How to Survive a Hunt in Phasmophobia

The lights are flickering, you hear footsteps and your racing heart beating. You find cover and hide behind a door, but it’s too late. Grey fingers wrap around your face and eyes and then poof. Everything goes grey and now you’re here trying to figure out how to survive a hunt in Phasmophobia.

Avoid Hunts Until You’re Ready

Generally speaking, you don’t want to enter the house and immediately start throwing things around and yelling the ghost’s name from the start. Gather information discreetly, use lights, and preserve your sanity. Be careful not to use too many electrical lights as the circuit breaker could switch off.

Spend the early game placing tripods, and cameras, checking temperatures and locating hiding spots. After doing this initial setup, decide whether you want to play aggressively or cautiously.

Know Where You Are and What is Around You

If you want to survive a hunt in Phasmophobia, whether you are aggressive or cautious, always have a hiding spot scouted out no matter where you are. Once a hunt begins, you have two to three seconds of safety before the ghost officially starts chasing you.

Also, keep an eye open for the cursed possessions. They can help you greatly or kill you instantly depending on your luck and are as follows.

How to Survive a Hunt Once it Begins

After the initial two to three seconds grace period when the hunt starts, go to your hiding place fast. To help you with surviving a hunt, always break the line of sight before entering your hiding space. The ghost will open closet doors, lockers, and other locations you’re hiding behind or in if they see you enter.

Lockers and other hiding spots can be found on many maps, hidden inside of, and the doors closed. — Here’s a locker, though, it needs to be closed to do you any good./ Credits: Kinetic Games

Turn off all electrical devices and lights. The ghost will be able to locate you while they are activated.
If you think you are going to be hunted or are trying to force a hunt, bring smudge sticks or a crucifix. You can prevent a hunt or end one instantly with a lucky toss of the crucifix or a nice face full of smoke to the ghost.
There are also certain objects you can loop the ghost around. The car in the garage, the campfire at the camping site.
Finally, keep quiet. Do not use your microphone at all. If you speak, you will be found and then it’s game over.

Using Cursed Possessions to Survive a Hunt

These items can influence how the ghost behaves during a hunt in many ways and also increases or decreases your chances of survival. It’s important to know that using a cursed possession lowers your sanity at a very rapid rate. The lower your sanity, the more likely you are to be hunted.

If you’re playing on a game difficulty that has a setup grace period where you can’t be attacked, interacting with a cursed possession instantly ends this grace period allowing you to be hunted.

Most of these items, with the exception of unfortunate rng with the Tarot Cards or the Voodoo Doll, can be consistent in getting your desired results. This is super helpful when trying to learn how to survive a hunt in Phasmophobia.

Music Box

This cursed possession makes the ghost sing along with the music from the box revealing their position. Be careful though, if you get too close to the ghost with the music box in hand, it will trigger a Cursed Hunt which is a longer version of a regular hunt.

Ouija Board

The board allows the controlling player to ask the ghost questions and receive an honest response.

It’s most helpful and effective to use questions like, “Where are you”, “How old are you?”, “When did you die”, “Where is the bone located?” When you’re done, always say goodbye to deactivate the item, otherwise, you will drain your sanity completely and break the ouija board from being used again.

The Ouija Board looks like your typical Ouija board you would find outside of the game. — The Ouija Board in Phasmophobia./Credits: Kinetic Games

Always have an EMF Reader with you to catch a possible EMF 5 reading on the board, and scout out a hiding location before using the Ouija board.

Voodoo Doll

Voodoo Doll is hit or miss on if it’s helpful to you or not because this is one of the rng items in Phasmophobia and can both increase and decrease your chances to survive a hunt.

There are 10 pins in the doll and using the doll randomly chooses one of the pins to push into the doll. Using the doll allows you to force the ghost to do certain actions. You can force them to interact with a Ghost Book, walk through the D.O.T.S. Projector, touch doors, windows and light switches.

You can imagine how useful this is for forcing evidence to be found early on or squeezing out that last bit of evidence from a stubborn ghost. Every pin you push lowers your sanity by 5% except for the pin in the heart. The heart pin will drop your sanity by 10% and trigger a cursed hunt.

The Tarot Cards

The Tarot cards, like the Voodoo Doll, are the second rng item and consist of a deck of 10 cards. They could either save your life, make the hunt faster or slower, or kill you on the spot depending on the card you draw.

The Tarot deck hosts the image of multiple ghosts and ghouls on a black and silver backed card. — The deck of Tarot Cards in Phasmophobia. As useful as it is dangerous./Credits: Kinetic Games

The cards are as follows:

The Sun – This helpful card burns yellow as you draw it and restores sanity to 100%. Useful if trying to stay longer for more evidence, but bad if you want to lose sanity to make the ghost more active.
The Moon – The Moon burns white on drawing and will instantly drop your sanity to 0%.
The Tower – The Tower burns blue and forces a ghost interaction to occur.
The Wheel of Fortune – The Wheel of Fortune can burn green, which restores 25% sanity, or red which depletes 25% sanity.
The Devil – The Devil burns pink and instantly triggers a ghost event on the player nearest to the ghost when it’s drawn.
The High Priestess – The High Priestess is arguably the best card in the deck as it revives a random player who has died in this game. It burns light yellow.
The Hanged Man – The Hanged Man instantly kills the player who draws it and does not burn.
Death – Death will trigger a cursed hunt when drawn and burns purple.
The Hermit – The Hermit burns Cyan colored and teleports the ghost back to its room and traps it for one minute.
The Fool – The Fool burns light purple and is a “Gotcha!” card. It has no effect and simply disguises itself as another card before flipping over, revealing itself, and then disappearing.

Haunted Mirror

The Haunted Mirror is a super useful and sanity-depleting item. When figuring out how to survive a hunt in Phasmophobia, it’s very important to know your surroundings. When you use the Haunted Mirror, it lets you briefly see through the ghosts’ eyes until your sanity reaches zero. Once your sanity drops to zero, the mirror breaks and a cursed hunt begins.

When the haunted mirror breaks, it becomes unusable and purple energy cracks the mirror. — The Haunted Mirror after breaking./Credits: Kinetic Games

Your sanity depletes at a whopping 10% per second so be sure you can depict the ghosts’ location fast.

The Summoning Circle

This cursed possession is a large red circle with five red candles at different points of the pentagram. After lighting all five candles, the ghost will be summoned into the circle and trapped there briefly. This allows the player to take photos of the ghost for evidence in relative safety.

This is exceptionally helpful versus shy and lazy ghosts that refuse to give you evidence or make an appearance.

This picture depicts a Summoning Circle located in the baby room on Willow Street but can be found in many other locations. — One example of the Summoning Circle. It can also be found in basements, attics and other places./Credits: Kinetic Games

Be very careful as the ghost will be very angry after being trapped. This will trigger a cursed hunt immediately after they break free. Take your photos and run. Lighting the candles depletes your sanity at a rate of 16% per candle.