Ghost in the machine: how AI is haunting the search for the supernatural

Ghost hunting is a tech-heavy pursuit. When Amy Waine and Jarrad Cutting investigate haunted locations, they’re loaded up with software of their own design, such as an app that assigns signals from a phone’s sensors to different words in a database. In the age of ChatGPT, the ghost-hunting pair is probing the world of AI. They describe one of their latest inventions, an app called GhostTube Seer, as “the world’s first AI Ghost Hunting tool”. In the hands of paranormal investigators, scientific tools like EMF meters (used to detect electromagnetic fields) are repurposed to identify changes and anomalies that they believe indicate supernatural activity. Seer is, in many ways, simply an expansion of that practice, another way to scan an empty room and believe that something may be there. The app, which requires a paid monthly subscription, has more than 1m downloads, according to its Google Play store listing.But for others in the ghost hunting world, AI is an unwelcome presence. Since the release of ChatGPT in 2022, AI-generated ghost stories and images of the supernatural have flooded online spaces, so much so that popular forums like the r/Nosleep subreddit, meant for scary stories, have implemented a strict policy against AI-generated material.Waine and Cutting claim their app can generate images depicting the supernatural, using signals from a phone’s built-in magnetometer, identifying words and phrases in those signals, and then running them through an image generator.Fellow paranormal enthusiasts can post the images they generate to a feed and comment on other users’ pictures. Since its release in 2023, Seer has become a regular part of their onscreen work. In a recent video on their Amy’s Crypt YouTube channel, the pair sat in a carefully selected location in the Winchester Mystery House while running GhostTube Seer.“Can you show us what used to go on in this room?” Cutting asked. The app generated an abstract compilation of wooden walls and golden curtains that the pair suggested could be one of the home’s bedrooms. Seer also generated images of humans and animals while running: a woman reading, another woman with a black shawl, and a flock of white birds flying. Each was interpreted by the pair to have some relevance to the history of the home. The pursuit of ghosts has historically been relatively niche and personal, even after early 2000s TV shows like Ghost Hunters prompted a surge of interest in the hobby. That’s changed in recent years. Ghost stories and sightings, once they find their way online, can become training material for large language models like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, just like any other content.New technologies have always been a part of paranormal history, says Alex Matsuo, a paranormal researcher and author whose day job is in the technology industry. Thomas Edison’s attempt at a “spirit phone” to contact the dead is an early example, one with an ambition not dissimilar to today’s AI-powered “deathbots”. The history of spirit photographs, a hotly debated phenomenon of the 19th and early 20th century, parallels advances in new photography techniques.Some paranormal enthusiasts, though, are concerned that generative AI is more than just another new technology to play with and instead threatens the soul of what they do. “I’m not surprised that AI has been embraced by a lot of people in the ghost hunting community,” said Matsuo.When GhostTube Seer was first released, she tried it out. She is skeptical of what she’s seen so far.“Any time someone’s coming out with a ghost hunting tool using AI, my big question has always been: ‘OK if you’re using AI, you’re using some sort of large language model, what data are you training it on to [determine] what’s a ghost?’” Matsuo said. She also noted that there are ethical concerns: is a generative image tool using copyrighted art to create its own spectres? Are ghost hunting chatbots sending users into their own “paranormal echo chambers”?Other paranormal enthusiasts are embracing the proverbial ghost in the machine. Seer isn’t the only generative AI app designed for ghost hunters. Sean Austin, a paranormal investigator who was featured on a Travel Channel series about ghost hunting, launched an app called Spirit Phone Innovations that uses “advanced AI” to analyze audio signals to detect EVP – electronic voice phenomena – a mainstay of ghost hunting.Matsuo believes the heart of looking for ghosts should remain deeply human.“A lot of us come into the ghost hunting world because we’ve gone through some trauma or grief,” she said. Ghost hunting is, for many, a form of processing loss, she said. “Everyone’s trying to find the next big thing that could give us an answer into the unknown or validating the existence of ghosts.”As AI’s physical footprint expands with the rapid construction of datacenters across the US, ghostly locations are likewise facing the threat of change. A former asylum in Pennsylvania that became a beloved haunted house was sold to a datacenter developer in late 2025 to be torn down. However, local residents banded together and successfully blocked it in May.