Thirty-Year Ghost Census Finds the Classic Apparition Fading Into Shadow

THE INTERNET — The traditional ghost, long a fixture of the parlor and the porch light, appears to be losing ground to darker and vaguer company, according to a digest entry in The Anomalist describing the work of ghost researcher M.J. Wayland.

Wayland, the entry says, compared 1,000 ghost encounters posted online in the early internet era, from 1994 to 2012, with 1,000 posted between 2024 and 2026. The digest reports that he used AI models for the comparison and sets out his methodology in a published article, which it recommends to readers who find arithmetic less alarming than hauntings.

The shift in the cast is described with some affection. Gone, the entry suggests, are the cheerful Casper-style spirits, the solid-looking apparitions of the Scooby-Doo variety and the ladies in white. In their place, it says, come shadows lurking in corners, faceless beings tormenting dreams and men in hats waiting by bedroom doors in the dark. One finding, however, held steady: according to the digest, the level of fear reported did not change.

The entry then points readers to a related piece by Rachael Funnell of IFLScience on so-called Haunted People Syndrome, drawn from the case of a family reportedly visited by ghosts for more than a decade. The idea, as the digest quotes Funnell, is that some people are predisposed to supernatural activity because they are prone to unusual sensory experiences, later reinforced by paranormal beliefs and social contagion.

The Anomalist's contributor, identified only as CM, is unconvinced that this closes the matter. The theory, the entry says, does not account for supernatural attachments and sounds suspiciously like victim blaming.