Ghost shirts were sacred vests worn by the Lakota Sioux that were supposed to guard against bullets through spiritual power.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, a faction revolting against the rigidly hierarchical, mechanized United States of the future calls itself the Ghost Shirt Society. The founders claim that, like the militant Native Americans of the late 19th century, they are “mak[ing] one last fight for the old values.”
