Haunted Real Estate: San Antonio's ghost gap

The paranormal tourism market in Texas is split between location and activity. A new study by home security company Vivint ranks San Antonio second in the nation for the number of purportedly haunted places, yet the city ranks lower for actual ghost sightings.

San Antonio contains 56 sites listed as haunted. This count places the city behind only Los Angeles, which has 61 such locations. Austin, located to the north, has only 21 purportedly haunted places on the list.

Despite the lower inventory of haunted sites, Austin recorded 115 reported ghost sightings last month. San Antonio logged just 27 sightings during the same period. The Austin figure was the highest among the 74 U.S. cities included in the study.

This disparity affects the city's standing on the Spookiness Index. San Antonio finished 11th in the overall ranking. Austin placed eighth, ahead of New Orleans. Texas cities dominated the ghost sightings category, with Austin, Dallas, and Houston taking the top three spots in that specific metric.

Researchers derived the index from seven factors. These include reported sightings, haunted places, haunted house attractions, paranormal-themed businesses, and spooky Google searches. The team collected data in September, normalized each measure, and combined them into a single score. Other metrics show San Antonio has a lower concentration of psychics and astrologers at 0.73 per 10,000 residents. The city also had the lowest number of spooky Google searches per 10,000 residents among the four Texas cities in the top 20, with 163.