Story 1

The Superstition Index: which states believe in ghosts?

We scored every state on how much it searches Google for four ghost-belief terms over the last 12 months: “paranormal”, “Ouija board”, “ghost hunting” and “is my house haunted”. Google Trends scores each state from 0 to 100 relative to the state with the highest share of searches. The index is the average of the four.

Superstition Index by state, 2026

Darker = more superstitious. Number = rank out of 50. Source: Google Trends, US searches, Oct 2025 – Oct 2026.

The 10 most superstitious states

What the data shows

• Wyoming tops three of the four ghost searches: “paranormal”, “Ouija board” and “ghost hunting”. It had too few searches for “is my house haunted” to be scored.
• West Virginia is the most consistent believer: #1 for “is my house haunted”, #2 for “Ouija board”, #2 for “ghost hunting” and #3 for “paranormal”.
• Rural states believe, big states don’t. Utah, South Dakota, Idaho, Kentucky and Oklahoma all make the top 10. The four most populous states, California, Texas, Florida and New York, rank #45, #39, #47 and #46.
• Ghost-tour capitals are not the biggest believers. South Carolina, home of Charleston’s famous ghost walks, ranks #48. Georgia, home of Savannah, ranks #44. Louisiana, home of New Orleans, ranks #43.
• Hawaii is the least superstitious state, last for “Ouija board” and near the bottom for every other term.

The raw Google Trends scores behind the index

Each column is a separate Google Trends query for US states over the past 12 months. 100 is the state with the highest share of searches for that term. A dash means Google had too little data for that state. The index is the average of the available scores.

Check it yourself. Open any term in Google Trends, then scroll to “Interest by subregion”. Scores move a little each day, so expect small differences from ours.

America summons the spirits once a year

US searches for “Ouija board” sit at around a third of their peak for most of the year, then more than triple in the week of Halloween. Rising related searches include “is the Ouija board dangerous” (+80%) and “does the Ouija board actually work” (+100%).

Weekly US Google searches for “Ouija board”, indexed to the peak week (100). Source: Google Trends.

Where people go looking for a scare

A separate measure, searches for “haunted house near me”, shows where people actively look for haunted attractions. West Virginia and Arkansas tie for first, followed by Ohio and Illinois. Hawaii, Alaska and the Dakotas barely search for them.

Google searches for “haunted house near me” by state. Number = rank out of 50. Source: Google Trends, Oct 2025 – Oct 2026.

Story 2

What guests at America’s haunted hotels actually report

We searched Google Maps for haunted hotels in every state and collected 731 Google reviews that mention a ghost, at 105 hotels, inns and B&Bs. Then we read and classified them one by one. Every encounter we counted is listed below with a link to the hotel, so you can check it.

Disappointed guests outnumber haunted ones 3 to 2

For every two guests who describe an encounter, about three write that they saw nothing. Most ghost reviews are neither: they mention the ghost tour, the hotel’s legend or the staff’s stories. Some of the disappointed guests:

The most common encounter: seeing a figure or shadow

We gave each of the 67 encounters one main type. Seeing something, usually a figure or shadow at night, comes first. Footsteps and knocks come second. Unexplained smells and a vague sense of a presence are the rarest.

In their own words

All 50 states

Superstition rank and score (0–100), “haunted house near me” rank, the most-reviewed place in the state’s Google Maps results for “haunted places”, and its most-discussed haunted hotel in our sample.

How we did it

1. Chose the search terms. We tested seven ghost-related searches and kept four that measure belief: “paranormal”, “Ouija board”, “ghost hunting” and “is my house haunted”. We dropped “psychic”, because most of its searches are about the Pokémon type, and “ghost sighting”, because it has too few searches for stable state scores. “Haunted house near me” is reported separately, as a measure of thrill-seeking rather than belief.
2. Pulled Google Trends data. For each term we collected Google Trends “interest by subregion” for the United States over the past 12 months (12 October 2025 to 11 October 2026). Each term was queried on its own on 11 October 2026. Google Trends measures a term’s share of all searches in a state, so a small state can outrank a big one.
3. Built the Superstition Index. A state’s score is the average of its four term scores. 15 smaller states had too few searches for “is my house haunted” (Alaska, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Wyoming), so their score is the average of the other three. The raw scores are in the table above.
4. Found the haunted hotels. We ran the Google Maps search “haunted hotel in [state]” for all 50 states and took the top five results (155 places). We kept only hotels, inns, B&Bs and resorts located in that state, which left 105 properties.
5. Collected the reviews. For each property we collected up to 20 Google reviews that contain the word “ghost”: 731 unique reviews in total.
6. Read and classified them. Two keyword filters flagged reviews that might describe an experience (“heard”, “saw”, “footsteps”, “orbs” and similar) or say nothing happened (“no ghosts”, “didn’t see any” and similar). We read every flagged review. We counted an encounter only when the guest, or someone staying with them, described a specific thing that happened during their own stay. We left out jokes, dreams, stories told by guides or staff, other guests’ experiences and vague claims such as “things happened”. That left 67 encounters and 97 “nothing happened” reviews. Each encounter got one main type.
7. Found the haunted attractions. We ran the Google Maps search “haunted places in [state]” for every state and kept up to 20 results per state that are located there (771 places). For each state we list the place with the most Google reviews.

Limits of this data

• Searching for something is not the same as believing in it. People also search out of curiosity, for games, films and Halloween parties.
• Google Trends values are relative, rounded and based on a sample of searches. Small states can swing more from year to year.
• Reviews are what guests chose to write, not a survey of all guests. Hotels were picked from Google Maps results, not from a complete list. Classifying a review takes judgment; the full evidence table lets anyone check ours.