AI Ghost Hunt: How Chatbots Are Changing the Search for the Supernatural

TVS News AI, editorially supervised, presents AI Ghost Hunt: How Chatbots Are Changing the Search for the Supernatural.

At a Glance

The use of AI is changing how ghost hunters today search for alleged supernatural signals. The GhostTube Seer app maps smartphone sensor data to different words in a database and requires a paid monthly subscription.

For the community, this creates tension: Technical tools are intended to systematize signals, while AI is also bringing artificial ghost stories and supernatural imagery into online spaces.

How AI Turns Sensor Data Into a Ghost Story

When Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting investigate allegedly supernatural locations, they use not only measuring devices but also software they developed themselves. One of their applications, GhostTube Seer, is described by them as “the world’s first AI Ghost Hunting tool.”

“If you’re using AI, you’re using some sort of language model, what data are you training it on to [determine] what’s a ghost?”

The app records signals from a smartphone’s sensors, matches them with words and terms from a database, and then processes the readings with an image generator. In this way, technical signals can become depictions of people, animals, or buildings. Users then link the generated images to the history of the location being investigated.

In a recent video, the couple visited the Winchester Mystery House. While GhostTube Seer was running inside, it produced abstract compositions featuring wood paneling and golden curtains, as well as images of women, animals, and a flock of white birds. The couple interpreted these motifs in connection with the history of the house.

This approach extends an already established practice. Paranormal investigators use EMF meters to measure electromagnetic fields and record detected changes or anomalies that they associate with supernatural activity. What the app produces remains an interpretation of the readings, not proof of a supernatural phenomenon.

GhostTube Seer: More Than One Million Downloads

GhostTube Seer is not a free experiment. The application requires a paid monthly subscription. According to its Google Play Store listing, it has surpassed one million downloads. This shows that AI-supported ghost hunting is now a commercially usable product.

The download figure, however, says nothing about whether the app can detect supernatural appearances. It merely demonstrates how many people have installed the tool. The crucial interpretation of the data remains in the hands of those working with the technology.

Why Forums Reject AI Ghost Stories

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, AI-generated ghost stories and images of the supernatural have strongly shaped online spaces. The popular forum r/Nosleep, known for scary stories, has therefore introduced a strict policy against AI-generated material.

The platform is responding to a new situation: A depiction can initially appear to be a report or an authentic memory, even though it was artificially generated. Proof of origin is therefore becoming more important when evaluating stories and images.

New Technology, Old Questions

The development of generative AI is nothing new. Thomas Edison already attempted to contact the deceased with a “spirit phone.” Today, so-called AI “deathbots” pursue a similar idea, albeit with significantly more modern technical tools.

Paranormal researcher and author Alex Matsuo, who herself works in the technology industry, sees critical questions alongside the possibilities. With every new AI tool for ghost hunters, she asks what data a language model is trained on and what it uses to identify a ghost. She also questions the use of copyright-protected works of art in generative image tools. She is particularly critical of the effect of ghost-hunting chatbots, which could lead users into their own “paranormal echo chambers.”

Other paranormal enthusiasts use AI in a markedly more positive way. Sean Austin, who appeared in a travel-channel series about ghost hunting, released the Spirit Phone Innovations app. It is designed to analyze audio signals using “advanced AI” and detect electronic voices, known as EVPs.

Despite all the technical innovations, Matsuo considers the core motivation behind ghost hunting to be human. Many people take up this hobby after experiencing grief or another loss. Searching for ghosts can be a way for them to process that loss. Ultimately, they are all searching for something that could provide an answer to questions about the unknown or confirm the existence of ghosts.

Data Centers as a New Threat to Haunted Locations

As data centers expand rapidly across the United States, their physical impact is growing as well. A former psychiatric hospital in Pennsylvania that had become a popular haunted-house attraction was sold to a data center developer at the end of 2025. The planned demolition was to be replaced by a new data center. In May, however, local residents successfully blocked the project.

Digitalization therefore affects not only the tools of ghost hunters. It can also change the places where people search for supernatural traces.

Conclusion

The examples show two parallel developments: Apps such as GhostTube Seer equip ghost hunting with sensors, databases, and generative AI. At the same time, the volume of artificial ghost stories and images whose origins are not always immediately recognizable is growing.

The more powerful the software becomes, the more important the question of who interprets a signal or depiction, and on what basis remains. Technical innovation is changing the search for the supernatural, but it does not replace either the interpretation or the personal meaning that people associate with that search.

More sources on the topic: The Guardian, “Ghost in the machine: how AI is haunting the search for the supernatural“, available online.