One of the best things to come out of 2020 was Phasmophobia, the fantastic indie game developed by Kinetic Games. For a while following the game’s release in September, most YouTubers had a knack for playing this surprisingly engaging title — you could not scroll through the trending gaming section without finding a handful of Phasmophobia videos.
Phasmophobia focuses on psychological horror with a multiplayer concentration, producing top-notch gameplay that lies somewhere in between frightening and hilarious. Naturally, the game is not meant to be funny; it’s the multiplayer component that can make the gameplay some of the best times you’ll have with your friends. Luckily for you, Phasmophobia is full of spooky locations, with the possibility of more to come. It should be noted that bigger locations often account for tougher investigations, as they require larger teams and are unlocked only by levelling up.
Updated August 6, 2022 by Dace McNally: The new Custom Difficulty update for Phasmophobia offers players quality of life updates to the game lobby and shop menus, as well as the titular addition of customizable jobs allowing players to ramp up the intensity of the game like never before. Alongside this update comes the highly anticipated overhaul of the Asylum map, referred to now as Sunny Meadows. To keep up with all the new updates, this list has been amended and is still ranked by the scariest and most fun locations to visit and explore.
10 Tanglewood Street House
This is one of the smallest locations in the game and serves as a training ground during the game’s tutorial. Are you fond of tight, spooky, single-story houses with a dark basement? You can expect a quick ghost hunting investigation to take place here, since the location is so small that it will greatly facilitate gathering evidence.
However, since this house is tiny it also proves dangerous during a ghost’s hunting phase. There are only two closets where you can hide, so make sure to learn where those are. Do not make the classic mistake to forget about these spots.
9 Willow Street House
Willow Street House feels a lot smaller than Tanglewood Street House. Its tiny size can make it one of the easiest places to conduct an investigation, but don’t let its small environs fool you. The close quarters can be a hindrance more than a help.
Ghost hunts that take place in the Willow Street House can end in your death due to a noticeable lack of viable hiding spots. That said, this place is one of the best locations to visit if you only have a team of two struggling to identify a ghost.
8 Ridgeview Road House
Another small map in the game is Ridgeview Road House. This looks like the classic two-story house you could quickly sketch if someone asked you what a typical American house looks like. It has plenty of rooms for you to explore, and a good old creepy basement. Most of the rooms are pretty small and have enough objects in them to make navigation a little difficult.
The layout of the house itself allows you to hide quickly, should you need to in case a ghost is on your tail. This is one of the recurring advantages within small maps that have multiple floors and rooms.
7 Edgefield Street House
Things get a little worse if you are prone to spooks in this two-story, crammed, six-bedroom house. Nothing is worse than the feeling of turning a corner in a horror game, expecting something on the other side. Even worse is the feeling of getting turned around after a long streak of corners that progressively make things more unnerving as you look for a clear, open space.
Edgefield Street House is full of rooms that make the environment seem stuffy, claustrophobic even. However, you can use this to your advantage: many rooms means many places to hide during a hunt. Make sure to put some cameras in the hallways to gather evidence more quickly.
6 Bleasdale Farmhouse
Bleasdale Farmhouse is one of two farmhouse map variants in Phasmophobia. It has more floors than its counterpart, but each has the same shape — they only differ in terms of room arrangement. The attic is the third and final floor found within the house, and does not contain any rooms within itself, but serves as a possible spawn location for the Ouija Board.
There is something especially unnerving about old, creaky, wooden houses, so familiarizing yourself with this map can take some time.
5 Grafton Farmhouse
The other farmhouse variant, and last small map in Phasmophobia, is Grafton Farmhouse. It has two floors, one less compared to the other farmhouse, but both are larger with consequently larger rooms that can make escape difficult during a hunt. You can play this map, and the other small maps, safely with two people, though having more can speed up the investigation process. After all, this is a multiplayer game (and one of the best to have come out).
The upstairs of this map is especially dangerous since the second floor is significantly smaller than the first, because its rooms are too wide to allow for a speedy escape in dangerous situation. Don’t stay up there for too long.
4 Prison
The Prison is one of two medium-sized maps in the game. Its cold ambiance reflects that of an actual prison and serves as the primary reason why this location is scary. In fact, it mostly looks like any other prison, it’s the emptiness of it that makes it so uncanny.
You would expect a prison to be full of people, so there is something spine-chilling that comes with being in an empty one. This map should be tackled only by larger teams, of at least three players, and it can net you a considerable sum of money if your team has good chemistry.
3 Maple Lodge Campsite
The Maple Lodge Campsite map is the first almost-completely outdoor location available in Phasmophobia, and was introduced in the Nightmare expansion update. As well as a camping lodge, tents, and a haunted lake, the Campsite’s medium-sized map also includes a roaring campfire to keep spooks at bay, as well as interactive games that can be played by both living and recently deceased players.
While previously the outdoors was a safe haven away from ghosts, in the Maple Lodge map, there’s now fewer hiding spots away from terrifying ghouls. Hiding inside tents and behind the camping lodge adds an extra layer of terror, as well as a familiar figure lurking in the forest…
2 Brownstone High School
This map is something the stuff of nightmares is made of. High schools are such familiar settings for most people that it is frightening to be investigating a ghost within one. Luckily, like most high schools, Brownstone is just as intuitive to navigate.
Spread between two floors filled with classrooms, bathrooms, and locker rooms, Brownstone is especially ominous to navigate due to the endless darkness it’s engulfed in. What’s creepier than walking down a seemingly endless hallway, looking for a light switch, while hearing strange noises? Bring a large team to this map to facilitate things.
1 Sunny Meadows
Once referred to as the Asylum, the largest and most brutal map to play in is Sunny Meadows, roughly double the size of Brownstone High School — the second-largest map in the game. The location features unique environments such as a chapel, a boiler room, and a courtyard, each with its own assets and design, creating diversity in Sunny Meadows’ overall appearance, and providing unique haunting locations with each visit.
Sanity Pills are a must-have, as exploring the location will take some time, and multiple paranormal events, possibly even hunts, will likely occur before the ghost is located. Due to its size and labyrinth-like layout, solo investigations should only be attempted by the bravest and best. Only teams with experienced paranormal investigators might make it out of this dreadful location.
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