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[DwarfOfTheLand]

That actually gives me cold chills thinking about it.

Looking around the fort, see one dead farmer laying on a pile of hemp seeds with no rational cause of death.

But then I think -

oh wait
this is dwarf fortress

[Naryar]

Bad trip + murderous ghosts = very bad trip.

[Loud Whispers]

Bad trip + murderous ghosts = very bad trip.

Dwarves, rope reed and magma do not mix well with spooky ghosts

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Wait so how do we weaponise this? Has anyone seen a ghost kill a non-resident?

[NW_Kohaku]

Wait so how do we weaponise this? Has anyone seen a ghost kill a non-resident?

I haven't heard of it, but you can weaponize friendly ghosts.  I remember someone finding a way to get ghost trainers to train aquatic creatures, which are normally untrainable due to incapacity to path into submerged training areas.

[Loud Whispers]

Is it possible to reliably harness ghost labour?

[NW_Kohaku]

Is it possible to reliably harness ghost labour?

I'm not sure it is, but even if it is, it requires some extremely specific parameters be met: 

You can read the thread where it happened here.  The ghost in question needs to be a specific type of ghost (restless haunt with no present living relations or forlorn haunt) and needs to already have a labor they prefer doing. (Hence, you need to give them at least a few levels of animal tamer in life, and have it at least a level above any other labor.) Then, when the ghost starts "performing the actions they did in life", it's animal taming.  The ghost in question was a new migrant, so they had no set places they preferred to go, which made things easier, but hypothetically, a player could simply build the animal training pits around the location the ghost likes to go.

The utility of this, if you get it working, should be obvious; Ghosts can gather food for taming animals from through solid walls, can't be killed by rampaging creatures, and can tame aquatic creatures.  Hence, you can seal away your most dangerous beasts, and tame them in safety. 

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Has a burderous ghost etc. Ever harmed a hostile?

[NW_Kohaku]

Has a burderous ghost etc. Ever harmed a hostile?

Not to my knowledge (but I haven't been here for a couple years, so...)

They're meant to be a punishment, not an asset, so the fact that you can use this loophole at all is probably mostly unintended, anyway.  As a bonus, they prefer murdering their friends and family over any other target.

[Insert_Gnome_Here]

Has a burderous ghost etc. Ever harmed a hostile?

Not to my knowledge (but I haven't been here for a couple years, so...)

They're meant to be a punishment, not an asset

When has that ever stopped a determined DF player before?

[NW_Kohaku]

When has that ever stopped a determined DF player before?

When it uses "isolated" rules. 

Most rules of Dwarf Fortress can be weaponized because they are blind and impartial in their application, and because they co-inhabit the same gamespace and rulespace.  Obsidian casting eliminates all units because the game can't handle water and magma in the same space, so it creates a wall, and a creature can't occupy a wall space.  Minecarts are buggy as heck, and can be used in conjunction with high speed ramping and fluids to become deadly projectiles because they occupy the same space as an invader.  You can create creature logic gates by knowing how a creature will path, and altering the terrain to exploit its behavior.

Ghosts are specifically not bound by the physical lay of the land, do not have an easily controlled target, and largely ignore all the other physical rules that the rest of the game operates upon.  (Incidentally, so do boogeymen, which are also nearly impossible to find an offensive use for...)

[Loud Whispers]

(Incidentally, so do boogeymen, which are also nearly impossible to find an offensive use for...)

That reminds me... I am yet to try and take an adventurer out in the middle of the night, alone, to deliberately induce a bogeymen attack - and then lead the bogeymen into a camp full of angry bandits or the lair of some fearsome megabeast. Given their skill, they'd fair a reasonable chance of emptying the site. And providing you survived the night (altogether possible with a ring of campfires), you could awake to find some nice loot to boot. Ghosts are considerably harder to weaponize. Can all labours be utilized by ghosts, or is it constrained to fishing and animal training? Ghost haulers/medics could have vast practical uses (though their attempts to drag Dwarves through solid walls would be traumatizing) while ghost siege engineers and miners could be potentially devastating to attacking foes.

[NW_Kohaku]

That reminds me... I am yet to try and take an adventurer out in the middle of the night, alone, to deliberately induce a bogeymen attack - and then lead the bogeymen into a camp full of angry bandits or the lair of some fearsome megabeast. Given their skill, they'd fair a reasonable chance of emptying the site.

I haven't tried this since 0.31, but boogeymen ignore all other creatures, and all other creatures ignore boogeymen.  Someone took some boogeymen on a trip through a city into the market square, and the merchants were still hawking wares at the adventurer while the boogeymen were chasing them.  The merchants were totally fine. 

Again, it's an isolated ruleset that ignores the "physics" of every other portion of the game.

Ghosts are considerably harder to weaponize. Can all labours be utilized by ghosts, or is it constrained to fishing and animal training? Ghost haulers/medics could have vast practical uses (though their attempts to drag Dwarves through solid walls would be traumatizing) while ghost siege engineers and miners could be potentially devastating to attacking foes.

Most labors can be used by dwarves, as far as I know, but they're restricted to areas they liked in life.  This usually means going to the same workshop over and over if they're that type of dwarf.  Haulers wouldn't work, since hauling isn't a skilled labor that triggers specific preferences, and it would probably only work if it was only moving stuff from the same workshop to the same stockpile, anyway.  A ghost carpenter might be capable of still producing wood beds over and over, though.  I'm not sure whether it would care about your orders, though, but the ghost tamer thing implies it would. 

Your best bet of weaponizing a ghost is to use the aquatic taming trick to train some warshark tanks to dump enemies into. 

[Loud Whispers]

That reminds me... I am yet to try and take an adventurer out in the middle of the night, alone, to deliberately induce a bogeymen attack - and then lead the bogeymen into a camp full of angry bandits or the lair of some fearsome megabeast. Given their skill, they'd fair a reasonable chance of emptying the site.

I haven't tried this since 0.31, but boogeymen ignore all other creatures, and all other creatures ignore boogeymen.  Someone took some boogeymen on a trip through a city into the market square, and the merchants were still hawking wares at the adventurer while the boogeymen were chasing them.  The merchants were totally fine.

I knew I'd seen this before. Bogeymen aint got shit on mass market economics. 

Most labors can be used by dwarves, as far as I know, but they're restricted to areas they liked in life.  This usually means going to the same workshop over and over if they're that type of dwarf.  Haulers wouldn't work, since hauling isn't a skilled labor that triggers specific preferences, and it would probably only work if it was only moving stuff from the same workshop to the same stockpile, anyway.  A ghost carpenter might be capable of still producing wood beds over and over, though.  I'm not sure whether it would care about your orders, though, but the ghost tamer thing implies it would. 
Your best bet of weaponizing a ghost is to use the aquatic taming trick to train some warshark tanks to dump enemies into.

Engineer ghost, for the good of dwarfkind, must happen

Disregarding military applications of Engineer ghost, you could even convert their ghost energy to kinetic energy with ghost powered pumps

[Inevitability]

Wasn't it determined that it only works with fishing and animal training?
The wiki specifically mentions those two jobs as the ones ghosts perform.