Millie murmured as she came out of her faint.

"Please stop waving that burning feather under my nose dear Tilda, it reminds me of my sweet saintly mother's cologne" Tilda chuckled. Tilda was Millie's mother, you see.

"If we steal the crowns the fleshly beings will want to talk to us, to get the crowns back!"

The ghostly conference had taken so long that it was already Halloween, so the ghosts creep, walked, flew and shuddered to the Halloween Gala day festivities.

Luffian's had come from all over Luff for the celebration. Shirt tails were flying freely in the wind. Arthur the pianist had finished his recital, and everyone was laughing and chatting, eating cake careless of where the crumbs fell, and having a wonderful time. Luff was a delightful kingdom. The loyal subjects of Luff had all had lots practice being joyful and carefree and were very good at it.

The five kings were wandering around chatting with their devoted subjects and playing practical jokes. The kings justified this by explaining it is important for kings to be seen to have an excellent sense of humour if they wish to remain kings after the next election, but actually they just enjoyed practical jokes. No-one minded, Luff is that kind of place. Life is in Luff is so good that Royalty were quite easy to endure. They were hardly ever a nuisance and a bother, considering how much fun everyone was always having.

Suddenly, all the kingdoms ghosts, except the chocolate stealing tooth grinder, appeared. . The chocolate stealing tooth grinder was sulking because skull had meant crowns for heads not tooth crowns, so he snuck off to steal chocolate from the candy dispensing machine while everyone was distracted.

No-one could hear the ghosts but most people could see them or feel their presence. Everyone cheered, now this was really Halloween! The children rushed forward as a group to play with the nice ghosts. The second king good naturedly sprayed Tilda with water from his joke plastic button hole flower.

Millie leapt up and stole his crown!

Before anyone, even the ghosts, had realised what was happening the ghosts had all the crowns. They modelled the royal headgear proudly, laughing and dancing.

The second king sighed and put down his cake. He tucked in his shirt.

"give me my crown back!"he demanded

 "but I'm your king!" the king exclaimed ! He was truly surprised. Everyone loved the five kings, even if they did get underfoot sometimes.

"How can I be king if you don't listen to me?"

Blithely was abashed.

Of course the king was right. Royalty widely agreed to be a very good thing in Luff . Luffian's often congratulated themselves on their kings. It is hard not feel a little bit smug sometimes when you live in a place that is as close to perfect as a place to live can be. Being a Luff kingdom resident was very good fun and things generally went well, even for ghosts. Except for the Halloween shirts.

"We want you to be our king, but how can you be our king if you don't listen to us?" demanded Skull.

"We are people too!" exclaimed some of the ghosts. "well, creatures of the night, anyway!"

The kings sat down. The crowd hushed.

All citizens of Luff deserve to be happy, including ghosts. Everyone loved Halloween, but nobody had thought the ghosts would really mind if they weren't listened to. Nobody had really thought about the ghost's feelings at all.

"Is it really that bad?" asked the kings

"Luffian's need their sleep" they explained.

The people of Luff agreed that they needed their sleep. They told the ghosts that they appreciated them and quite liked the creatures of the night sometimes, except the chocolate stealing teeth rotter, but they had enjoyed being able to sleep at Halloween.

"Hes a grinder" corrected Skull

"It wouldn't be so bad if all Luffian's understood sign language" explained Tilda, who was thinking maybe it could be introduced as a subject in every kingdom school.

The loyal subjects of Luff thought about it. Halloween wouldn't be any fun without the creatures of the night, and they were good natured people. They good naturedly admitted that Halloween was the ghosts party.

"One night without sleep a year isn't too bad" thought Gus, and it would be nice not to have to try to execute complicated acrobatic diving moves wearing a shirt.

Luffian's began to tuck in their shirts. The fashion gurus of the kingdom sighed a collective sigh of relief. The nightmare of Halloween was over. There was much cheering when a number of the young people took their shirts off and ran around with water pistols squirting each other and the ghosts and the fashion gurus, but not their parents.

The Kings loaned the ghosts their crowns for the night and everyone cavorted around enjoying a wonderful gala celebration. Almost everyone had a completely delightful time The chocolate stealing tooth grinder wasn't entirely dissatisfied, but he didn't have a good time. He had accidentally bitten into of one of the kings practical jokes, a fake block of chocolates. He didn't steal chocolate for a long time after that. Plastic tastes awful. Tilda had told him so, many times. For shame, she moaned gleefully.

Having relaxed and resolved to go without sleep and not get up early the next day, people found they genuinely adored being haunted at Halloween!

The ghosts tried to be considerate about bedtimes those who couldn't sleep in, like the baker and a two of the kings and four of the princes and one princess. Skull haunted those who really wanted to sleep that night, as he had decided not to talk again for a while as he was so happy. Skull had learned a lot about not talking when his former owners had been together. Tilda agreed it would be a great shame to waste his skill and natural talent for listening.

Everyone lived happily and peacefully, enjoying the clement weather and pretty scenery of the kingdom, until their next adventure.