If you see or feel dead people, you’ve got company. Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they believe in ghosts, according to a May 2025 Gallup poll, with belief drifting upward among today’s youth. The American ghost story is shape-shifting — like a figure at the end of a dark hallway — and, like that spirit, it refuses to die.
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Do ghosts exist? It depends on whom you ask
Ghosts are the most common supernatural belief across all cultures, Joseph Baker, coauthor of the book “Paranormal America,” told Straight Arrow News. The human mind tends to view the “soul” as distinct from the body, with the possibility of an afterlife. That could explain why more Americans believe in ghosts than in other paranormal phenomena like astrology, telepathy, clairvoyance or reincarnation, according to Gallup.
Angela Artuso, a paranormal investigator and director of the Gotham Paranormal Research Society, told SAN that while “no one can claim that ghosts are real with 100% certainty,” she became a believer after having repeated experiences she could not explain.
“People have been claiming to see ghosts for centuries, and those who have actually witnessed full-body apparitions and other strange anomalies will stand by what they saw,” Artuso said.
Similarly, Baker said the strongest “evidence” for ghosts is testimonial, not the blinking of gadgets we see on TV.
“All kinds of people have said they’ve had extremely real encounters with these things. They swear on their lives,” he told SAN. “Objectively, does that mean it was a ghost? We don’t know. But people’s experiences are real.”
Skeptics, of course, aren’t buying it. Baker said while it’s hard to prove a negative, there is still “no tangible, substantive proof” of ghosts.
“Observations about fluctuations in temperature or electromagnetic frequency don’t really indicate anything,” he said.
Artuso conceded the limits of ghost “science.” Devices can “help detect and pinpoint anomalies,” she said, but they don’t prove a spirit is present. In the field, “your own five senses” remain among the best tools.
“I’ve never seen persuasive evidence for the existence of ghosts,” Barry Markovsky, sociologist and author of the forthcoming book “Everyday Extraordinary: A Scientist Ponders a Lifetime of Magical, Bizarre, and Paranormal Experiences,” told SAN.
Reliable evidence could be the “recurring detection of an entity under tightly controlled conditions, for which there exists no other physical explanation,” he said. Claims about “the world’s most haunted places” have all been debunked, he added. “Because physics seems to apply everywhere else on Earth and in the heavens, it seems highly unlikely that physics-violating beings are floating among us.”
Spiritual beliefs sometimes replace religion
As Americans became less religious, belief in ghosts and other paranormal phenomena grew stronger. Spirituality may be filling a void left by the decline of institutional religion, Baker suggested.
In the early 2010s, 60% of Americans called religion “very important.” Today, that share is 45%, Gallup found. Regular attendance at churches, synagogues, mosques and temples has plunged, especially among younger generations. Meanwhile, belief in ghosts surged from roughly 1 in 4 Americans in 1991 to nearly half in the 2010s and has held steady since, according to Gallup and Pew.
As Americans drift from organized religion, their faith in an afterlife and the supernatural shows no decline, Baker said. Ghosts appeal to “moderately religious dabblers, that flux of people who moved out of institutionalized religion but still have spiritual interests.”
Young Americans see dead people
Americans ages 18 to 29 are more likely than their elders to believe in ghosts, according to Chapman University researchers. One reason, experts said, is that their media landscape is saturated with TV shows like “Ghost Hunters”, “Ghost Adventures” and “Haunted Encounters”, plus an endless feed of #GhostTok clips, livestreamed investigations, “what’s that noise” videos and specters “caught on camera.”
Ghost stories have migrated from the campfire to the airwaves to the “For You” page, but the lore itself hasn’t changed much in decades, Baker said. The settings are still familiar: historic homes, abandoned asylums, shuttered prisons and blood-soaked battlefields. Ghosts cluster where deaths were especially gruesome, out of place, untimely or unjust. The stories endure, but they’ve been rebranded for a new generation.
‘Ghost tourism’ is booming, and not just for Halloween
Halloween is the holiday highlight, but the booming “ghost tourism” industry runs year-round with paranormal investigations, haunted houses, ghost tours, haunted sleep-overs and ghost hunts from coast to coast.
For believers, there’s comfort in feeling a deceased loved one nearby or having their ghostly experiences validated and explored, Artuso said. For the dabblers and skeptics, there’s still the thrill of the scare, the intrigue of the unknown and escapism of great storytelling. For towns with a dark past, there’s money in the macabre.
Profit motive may be a driver of “ghost tourism,” said Markovsky, a skeptic, but “the more responsible guides can offer honest, valuable information about history and folklore. And if part of the folklore is that the long-dead Mrs. Wilson reportedly stares backlit from the third-floor cupola, all the more fun.”
