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.

What the data shows

• The Midwest and the South lead the hunt for haunted houses. Nine of the top 10 states are in the Midwest or the South; Wyoming is the only exception.
• Old prisons and asylums draw the biggest crowds. In many states the most-reviewed haunted place is a former prison, asylum or sanatorium: the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum (WV), Waverly Hills Sanatorium (KY), the Old Idaho Penitentiary, the Ohio State Reformatory and the Missouri State Penitentiary.
• The most-reviewed haunted places in the US in our data include California’s Winchester Mystery House (16,372 reviews), Colorado’s Frightmare Compound (9,541), Florida’s Scream-A-Geddon (8,526) and the Nashville Nightmare Haunted House (7,472).

All 50 states

How we did it

1. 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.