Ghost Hunters Divided as Artificial Intelligence Enters the Haunted House

THE INTERNET — The ghost-hunting fraternity, long accustomed to meters, recorders and gadgets of every description, finds itself in a fresh dispute over the newest instrument of all: artificial intelligence. According to a report published by The Guardian and noted by The Anomalist, the technology has won enthusiastic adopters and wary critics in roughly equal measure.

Among the adopters are Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting, a ghost-hunting pair who design their own software. They describe their app, GhostTube Seer, as the world's first AI ghost-hunting tool. The pair claim it takes readings from a phone's magnetometer, identifies words and phrases in the signals, and passes them to an image generator. The app requires a paid subscription and, per its Google Play listing, has more than one million downloads.

In a video on their Amy's Crypt YouTube channel, the pair sat in the Winchester Mystery House and asked the app to show what once went on in the room. It produced wooden walls and golden curtains, then a woman reading, a woman in a black shawl and a flock of white birds. The investigators took each image to bear some relation to the home's history.

Not everyone is persuaded. Alex Matsuo, a paranormal researcher and author who works in the technology industry, told the paper she is skeptical, and wonders what data such tools are trained on to decide what counts as a ghost. She also raised concerns about copyrighted art and about chatbots leading users into what she called paranormal echo chambers. She noted that new technology has always found its way into the field, from Edison's proposed spirit phone to spirit photography.

Matsuo said many people come to ghost hunting through trauma or grief, and believes the pursuit should remain deeply human. Elsewhere, the report says, the r/Nosleep subreddit has adopted a strict policy against AI-generated stories, while investigator Sean Austin has launched an app that uses AI to analyze audio for electronic voice phenomena.

The report adds that a former Pennsylvania asylum, a beloved haunted house, was sold to a datacenter developer in late 2025, though residents reportedly blocked the demolition in May.