Methodology and sources

This page explains how a place gets onto Haunted Maps, and what you can and cannot rely on.

How a story page is made

1. We check the place. An automated check looks at its position, the evidence for it and possible duplicates. Most of the leads we collect have not passed this step, and those that fail stay off the public map.
2. We gather sources. These include heritage registers, encyclopedias, archives, newspapers, the sites of the places themselves and, for television appearances, episode records.
3. We write a draft from those sources, keeping the documented history apart from the legend.
4. A separate AI fact-check compares the draft with the research file built from the sources. Claims the file does not support are removed or marked as doubtful. This step changes nearly every draft.
5. The page must pass a quality gate. It needs at least 600 words of original text, at least two cited sources, and at least three free-to-use images or one archive document. Pages that fail stay unpublished.

How we use AI

AI models, currently Anthropic’s Claude, gather sources, write the drafts and carry out the fact-check described above. The fact-check is run separately from the writing. No person reads every page before it is published, so mistakes can get through.

That is why every page lists its sources so you can check them yourself, and why corrections matter to us. We do not use AI to create images of places: a photograph of a place on this site is a real photograph, credited to its author.

How to read our wording

We write “said to”, “reported” and “according to” for anything that is a claim, not an established fact. Nothing on this site is evidence that ghosts exist. We try to say where a story comes from, particularly when its origin is a novel, a marketing campaign or a television show.

Photographs

We use images with licenses that allow reuse, such as Creative Commons or public domain, and show the credit and license with them. If you own an image and think we have made a mistake, please tell us.

Locations and the map

The points on our public map are deliberately placed a short distance from the real position. This protects private owners and fragile sites, and exact locations are kept back for a planned paid product. The map includes only places that passed our automated check of position, evidence and duplicates, and our full stories cover a smaller number of them.

Updates

Each page shows the date it was last updated. Opening hours, tours and access rules change often, so always check with the site itself before you travel.