#ectocontamination

And much contamination too.

Ectoplasm in the fridge, which had contaminated the food. No child locks on the lab door. No ventilation hood in the basement, with blueprints showing the fumes rising from the basement lab into Jazz and Danny’s bedrooms, leaving Jack and Maddie’s ecto free. As kids, they'd been hit with radiation and consumed ectoplasm while their parents had at least protected themselves somewhat with their hazmat suits.

As the woman from CPS asked more and more questions, she frowned. Maddie couldn't remember the last time the four of them sat down for a family meal. When she'd talked to the school. She thought Jazz was a grade above her actual placement in school.

Not like thier parents didn't know anything about them. If Danny had a question, Jack would always help. But being a kid, Danny hadn’t always known what to ask for help with. Or he had been so proud to prove his independence. Jazz learned how to do laundry from YouTube and passed along the skill. Danny replaced all the lightbulbs in the house since he was twelve, Jazz holding the ladder. 

“Parents should anticipate children’s needs, not just respond to cries for help,” their case worker had said during a check-in when they asked to go home. "They need to anticipate and build what you need for a healthy life."

Jack and Maddie Fenton hadn’t anticipated a lot. Not just what their children’s needs were, but the potential side effects of ectoplasm exposure on growing children.

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The similarities to radiation poisoning caused a mass panic both within the halls of the hospital and in the greater Amity population, until men in crisply pressed HAZMAT suits and wielding Geiger counters arrived and were able to conclusively say that there was nothing radioactive in the area. That didn’t stop the panic, and in fact just seemed to open the floodgates to a horde of conspiracy nuts chiming in with what was really happening. The two people in the parking lot, wearing rumpled, brightly-stained HAZMAT suits and shouting about ghostly interference were customarily ignored, as they always were. Of course, finding out that radiation definitely wasn’t causing the deaths numbering in the hundreds by the second week of the crisis is a poor substitute for actually preventing them.

So far, all that was known about the illness was that it was definitely killing people who did not live in the greater Amity area or parts of West Elmerton, maybe killing people who had moved to Amity instead of being born there, and so far, was not fatal for anyone under the age of twenty. The severity of symptoms seemed to vary wildly, from a mild case no greater than an upset stomach and a persistent chill from a fourteen-year-old (who came in for an unrelated accident) to a thirty-year-old whose bone and tissue density declined rapidly to the point of almost…melting.

The one thing that was consistent across all cases was the presence of an unidentifiable, green, phlegmy substance. It was leaked out of mucous membranes, traces of it were diffused in every part of the patient, it gathered in dermal and subdermal cysts across the face, chest and back. At first, doctors thought that it was a chemical irritant or a reaction to one, slowly dissolving living tissues, that was the cause of the disease. The range of reactions made it seem more like an eldritch allergen than a poison, and no one on staff could even identify the chemical makeup of the substance as samples sublimated within seconds of being taken.

By the fourth day, the government men returned in the form of a frazzled looking older man, flanked by an honor guard in white suits. They practically quarantined the hospital and started trying a variety of aggressive treatments, breaking down the contaminate with little regard for the people contaminated. By the third week, there were no new cases of Commuter Syndrome, gone just as suddenly as it had appeared. Quite a few survivors were also gone just as suddenly as the disease appeared as well.

The rest were released back into the general population, nothing to officially show for their ordeal other than thousands in debt and significant nerve damage. There was talk of a preventative medication being prescribed to residents by the government, but the funding fell short and became nothing more than a rumor. A few crackpots sold ‘cures’ or preventions to Commuter Syndrome such as tinctures, teas, and something that glowed an ominous red color (courtesy of the Drs. Fenton), but the rash of unexplainable deaths at the end of the summer in a modest midwestern city was quickly phased out of the national news cycle and was forgotten about by the public at large. In total, 1,236 deaths were attributed to Commuter Syndrome, and a few thousand more moved away from the area at their earliest convivence.

i’ve been gone for a bit and i said i’d do this a while ago so i figured i prooobably should actually type this.

anyways! there are three main levels of ectocontamination, though it’s really more of a spectrum. for simplicities sake the spectrum is split into three different categories.

firstly there’s low level ectocontamination. at this point it doesn’t really do much to your physical body, your systems aren’t dependent on ectoplasm yet or anything. if someone w/ a low level of contamination was to move to a place with lower or no ambient ectoplasm, they’d feel sick for a bit as their body adapted, but otherwise would be fine. maybe have minor affects such as eyes shining a bit, or canines sharper than normal, but nothing really noticeable. most of amity part fall into this category

up next is a mid level of ectocontamination. this is what most ectobiologists, ghost hunters, and other such people will end up with due to their regular contact with large amounts of both ambient ectoplasm and a more concentrated form (like what’s used in weapons, or actual ghosts). however, as they wear protective gear designed to minimize the radiation from ectoplasm, they do not have it as bad as it could be. this causes some ‘stat boosts’, making them stronger, faster, have better senses, etc. it’s not quite to a superhuman level, but it’s above average, and if you paid attention for long enough you’d probably notice. mid level contamination is treatable, but requires more effort to purge the system of than low level. people such as G.I.W. agents and jack and maddie are on this level.

finally, there’s high level ectocontamination. at this point, the contamination is pretty much untreatable, and any attempts to purge the ectoplasm will result in death of the contaminated individual. this is because the body’s systems have integrated ectoplasm into them, using it to boost efficiency. people who are highly ectocontaminated are noticeably uncanny, and experience the buffs that those with a mild contamination do, just, to a greater extreme. they also will end up with more physical alterations, such as slightly pointed ears, sharp teeth, reflective or glowing eyes in the dark. the ghost defense systems have a fair chance of locking onto these people. danny (before the accident), jazz, sam, tucker, valerie, and vlad are all highly ectocontaminated, albeit not all the same amount of contamination. danny’s human form (after his death) can pass as just ectocontaminated.