Survey finds that New Jersey isn’t very spooky

A new survey from Move Buddha, “American Haunting: The Spookiest States in the USA”, will have disappointing news for lovers of the paranormal in New Jersey: we rank just 38th on the creepy scale.

Each state got three scores: the spook score, the creep score, and the boo score.

The spook score was determined by the number of haunted locations by population, the founding date of the oldest city, number of cemeteries by population, and the age of the oldest cemetery.

The creep score took into consideration the number of unsolved murders and the number of abandoned buildings.

Finally, the boo score was derived by the number of ghost towns in the state and the number of ghost sightings by population.

Just a warning: New York is the number one creep state and #15 overall, while Pennsylvania also winds up near the top — it is number 5. New York has a large number of unsolved murders and abandoned places.

The most haunted state, at least according to Move Buddha, is New Mexico. According to the survey:

Home to places such as the Acoma Pueblo, which is considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited region in the entire Western Hemisphere, this southwestern state is the ideal location to commune with spirits of the distant past.

The rest of the top ten most haunted states are:

Sorry, New Jersey, even with the Devil’s Tree, Shades of Death Road and all the other spooky places in the Garden State, it just wasn’t good enough.

The post above reflects the thoughts and observations of New Jersey 101.5 talk show host Bill Doyle. Any opinions expressed are Bill Doyle's own.