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.

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.

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.