New York has been crowned the most haunted state in America, according to a new survey tracking paranormal encounters.
Casino.ca, the gambling comparison site that compiled the data, found that New York has logged 160,198 reported ghost sightings over the past century. That breaks down to 81 sightings for every 10,000 residents, putting the Empire State well ahead of second-place Texas and third-place Louisiana, which recorded 77 and 74 sightings per 10,000 people respectively.
Angela Artuso, Director of the Gotham Paranormal Research Society, has spent years probing the city’s most spirit-heavy locations. Her team has conducted numerous investigations at the Morris-Jumel Mansion in Washington Heights, Manhattan’s oldest surviving residence, which she describes as “loaded” with entities that never crossed over.
“The mansion itself is known for disembodied voices, apparitions, some screams, some giggles from women that were not seen,” Artuso said. She recalled one particularly chilling moment during a setup for filming: “In Burr’s bedroom, we got this horrible-sounding disembodied voice when we were setting up our video camera. I have no idea what it said, but it screamed across the opening part of our video when we hit record.”
The mansion’s spectral roster includes Vice President Aaron Burr and his wife, Eliza Jumel, whose divorce from Burr was finalized on the day he died. Jumel is said to linger on the balcony, while a Hessian soldier who fell down the home’s stairs and onto his bayonet is believed to haunt the halls. The building later gained pop culture fame as the place where Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote “Hamilton.”
Artuso’s team has also investigated Fraunces Tavern, the famous bar where George Washington celebrated Revolutionary War victory. Patrons and researchers alike have reported a woman lurking in the halls, identified as the spirit of Anna Gardie, a French Saint-Domingue-born dancer considered one of America’s first ballet stars. Gardie and her husband were living in the boarding house above the bar in 1798 when he killed her in a murder-suicide after she refused to return with him to France.
The tavern hosts more than sorrowful spirits. Artuso described capturing disembodied sounds of celebration that seemed to belong to another era entirely.
“When we did our investigations, we kept getting this strange male voice come through in the long room — where George Washington had a farewell dinner for his troops — saying, ‘Hey ladies, ladies. And back then, no ladies were allowed in there,” Artuso said. “That was pretty wild. It was almost like we were getting yelled at for being present in a place we shouldn’t have been.”
The Chelsea Hotel stands as perhaps Manhattan’s most notorious paranormal landmark. Dozens of people have died within its walls, including several high-profile cases. Guests have claimed to see Nancy Spungen haunting the premises decades after she was stabbed to death by Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious in Room 100. The ghost of Etelka Graf is also said to remain there after she severed her own left hand before leaping to her death from a fifth-floor window.
Artuso has not conducted an official investigation at the Chelsea, but she performed her own “mini investigation” and could “feel the heaviness” of the location.
“Their basement facility area is supposedly very heavy with apparitions and disembodied voices reported by the staff, and a lot of the staff are even leery about going downstairs,” she said. The hotel’s elevator is also known to stop at the first-floor check-in desk with nobody inside it.
“Many people at the hotel constantly say they see apparitions, they hear singing, they hear people sobbing, people crying,” Artuso added.
The survey’s methodology and full criteria were not detailed in the release, though the century-long tracking period suggests the data draws from accumulated reports rather than recent incidents alone. Texas and Louisiana’s strong showings indicate the American South and Southwest remain regions of significant paranormal interest, but neither could match New York’s sheer volume of reported encounters.
New York’s famous eternal residents span from founding fathers to rockstars, with historical figures and counterculture casualties alike said to roam their former domains. The concentration of old buildings, violent history, and dense population may all contribute to the state’s dominant position in American ghost lore.
Artuso’s investigations suggest that professional paranormal research in the city continues to turn up fresh evidence, or at least fresh frights, even at well-documented locations. Her experiences with disembodied voices responding directly to her team’s presence — scolding them for entering a historically male space, screaming as cameras rolled — point to what she believes is active, aware spiritual energy rather than residual echoes.
The state’s haunted reputation shows no signs of fading, with tourists and locals alike continuing to seek out these storied locations.