What the study found
The study found no effect of a site's violent history on participants' comfort, anxiety, place attachment, moral gravity, or paranormal sensations. Instead, the narrative participants read modestly reduced comfort, whether the history described was true or fabricated.
Why the authors say this matters
The authors conclude that any environment-based "haunting" appears to be negligible in this study, and that unease is better explained by suggestion than by the setting itself. They also say that ghost criminology would need clear observations and failure thresholds to count as an empirical theory.
What the researchers tested
The researchers ran a preregistered 2 × 2 field experiment in two architecturally matched university buildings. One building had a documented Civil War-era history involving enslaved labor, mass amputations, and temporary corpse storage, while the other had no violent history; participants read either truthful, false, or neutral descriptions and then completed several rating scales after visiting one of the sites.
What worked and what didn't
Across five preregistered outcomes, site history did not change the results. Narrative did reduce comfort modestly, but this happened whether the history was true or invented, and there were no changes in anxiety, attachment, moral gravity, or anomalous sensations.
What to keep in mind
The abstract does not describe detailed limitations beyond the call for clearer testable predictions in ghost criminology. The findings are limited to this preregistered experiment, these two sites, and the outcomes that were measured.
Key points
- Site history did not affect comfort, anxiety, attachment, moral gravity, or paranormal sensations.
- Reading a history narrative modestly reduced comfort, even when the history was fabricated.
- The study used a preregistered 2 × 2 field experiment with 319 participants.
- The authors say the findings place any environment-based haunting at negligible levels.
- The abstract says ghost criminology needs clear failure criteria to remain empirically testable.
Disclosure
- Research title:
- Narrative, not site history, shaped unease in ghost study
- Authors:
- Ian T. Adams
- Institutions:
- University of South Carolina
- Publication date:
- 2026-03-02
- OpenAlex record:
- View
- Image credit:
- Phil Roeder, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
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