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October 15, 2026
October 15, 2026
October is one of our favorite months at Dscout.
Over the years, we’ve discussed spooky sample sizes, the scary prospect of switching tools, and the fears around professional participants. You’ll even see a wave of Halloween names in our internal Slack, shout-out “Colloween Pate” and “Si-scare-a Jones.”
But of course, to stay true to our roots, we have to conduct some Halloween-themed research.
Previously, we conducted a study on people’s favorite/least favorite candy (sorry to all the Almond Joy lovers out there…but the data is looking bleak). This year, we wanted to get a little more paranormal.
We asked 50 participants to tell us about an unexplained encounter. Things like ghosts, strange presences, or anything else that's stuck with them and never quite made sense. We also asked them to reflect on it in hindsight and try to determine whether or not what they saw was truly… paranormal 😱
Figures, voices, shadows, scratching noises, moving objects—those are just some of the things that participants recapped for us during the study.
To hear a few of their stories:
Beyond hearing their stories, we asked participants to share a little more about the time frame, and how they would describe the encounter.
For most participants, the story happened many moons ago. 40% of responses reported that the unexplained encounter happened more than 5 years ago.
When we asked participants to describe what they saw (or sensed), most said it felt scary, like a presence, or like a sound.
Now that they're past the event (hopefully), we asked them to reflect a bit further.
Was there lingering fear? Did they chalk it up to the wind? Did they enjoy having a ghost nearby, Casper perhaps?
Most reported feeling scared, but there was a significant amount of curiosity and confusion in the mix.
We also asked if time changed how they saw the experience. Some people doubled down. Others left a little room for doubt.
“For the Ouija board incident, I still believe we encountered some sort of presence. I think it's an instance of ‘don't intentionally welcome something like that into your house if you're not ready to deal with it.’” — Brad B. (He/Him/His)
“My view has never changed over time. I’ve always felt a strong presence in that house.” — Kamryn V. (She/Her/Hers)
“I think in the moment I wanted to believe it was a spirit. Looking back I still hold truth in that, however, I acknowledge it could’ve been a coincidence.” — Amelia K. (She/Her/Hers)
Who’s to say what actually happened? Sadly, as many paranormal investigators realize, we may never know what occured in those moments.
But we’ll leave you with this: We asked the participants, “How certain are you that the experience involved something paranormal on a scale of 1-5 (1 = not at all certain, 5 = extremely certain)?”
54% of the participants said that they were extremely certain that what they experienced involved something paranormal.
And that’s enough to give us all chills during the spooky season.
