Apparently, the afterlife has become a travel destination. According to new research, nearly half of travelers would consider attempting to contact the dead while on vacation. Others are content wandering through abandoned buildings, spending the night in supposedly haunted hotels, or descending into centuries-old underground passages in search of something they cannot quite explain. In an age when almost every aspect of our lives is documented, reviewed, and algorithmically predicted, the possibility of encountering something inexplicable has acquired a peculiar appeal.
The numbers are surprisingly substantial. In its recently published travel predictions for 2027, Booking.com reports that 65 percent of global travelers are interested in paranormal experiences, while 48 percent would consider an experience intended to establish contact with the other side. Among American travelers, those figures climb to 72 and 57 percent, respectively. The findings, based on more than 28,000 respondents across 32 markets, suggest that ghost tourism is moving beyond its traditional audience of paranormal enthusiasts and horror obsessives. Of course, people have always been fascinated by ghosts. Victorian spiritualism turned séances into fashionable social gatherings, while nineteenth-century Gothic literature transformed ruined castles, remote mansions, and mysterious apparitions into objects of cultural fascination. More recently, television programs such as Ghost Hunters and the endless proliferation of paranormal content on YouTube have made the investigation of supposedly haunted places a recognizable entertainment genre.
What has changed is the way this fascination is being incorporated into travel. The supernatural is no longer something we simply read about or watch on a screen. Increasingly, it is something we purchase access to, complete with tickets, guided investigations, overnight stays, and occasionally expensive electronic equipment designed to detect the presence of entities whose existence remains scientifically unverified. There is something almost contradictory about this development. We live in a culture increasingly obsessed with measurable outcomes, technological certainty, and instant access to information. Yet a growing number of travelers appear interested in experiences whose appeal depends precisely on the possibility that something cannot be explained. Perhaps this is less surprising than it initially seems. The contemporary travel industry has become remarkably efficient at eliminating uncertainty. Algorithms recommend destinations, online reviews tell us what to expect, and social media allows us to inspect hotel rooms and restaurant menus before leaving home. Even supposedly spontaneous adventures are frequently assembled from carefully curated itineraries. Ghost tourism offers an unusual alternative: an experience that, at least in theory, cannot be guaranteed.
Whether anything supernatural actually happens is almost beside the point. Three places offer particularly revealing examples of how this fascination is playing out in 2026.
In Edinburgh, the supernatural is practically embedded in the city’s architecture. Beneath the Old Town, the South Bridge Vaults form a network of underground chambers that once accommodated businesses and storage spaces, and have since become the setting for countless ghost stories. Nearby, Greyfriars Kirkyard attracts visitors fascinated by the legend of the Mackenzie Poltergeist. In September 2026, Edinburgh topped a European ranking of cities for Halloween travel, reflecting its unusually dense combination of historic architecture and paranormal tourism. Yet the most interesting thing about Edinburgh’s ghost industry is how effortlessly it transforms actual history into something resembling Gothic fiction. Plague, poverty, religious persecution, and urban overcrowding become the raw materials for supernatural entertainment. The ghosts may be imaginary, but the suffering behind many of these stories was not.
In Venice, the island of Poveglia offers a considerably darker alternative to the city’s overcrowded canals and Renaissance palazzos. Abandoned since the closure of its hospital in 1968, this small island in the Venetian Lagoon has acquired a reputation as one of the world’s most haunted places. Its history includes periods of quarantine, isolation, and institutional care, while more sensational accounts tell of mass graves, psychiatric experiments, and restless spirits wandering through its decaying buildings. Much of this mythology, however, appears to have originated online in the early 2000s, before paranormal television turned Poveglia into something of an underground obsession. What makes the island particularly interesting in 2026 is that its future is being contested by the living rather than the dead. After years of campaigning against its privatization, a local citizens’ association secured a concession over part of the island in 2025, with plans to restore public access and create a community park. The island remains largely inaccessible to casual visitors, making authorized visits difficult and its forbidden reputation all the more seductive. Poveglia exposes an intriguing contradiction: while ghost tourism turns abandoned places into objects of fascination, the people fighting to reclaim them are often interested in something considerably less supernatural—preventing another piece of their city from becoming a commodity. Perhaps the real haunting here is Venice’s increasingly uncertain relationship with its own inhabitants.
Deep in the forests north of Prague, Houska Castle has a rather unusual claim to fame: according to local legend, the thirteenth-century fortress was built not to keep enemies out, but to prevent something from escaping. Beneath its Gothic chapel supposedly lies a gateway to hell, inhabited by creatures that occasionally emerged to terrorize the surrounding countryside. The story has attracted paranormal investigators, occult enthusiasts, and television crews, turning an otherwise obscure medieval castle into a destination for those interested in the more sinister corners of European folklore. In 2026, visitors could explore the castle and a particularly bizarre attraction in its former carriage house: Peklem, a twelve-meter-long mechanical sculpture depicting eleven scenes of punishment inspired by Dante’s Inferno. There is something wonderfully absurd about this collision of medieval superstition, religious imagery, and contemporary horror tourism. Houska’s supposed portal has never been substantiated, but its reputation has become an attraction in its own right. The castle illustrates how easily folklore can acquire a second life through popular culture, particularly when paranormal television and the internet turn obscure local legends into internationally recognizable mythology. What began as a story about keeping the supernatural contained has become a business built around inviting people in.
There is also a more personal dimension to the trend. Interest in the paranormal does not necessarily imply belief in ghosts. For some, these experiences offer a way to engage with mortality, loss, or spiritual uncertainty outside conventional religious institutions. For others, the attraction is more straightforward: being frightened in a controlled environment can be enjoyable, particularly when the experience is shared. Horror cinema has operated on this principle for decades. Ghost tourism simply removes the screen.
What makes the trend culturally significant is its emergence alongside an increasingly digitized understanding of reality. Artificial intelligence can generate convincing images of people who never existed, recreate the voices of the dead, and simulate conversations with deceased relatives. Meanwhile, social media has made the distinction between genuine experience and carefully manufactured content increasingly unstable. Against this background, standing in a cold underground chamber and wondering whether a strange sound came from something unseen offers a remarkably physical form of uncertainty. The commercial implications are equally intriguing. Unlike conventional attractions, paranormal tourism can sell the possibility of an experience without having to deliver a verifiable result. A visitor who sees nothing may still leave satisfied, convinced that the atmosphere alone justified the expense. This makes ghost tourism an unusually flexible business model, although its dependence on historical sites also raises questions about preservation, authenticity, and the ethical treatment of difficult histories.
There is nothing inherently wrong with turning the past into entertainment. Storytelling has always been one of the ways societies remember themselves. But when historical suffering becomes little more than an atmospheric backdrop, the distinction between cultural interpretation and exploitation begins to disappear.
Perhaps the real fascination with ghost tourism has less to do with believing in the supernatural than with wanting to believe that something remains beyond our understanding. In a world where almost everything is searchable, explainable, and increasingly reproducible, uncertainty has become a strangely desirable commodity. Whether the dead have anything to say remains an open question. The travel industry, meanwhile, has already figured out how to sell us the opportunity to listen.
