By Jamie Hose

Halloween is almost at our doorsteps. Have you bought a costume? Perhaps you should.

Wearing ghoulish outfits on October 31^st is not solely a commercial enterprise. In fact, it has been a tradition for centuries. Drawing influence from Allhallowtide commemorations and seasonal festivals such as Samhain (“sow-in”) in Ireland and Calan Gaeaf (“kalan guy-av”) in Wales, costumes originally served to disguise you from the otherworldly spirits believed to walk among us as the seasons change.

So, it’s a form of protection, but an ironic one, to disguise yourself as a monster. Why, you ask? Because the word “monster” stems from Latin monstrare, which means “to reveal”.

In literature, psychology, and folklore, monsters shine a light on our fears and frustrations. From the earth-shaking Minotaur to the nuclear-irradiated Godzilla, from the legend of the Woman in Black to the playful yet menacing Poltergeist, monsters personify anxieties as diverse as natural disasters, moral corruption, and the dangers of technology.

In real life, many of those anxieties and fears extend beyond the page to haunt our everyday lives – including the workplace.

It’s absurd to expect you will go into the office one day and find a dragon snacking on the photocopier, but narcissistic leadership, toxic team cultures, rampant automation, and many other relatable worries can be embodied as monsters.

Read on to find out how the following five Halloween fiends can help us make sense of common workplace anxieties.

The Vampire – Blood-Suckers And Burnout

Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, defining how modern readers and cinema-goers would picture the vampire from then on.

Leaving his home in the Carpathian Mountains to take up new residence on the outskirts of London, the titular Count’s journey mirrors how Stoker fused diverse Eastern European folklore with tropes from Victorian Gothic fiction to bring vampires into a post-industrial world.

Unsurprisingly, an aristocrat feeding off the lifeblood of the masses lends itself to critiques of exploitation and narcissistic leadership. The vampire lurks within managers who subject teams to excessive workloads and unrealistic expectations, taking all the credit while offering little or no support.

Research by Professor Birgit Schyns at NEOMA Business School reveals the erosive impact of narcissistic leaders on employee wellbeing.

Surveying workers in the UK education sector during the COVID-19 pandemic, Schyns’ analysis reveals that vulnerable narcissistic leadership, characterised by covert feelings of entitlement, is linked to more acute and worsening levels of employee irritation.

In much the same way vampires sap their victims of life night after night, the research shows how narcissistic bosses drain resources and employees’ mental health during crises.

“Resources are often already stretched thin in crisis situations. Vulnerable narcissistic leaders strain them further, for instance by giving employees no guidelines on how to accomplish goals or blaming others for their own shortcomings. Employees already short on time and energy are required to invest more in making sense of their leader’s behaviour,” Schyns explains.

Tempting your vampire boss to stand in front of the boardroom window, unfortunately, won’t result in them turning to dust or burning away to nothing. So how can professionals vanquish such a foe in the real world?

The study advocates for vigilant supervisors and an involved HR team to detect this behaviour from leaders and ensure adequate support is provided for employees.

The recommendations are particularly pertinent in the context of widespread burnout, with Mental Health UK’s Burnout Report 2026 suggesting as many as one in five UK workers took time off sick due to stress-related poor mental health in the last year.

The Werewolf – Losing Control

Unlike vampires, there’s no definitive depiction of a werewolf in modern media. Perhaps Robert Eggers’ upcoming movie, Werwulf, will change that, or maybe 1941’s The Wolf Man, which introduced the idea that werewolves can only die from a silver bullet, will remain the closest we’ll get for now.

But werewolves have existed, in one form or another, since the earliest recorded stories. The Epic of Gilgamesh, carved onto tablets approximately 4,000 years ago, includes the story of a shepherd who was turned into a wolf by the goddess Ishtar. The basics are all there: a person becomes a mindless beast, and bad things ensue.

Concern that people will start sprouting fur and running on all fours at work is, if it exists, not widely attested. However, worries about losing freedom and self-determination at work are more reasonable and prevalent.

According to a December 2025 white paper by the University of Phoenix College of Doctoral Studies, 21 per cent of employees in the US feel their workplace autonomy is diminishing.

Whereas the werewolf’s self-control is governed by the changes of the moon,a longitudinal study by Associate Professor Redzo Mujcic and Professor Andrew Oswald at the University of Warwick shows how professional autonomy waxes and wanes over time. Based on analysis of workforces in the UK, Germany, and Australia, they find that workers typically perceive their autonomy increasing until approximately 40 years of age, after which the feeling starts to decline.

Mujcic and Oswald find that their perceptions match reality. Demotions, whether formal or informal, are common. Yet, they also acknowledge that prior research suggests psychological wellbeing is typically U-shaped over the course of a person’s life.

There’s the silver lining, then – or is it the silver bullet that slays this particular anxiety? Autonomy at work may well decrease after middle age, and you will likely notice it slipping, but there’s still much happiness ahead.

The Witch – Selling Your Soul

What is a witch? Depending on your age, or the type of media you enjoy, you might have very different answers. Does she live in a gingerbread house? Perhaps she has green skin and a pointy hat. Or maybe she’s the resident clever-cloggs at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

In her 2013 book about the Belvoir witch trials, Witches: James I and the English Witch Hunts, historian Tracy Borman starts by unpacking this exact question, offering several historical definitions. The most succinct answer is recounted by George Clifford, 3^rd Earl of Cumberland: “A Witch is one who woorketh by the Devill, or by some develish or curious art, either hurting or healing.”

So, let’s conclude that the spooky Halloween witch, unlike Hermione Granger, has made some rather shady deals, though not always for nefarious intentions.

Naturally, no reasonable boss will have your soul in the employment contract. But there are times at work when you find yourself in a difficult position where you have to choose the lesser of two bad outcomes – the lesser of two evils, if you will. How do you face this?

Research by Associate Professor Marjo-Riitta Diehl at Aalto University School of Business examines how middle managers navigate different perspectives of fair treatment in reaction to corporate changes.

Discrepancies between the organisation’s strategic needs and a duty of care to individual employees can lead to scenarios where middle managers experience guilt after making decisions that do not align with their personal morals.

In this position, Diehl’s research reveals a number of coping strategies. Some middle managers process the decision by dehumanising affected employees; for instance, calling laid-off workers “bad apples”.

Others, unable to reconcile with their consciences, may resign or even attempt to discreetly recompense people whom they feel have been treated unjustly.

“Organisations must be aware that if managers cannot reconcile their role with their values, they may end up trying to establish fairness according to their own rules ‘under the radar’ or even exit the company,” says Diehl.

It’s an uncomfortable idea to contemplate. When two conflicting perspectives of what is “right” are on the table, either course of action will inevitably be “wrong”.

The Mad Scientist – Innovation Without Ethics

In a gothic home laboratory, Victor Frankenstein completes the final stitches on his life’s work: an artificial man. But Victor’s rejection of the “creature” as soon as it begins to stir kicks off a chain of events that will lead to murder, madness, and misery.

In the glittering, glass-paned Cyberdyne Systems offices in 1995, Miles Dyson invents the microprocessor that leads to Skynet, an artificial intelligence that gains sentience and starts a robot apocalypse to exterminate humanity.

Unlike Frankenstein, Dyson does not present as darkly obsessive over his work. Yet, both Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein and James Cameron’s action flick Terminator 2: Judgment Day examine the effects of innovation gone wrong. What happens when progress is unshackled from ethics?

The replication of Frankenstein’s monster has not occurred to date, thankfully, but AI is now a reality for most workers. According to McKinsey’s The State of AI in 2026 report, 40 per cent of respondents from large organisations (exceeding $1 billion in annual revenue) report scaling AI agents. Across all organisations surveyed, 39 per cent of respondents expect AI to spark workforce declines for humans.

It’s impossible to avoid the ethical implications of widespread AI adoption. Nataliya Kosmyna, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), warns that offloading cognitive tasks to AI has a corrosive effect on people’s mental abilities.

Beyond a possible AI-fuelled brain drain, experts indicate problems with discrimination and bias when the technology is used to automate certain processes.

Assistant Professor Douglas Guilbeault at Stanford University was part of a research group that discovered pervasive biases against older women in AI-generated content. When asked to generate resumes based on the same input information, AI presented women as younger and less experienced than man, demonstrating it cannot be viewed as impartial in recruitment functions.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. An empirical analysis of 1,790 publicly-listed firms by Professor Wenbin Sun, Helzberg School of Management, and Professor Zhihua Ding, China University of Mining and Technology, finds that AI innovation significantly reduces corporate social irresponsibility.

This finding is supported in a different study by researchers at three Chinese universities, who examined microdata from listed Chinese firms between 2010 and 2021. They conclude that AI can significantly improve corporate social responsibility, especially in firms that are not state-owned, are high polluters, and operate in extremely competitive industries.

These studies highlight the inaccuracy of viewing innovation itself as undesirable. But AI offers a current case study in the importance of guiding principles. Progress at any cost breeds unintended consequences.

Look before you leap, or you might not like where you land.

The Invisible Man – Zero Accountability

A mysterious individual, swaddled in bandages, arrives at an inn during a snowstorm. His secret – when the bandages are removed, he is completely invisible!

What follows in H. G. Wells’ classic novel, The Invisible Man, is a tale of rapidly dwindling self-control. After all, how can the authorities catch the protagonist if they cannot see him? Free from any sort of accountability, the titular Invisible Man goes on a rampage.

The tale borrows themes from the Ring of Gyges, a thought experiment in Plato’s Republic. In this hypothetical, the magic ring allows its wearer to become invisible at will. The central question is whether a person, now free to indulge their worst impulses with impunity, could still behave virtuously.

Socrates, the Ancient Greek philosopher whose teachings are at the heart of Republic, argues that a person could. Wells’ novel paints a different picture.

The issue of accountability echoes in today’s workplaces. How can the person in charge be held accountable for their actions?

Tying executive compensation schemes to certain metrics could be one way to incentivise leaders to align with the interests of other stakeholders.

Research co-authored by Professor Stefan Reichelstein at Mannheim Business School examines what happens when such schemes are linked specifically with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metrics.

The study finds a positive link between “ESG Pay” and genuine improvement toward sustainability goals. Including emission-specific targets in pay packages led to decreased carbon dioxide emissions, and adopting ESG Pay is often accompanied by relative improvements in ESG ratings.

But do leaders themselves not have a responsibility to make themselves accountable? That’s the point raised in a paper by Associate Professor Jeremy Brees at Northern Arizona University. Drawing upon interviews with 100 leaders across multiple industries, Brees reframes accountability as a leadership capability, not a structural mechanism.

Professor Bas Kodden at Nyenrode Business University offers a similar viewpoint. His paper on the relationship between ego and leadership effectiveness highlights the importance of regulated humility – the ability to receive criticism without becoming defensive. At the organisational level, this gives employees the feeling of psychological safety needed to innovate and try new things; at the personal level, it allows the leader to remain open to learning and growing in effectiveness.

In amongst these studies lies the implicit question: should accountability fall primarily to mechanisms like reviewable performance metrics, or on the leaders themselves to recognise the inherent benefits of making themselves accountable?

Wells offers one answer; Socrates another. The choice is yours.

Forewarned is Forearmed

As autumn strips the trees to their leafless skeletons, the monsters of this season lay bare our fears and insecurities in like manner. Not just the weighty concerns of the wider world, but also those more intimate anxieties that we feel in everyday working life.

If one were to extract a “moral” from Halloween, it’s that “forewarned is forearmed”. In centuries past, costumes were a form of preparation for the night when ethereal spirits roamed abroad; in today’s more secular view, you should make sure you buy enough candy to satisfy the equally ravenous and implacable scourge of young trick-or-treaters.

So, how can you prepare for these five fiends of the modern workplace? Sadly, the pungent smell of garlic is only effective at deterring some vampiric bosses.

First, learn how to identify the early signs of toxic behaviour or a draining workplace culture. It’s hard to deal with a monster if you don’t know which one it is. Second, foster support networks and find healthy coping mechanisms for stress. There is no sense in tackling a problem alone if you can do it with help from colleagues and an involved HR team. Third, invest in yourself and your own learning. Continuing your personal development and expanding your skillset throughout your career offers multiple benefits. It gives you more tools to draw on when tackling a challenge. It also helps you to reframe taking accountability for mistakes or bad decisions as an opportunity to learn and do better.

After all, it’s not simply a question of monitoring each other. The spectral masks we wear invite us to remember we have our own ghoulishness to manage, too.

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