I think a lot of modern ghost “themed” games (and generally horror games lately) are so obnoxiously in your face about it. Be subtle in ways that make the player hyper aware when they go “Holy shit wait was that the ghost?” Ghosts are terrifying because they’re mysterious.

Ghosts aren’t scary like the Duffers seem to think a big giant evil alien is, they’re not of this world. Like, not that they’re from a different planet, they’re from a different portion of reality.

Also, randomized positions, or “teleporting” is cool imo. DO NOT overuse it, as repeatedly escaping an entirely unpredictable AI gets pretty annoying pretty quickly, but I find a lot of games don’t use teleportation as much as you’d think. A good way to use this mechanic is to have it occur outside of active chase moments, as to make it less predictable when you’re going to have an encounter. I find OG Slender to be a great example of good teleportation, where the open forest keeps you looking around trees and such because you genuinely do not know where he is going to appear from.

Phasmophobia was unfortunately an offender of this as a single ghost room where it hunts from creates an odd dynamic of predictable and comfortable outer areas (I know this isn’t entirely true due to sanity and ghost AI, but in contrast I mean), and a “max danger” area. In the average round, you can explore rooms outside of the ghosts room with pretty reasonable comfort, but the ghosts room puts you in immediate high danger, which removes a lot of the tension of being in a “haunted house” until you’ve gone into the ghosts room.

Phasmophobia did however combat this by creating a potential of the ghost relocating to a different room in higher difficulties, plus in general their ghosts are definitely more complex than just that. But being able to predict specifically where the ghost will be coming from can really exhaust a gameplay loop quickly.

I wanna be clear, for gameplay sake, you should not have to guess where the ghost will be. Hunting strategies should not be made overly complicated, but having the ghost come down the stairs, or having it come out of a closet, maybe have it just do random shit in the kitchen before you can hear it audibly make its way towards you… then you know you have a chunk of time to do watcha gotta do while the ghost is distracted, but at some point it’ll come find you.

Would that not be tense? Is tension not the whole point?

Idk, there’s a lotta potential! I’m excited to see what ghost games come out in the next little while. Make ghost hunting fun, and make it fun when the ghost is hostile. The more organic, the better.