Walk through for a defensive ghost investigator

Are you tired of dying?
Is the ghost hunting before you gathered your evidence?
This guide will share one way for detectives to investigate ghosts in houses safely.

Good hunting!

11 Steps

1. At the start of the game, hold a normal flashlight, a lit candle and a lighter.

2. Enter the house and turn on the breaker. If the ghost blew out your candle, you can relight it immediately with your lighter, and you would've found the area the ghost is roaming in.

3. Turn on the lights at frequently used paths (e.g. Edgestreet ground floor hallway).

4. Drop the flashlight to point the path towards the main door exit. So during a ghost event/hunt, even if the ghost turned off the breaker, it is easy to see whether the main door is closed (ghost hunt) or open (ghost event).

5. Get more flashlights and lit candles. Enter the house and look for hiding spots (and looping area for Deogen). Look for one on each floor - in case the ghost starts hunting upstairs and you're downstairs / vice versa. The best hiding spots involves an escape route that breaks line of sight many times and involves a locker / closet / narrow entry/angle. With lockers / closets, even if the ghost opens the locker/closet randomly, you can quickly close them again.

6. Drop flashlights to point towards your best hiding spots. These will help you when you need to turn off your flashlight during a hunt, and the breaker is off. Place them at key junctions and hallways as well so you can figure your way around easily.

7. Place your lit candles on the floor in the ghost room (if found) or frequently used hallways. Place them on the floor instead of tables. You can still check for ghost orbs if the candles are on the floor. The candles would be too bright if they are on the tables. Repeat step 6 and 7 with all the normal flashlights.

8. Place crucifixes in the path between the ghost room and your hiding spots. A lot of ghosts spawn outside their ghost room. If the crucifix is inside the ghost room, the ghost can spawn outside the room while you're in the ghost room, then you're cornered and dead. If the crucifix is outside the room, the ghost can spawn inside the room, and you can run to your hiding spot even if it hunts.

9. As you conduct your investigation, leave your tools in the ghost room for easy re-access. All ghosts will often snuff your candles. Keep the ghost room well lit by relighting your floor candles. These lit candles would not affect spirit box or orb evidence while keeping your sanity high. Your presence and voice in the ghost room provokes the ghost to be active. So, the ghost is unlikely to hunt before you finish gathering your evidence. That said, you might need to eat sanity pills if the ghost appeared to you frequently. Aim to maintain high sanity (70%+) for as long as possible.

10. When you're done with getting your evidence, you might want to trigger the ghost to hunt to check its behavior (nightmare mode) or to get a ghost photo (easily done with 1 teammate standing by with a photo camera). Place a smudge stick in your hiding spot. Hold a flashlight, a smudge stick and a lighter. Standby in a corner where the ghost is unlikely to spawn. Trigger the ghost to hunt (e.g. hide n seek oujia board, break the haunted mirror, spam voodoo doll needles).

11. When the ghost hunts, wait till the ghost sees you. When it is at about 3 arms distance, get your teammate to snap a photo, burn the smudge stick and immediately run to your hiding spot. Pick up the smudge stick in your hiding spot as a back up. If it's a Deogen, run to a loop instead of your hiding spot.

Identifying the ghost room

Now that the defensive measures were taken (plenty of lit candles, floor flashlights, smudge sticks, hiding spots, etc are ready). Here's more on identifying the ghost room safely and quickly.

1. Hold a lit candle and use a strong flashlight. Walk around the house and keep asking "where are you?" "are you here?" Eventually, the ghost will start moving things/doors or giving ghost events.

2. If the ghost has been moving doors but you can't figure out which one, close all doors - closet/locker/cabinet/room doors. The next time you hear a door moving, check for the ones that open. Most ghosts (except Yurei) only open doors. An EMF reader (EMF 2+), a photo camera (fingerprint / interaction photo) or UV light (handprint / fingerprint check) would confirm that the ghost was there.

3. To look for or confirm that it is the ghost room, use a thermometer. Make sure temperature in the suspected ghost room is low (<5 Celcius). This is a near-guarantee that the ghost is near the area. Check the rooms next to the suspected room as well.

If the breaker is turned on, the house's heating system would heat the entire house. The ghost cools their walking area. If you use a thermometer after a few minutes, it is reliable for confirming that the ghost was in an area. If you use it too early, the thermometer isn't as useful because entire house might be cold from the weather outside. If you were busy with defensive measures, then a few minutes would have passed and the thermometer is great.

Check every few minutes to confirm its location - sometimes the ghost roams a large area (e.g. Tanglewood house) or changes rooms (professional / nightmare mode).

4. If I want further confirmation, I would use the other tools (EMF reader, video camera, UV light, spirit box, etc) or cursed items (oujia board or haunted mirror). Make sure to check your sanity after using any cursed item. If it drops by ~30%, it isn't a bad idea to replenish sanity with pills.

Extra Notes

1. If you hold a lit candle throughout the investigation, your sanity will remain at 100% throughout the investigation (unless you had a face to face with the ghost).

2. If you aren't holding a lit candle, but a lit candle is near you, the passive sanity drop from being in a dark ghost room slows down significantly.

3. Use the 4 normal flashlights for escape route floor lighting. Reserve strong flashlights for active usage / ghost hunt trigger + smudge stick burn run. In fact, if you confirmed the ghost is a D.O.T.S. ghost or a non-D.O.T.S. ghost, you can use your D.O.T.S. projector for lighting as well - I typically use D.O.T.S. projector for lighting up the dark staircases - floor flashlights don't work well there.

4. Not sure if I said it already, but this walk through is definitely for the patient, defensive investigators.

5. If the ghost hunts early even with these defensive measures, it is likely an Onryo, Thaye or Demon. Due to the Onryo risk, I typically place 3 lit candles in the ghost room (instead of just 1 lit candle). Three candles don't usually go out all at once. As long as at least one is lit, the onryo is unlikely to hunt. It will be even safer if you placed one crucifix in the room and one crucifix outside the room as well.

6. If you suspect that the ghost is a Raiju, turn off all floor flashlights.

7. If someone used the Oujia board / haunted mirror, they should replenish their sanity with a pill. Otherwise, your team's sanity is lower, and a hunt might happen sooner.

8. If there's any optional task that requires your team sanity to be 25% or lower, please do this after you are done collecting evidence. In fact, if your team's sanity is about 60% and you're not done with evidence, eating some sanity pills would give your team more time to investigate safely.

If you force the team to drop sanity levels to 25% early, it can be difficult to restore sanity back to safe levels. At 25% sanity, the ghost starts hunting often. Each hunt makes sanity drop even further. So you might end up with average of 0% sanity. The pills only restores 25% (nightmare mode) to 40% (amateur mode) sanity. So you might end up with a cycle of what feels like 10 seconds investigation + 30 seconds of hunt + 20 seconds of walking to/from ghost room. It can become nearly impossible to gather anymore evidence safely.

9. If there's any optional task that requires you to use a smudge stick near the ghost, please do this last. There are only 4 smudge sticks. Use them when you actually need them: when you need to escape the ghost during a hunt. This task will be completed automatically.

[K.A.T]

Using the smudge stick near the ghost when your sanity is low will stop the ghost from hunting for 90 seconds (60 seconds if it was Demon). Good enough for gather missing evidences and defensive play style while solo

[1objection]

great guide

[Raft]

I'm glad it helps you!

[Kzsyo]

I loved your guide, I never know how to help my friends on investigation, cuz we all play it for months, so we are kinda "professionals". If I learn to play like that, our investigations will be even more smoother and easy!

[Raft]

It is unlocked at level 20.
https://phasmophobia.fandom.com/wiki/Difficulty#Nightmare

[ZagaL'A+]

When does Nightmare-Mode unlock?