{"id":462097,"date":"2026-10-10T11:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/462097\/"},"modified":"2026-10-10T11:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-10T11:00:09","slug":"austin-named-among-the-spookiest-cities-in-america-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/462097\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin named among the spookiest cities in America"},"content":{"rendered":"

Halloween is around the corner and spooky season is in full effect across Central Texas. From visiting haunted houses to embarking on ghost tours, the Lone Star State is home to dozens of\u00a0paranormal sites<\/a>,\u00a0including one of America’s spookiest cities.<\/p>\n

Austin was recently named the eighth spookiest city in the U.S. this year, according to a new Vivint report<\/a>. The state’s capital city was crowned Texas’ spookiest city after being the only Texas metro to break into the national top 10.<\/p>\n

Vivint, a smart home security company, conducted a study of 74 U.S. cities to find America’s spookiest destinations for 2026. The study\u00a0analyzed seven measures, adjusted for population to determine spookiness, including each city’s reported ghost sightings, haunted places and spooky search activity.<\/p>\n

Texas stood out as one of America’s biggest paranormal hotspots with four cities ranked among the nation’s 20 spookiest destinations. Austin led the state at No. 8 at the national level, followed by San Antonio at No. 11, Houston at No. 15, and Dallas at No. 19. In addition to Austin’s 115 reported ghost sightings, the city recorded 21 reported haunted places.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Driskill Hotel<\/a> on Sixth Street in Austin, the city\u2019s oldest hotel, is considered the most haunted place in Austin, famous for its lingering spirits. Other popular sites for ghost activity are Littlefield House on the University of Texas at Austin campus, the Texas State Capitol building and Oakwood Cemetery, according to Visit Austin<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, Austin outranked bigger cities with notorious paranormal pasts including New Orleans (No. 22), Savannah (No. 28), and Salem (No. 41). Texas also dominated reported ghost sightings, with Austin, Dallas, and Houston claiming the three highest totals among the cities studied.<\/p>\n

San Antonio had the second-highest number of reported haunted places in the entire study, with 56, trailing only Los Angeles, which had 61.The city’s downtown area, where the Battle of the Alamo took place in 1836, has several historic buildings<\/a> where lingering spirits remain<\/a> including the Alamo, Menger Hotel and the Esquire Tavern.<\/p>\n

Despite its large number of haunted locations and ghost sightings, San Antonio narrowly missed the top 10, ranking 11th overall. This was because San Antonio had the second-lowest concentration of psychics and astrologers among the cities studied, at just 0.73 per 10,000 residents, per the study.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Alamo City also recorded the second-lowest funeral services rate, at approximately 0.5 per 10,000 residents and Austin and Houston recorded the two lowest concentrations of spiritual shops among the 74 cities, with just 0.11 and 0.14 listings per 10,000 residents, respectively.<\/p>\n

In other parts of Texas, Dallas reported 64 ghost sightings and Houston had 48. Galveston and\u00a0Marfa ranked much lower than Texas’ four major cities, placing 56th and 57th nationally as the spookiest cities, respectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Halloween is around the corner and spooky season is in full effect across Central Texas. From visiting haunted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133,2108,2527,820],"class_list":["post-462097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news","tag-mysaaustin","tag-mysalifestyle","tag-mysastaff"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}