Halloween 2026 · for fun, from public data
Every US town of 10,000+ people gets a Haunt Index from 0 to 100, built from public records: cemeteries within 5 miles, vanished places, century-old houses and how dark it gets on Halloween night.
The ten highest readings in the country.
All 51 by the median town's score.
It is a playful score, not a ghost census. We count what public records can see: cemeteries within 5 miles of each town (USGS), places that used to exist nearby and are now gone, the share of homes built before 1940 and standing vacant (Census ACS), and how early the sun sets and how bright the moon is on October 31.
Each factor becomes a percentile against every other town and the percentiles are weighted into a total. That total is ranked against every other town: the score is the rank, from 0 to 100 with one decimal, so 99.7 beats 99.7% of the country. Every town also gets a rank in its state. Old houses and vacancy count for a quarter at most, so the score leans on cemeteries, vanished places and Halloween darkness. Read the full method.
Subject
Haunt Index reading
Evidence
For fun, from public data: cemeteries and vanished places from USGS GNIS, housing from the Census Bureau, sun and moon from astronomy-engine. A high score means more spooky ingredients nearby, nothing more. How it works.
For fun, from public data. Every US place with 10,000 or more residents in the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey gets one number from 0 to 100. The number compares towns with each other. It does not claim anything is actually haunted.
Each reading becomes a percentile: 80 means the town reads higher than 80% of all towns in the index. Every case file shows each reading’s percentile next to the evidence. The percentiles are weighted and added up into a weighted total (0–100).
The weighted total is then ranked against every other town, and the score is that rank as a percentile from 0 to 100, with one decimal: 99.7 means the town’s total beats 99.7% of the other towns. The top town reads 100.0 and the bottom one 0.0.
Old houses and vacancy are held to about a quarter of the score combined (the red bars). Both track the age and economy of a place more than anything spooky, so the score leans on cemeteries, vanished places and darkness.
Towns under 25,000 people have their weighted total pulled part of the way toward their state’s average before the ranking, because survey numbers for small places have wide error margins.
The national number one, reading by reading.
| Reading | Value | Pctl. | Weight | Points |
|---|
No ghost-sighting lists, no haunted-places databases, no rumors. Cemetery locations appear only as dots on the map; no cemetery is named or joked about. The jokes are about towns, the weather and the investigator.