The hum of silence echoed in my ears, masked only by my voice bouncing back from the walls of the empty room. A red light from my voice recorder blinked steadily on the floor, bathing the bedroom in a soft, repetitive glow. With each steady flash, I had a fraction of a second to survey the emptiness and catch ominous shadows that may be lurking in a corner. I sat there for an hour, my questions answered only by the persistent quiet. There was no thrill of a tap on my shoulder or a tug on my jacket. No disembodied voice whispering forgotten or indecipherable messages. It was just me, the silence, the occasional indicator light, and the lingering inquiry that brought me to that house in the first place: Is there life after death?
It’s a question still with no answer, though I truly hope there is more to our existence than what we see. But some would have you believe the proof is irrefutable as they lay out claims of encounters with demonic entities and bouts of life-ruining possession. For much of mainstream media, the craze of paranormal investigating started with Ed and Lorraine Warren, a duo of questionable intent that took ghost hunting from a fringe concept to something that intrigued the media. The reality, though, is that our fascination with the prospect of a spirit world dates back centuries ago when the elite gathered around tables and charlatans delighted with glorified magic shows.
Today, paranormal investigating is a far cry from when I first started sitting in pitch-black rooms. Thanks to the brilliant business acumen of Zak Bagans, everything’s a demon, and nobody is safe from that which goes bump in the night. And while I quite loathe the direction the practice has gone, in particular the countless doctored videos on social media passed off as real encounters, some good came of it. Without the overexcited personalities and the long-running success of Ghost Adventures, I don’t think games like Phasmophobia would exist. And without Phasmophobia, my Steam library would be several titles shy.
As much as it has done for digital ghost hunting, Phasmophobia and its inspired works are far from the first paranormal games to pit man against spirit. In fact, the evolution of ghost hunting in video games can be traced back to the 1980s, around the same time a quartet of boys in tan took on a supernatural threat of oversized Twinkie proportions.
Ghost Hunting, Ghostbusting, and Ghost Mastery
Even long before I purchased my first EMF meter and looked into joining the American Society for Psychical Research, gamers were going toe-to-toe with paranormal threats of all kinds. Atari and most early consoles featured some spooky threat, but Ghostbusters (1984) first put the concept of hunting ghosts and seeking out the unknown in gamers’ palms. Sure, the NES Ghostbusters game was very basic, and finding ghosts was kind of a crapshoot, but it opened a floodgate of related games, from the 1987 The Real Ghostbusters arcade to the punishingly difficult Sega Genesis title.
Ghostbusters made quite the ectoplasmic splash in gaming, particularly when the 2009 Ghostbusters: The Video Game launched as the answer to a third movie. However, we’ve skipped over an entire lineage of ghost-hunting experiences. Titles like Koei Tecmo’s Fatal Frame series, first released in 2001, put players on the defensive with a mysterious antique camera that eradicates ghosts with the click of a shutter.
Two years after players first manned the Camera Obscura, SCE Cambridge Studios introduced them to Lazarus Jones and Ghosthunter. Jones, a Detroit police officer, inadvertently turns off a ghost containment unit, leading him down a dangerous path full of spectral foes. The PS2 exclusive was absolutely a take on the Ghostbusters formula, replacing proton packs with an array of ghost-eradicating firearms. Jones was even equipped with a ghost trap of his own, which looks suspiciously similar to the Extreme Ghostbusters variant.
As much as we love seeking out the ghouls and ghosts of games past as investigators and hunters, one game twisted the formula and put us in control of these spectral fiends. Ghost Master, released between Fatal Frame and Ghosthunter, gave players control of an arsenal of supernatural threats to terrify the fine people of Gravenville. A resource management game at its roots, where players had to manage a singular resource and find the right combination of scares, Ghost Master introduced the Ghostbreakers, a team dedicated to eradicating Gravenville’s supernatural threat. Only the best Ghost Master could impede their progress and secure a healthy future for the dearly departed.
Players have been battling the supernatural for decades, and some developers have taken advantage of our love for the spooky. But it’s safe to say that some devs have done more with that love than others, which shifts the spotlight to a solo developer and a co-op multiplayer that sent a team of players right into the arms of evil.
In 2019, Shawn Hitchcock released Pacify, a four-player co-op thriller that can be credited with sparking a trend in gaming we’re still kind of seeing today. As the Paranormal Activity Helpers, Inc, players must pacify a supernatural threat before it eradicates them. The thing is, though, that Pacify isn’t the game players clamor for. It may have set the stage for bringing paranormal investigators into modern gaming, but it was Kinetic Games, an indie team in the United Kingdom, that really lit the fire.
From Hunting Ghosts to Hunting Clues: How Phasmophobia Changed the Playing Field
If you’ve spent any amount of time in the horror gaming airwaves, the name Phasmophobia has likely come up quite a bit. Where most supernatural games task players with removing a threat, Phasmophobia forces players to face it, study it, and leave without becoming another victim of the horrifying apparitions. The game is Ghost Hunting 101, providing players with actual tools used in real-world investigations to gather clues to uncover the type of spirit they’re dealing with. With EMF meters and UV lights in hand, it’s a race against the proverbial clock as ghouls, demons, poltergeists, wraiths, and a full rogue’s gallery of ghost types abominate the living presence. Agitated and deadly, they’ll make their presence known through hunts that send investigators running and cowering wherever they can find cover.
Though similar games predate Phasmophobia’s release, Kinetic Games’ title very quickly gained notoriety and became the “game to play” for horror streamers, and with that popularity came titles very clearly inspired by the format. Devour, Ghost Hunters Corp, Forewarned, Obsideo, and Midnight Ghost Hunt all build upon (or blatantly copy) the concepts behind Pacify and Phasmophobia, pitting ghost hunters and paranormal investigators against inescapable horrors.
The problem with a genre growing so popular that it spawns copycat after copycat is oversaturation. It must evolve, else players will grow tired of seeing the same concepts used and reused. And though something like Phasmophobia may seem like the peak of gamified ghost hunting, there is always room to grow.
Will we see a continued evolution in these otherworldly experiences? It’s almost a guarantee, though there are some nights when I prefer the old-school thrill of returning to the dark, waiting for the quiet to give way to an impossible voice.
(Originally published on Vocal.Media)
