Last updated 3 September 2026
How to play
Ghosts drift in from the left side of the screen — the opposite direction to the zombies and the racers — each one labeled with a common English word. Start typing that word and the ghost carrying it lights up letter by letter, in real time — finish the word before it reaches the red band on the right to banish it and score points. This is the busiest of the five typing games: up to nine ghosts can be on screen at once, so the challenge is picking a target and committing rather than raw speed. Let four slip past and it's game over, with a results screen showing your score, the wave you reached, and your longest combo streak — shareable as an image if you want to challenge someone to beat it.
Visual search and appearing targets
Targets that appear rather than travel along a predictable path make this partly a visual search task. Finding something new on screen is fast when it differs sharply from its surroundings and slow when it does not, and that difference is largely automatic rather than trainable — attention is drawn to sudden onset whether you intend it or not.
What is trainable is where you keep your gaze between targets. Fixing on one part of the screen means everything else is in peripheral vision, where reading is unreliable — the eye resolves detail only in a small central region and words a short distance away are genuinely not legible without moving your eyes. Keeping a soft, central gaze rather than staring at the last place something appeared usually shortens the time to spot the next one.
Switching costs
Every time you move from one target to another there is a small cost: your attention has to disengage, move and re-engage, and reading a new word takes a moment even once your eyes are on it. That cost is why finishing a word you have started is almost always better than abandoning it for a closer one that appeared mid-way, unless the first is clearly lost.
It is also why scores here vary more between attempts than in games with steadier pacing. Where targets happen to appear affects the result as much as how fast you type, so a single round tells you very little. Averaging several is a far better measure of whether you are actually improving.
As with the other games here, scores are kept in your browser's local storage on the device you are using. They are not synced, not visible to anyone else, and disappear if you clear your browsing data.
Common questions
How do I play Ghost Hunt?
Ghosts drift in from the left side of the screen, each one labeled with a word. Start typing that word and the ghost carrying it lights up letter by letter — finish the word before it reaches the red band on the right to banish it and score points. Let four ghosts slip past and it's game over.
How does scoring and the combo multiplier work?
Each ghost you banish scores points based on the word's length, multiplied by your current combo streak. The streak builds with every ghost banished in a row and resets to zero the moment one slips past, so holding the streak matters as much as raw speed.
Does the game get harder?
Yes — a new wave every 19 seconds, each one sending ghosts in more often and drifting them faster. What makes this one distinct is the crowd: up to nine ghosts can share the screen at once, more than any of the other games. Your wave number is shown live and is tracked as part of your final score.
Can I change the difficulty?
Yes — the Easy, Medium and Hard buttons sit above the haunt. Easy gives you an extra life and lets the ghosts drift in gently; Hard costs you a life and sends them gliding through much quicker. Your choice carries over to your next visit, and every setting tracks its own best score, so the three are never mixed together. You cannot switch mid-hunt — the buttons lock while a round runs.
Is my score saved anywhere?
Each difficulty's best hunt is stored in your browser's local storage on this device. Nothing is uploaded and no account exists, so the score is yours alone and cannot be compared with anyone else's. Wiping your browsing data clears it, as does using private browsing, and another device keeps a separate record of its own.
Where should I look between targets?
Keep a soft, central gaze rather than staring at wherever the last target appeared. The eye only resolves detail in a small central region, so anything a short distance away is genuinely not legible until you move your eyes to it.
Should I abandon a word if a closer target appears?
Usually not. Switching attention has a real cost — disengaging, moving and reading the new word all take time — so finishing what you started is normally faster unless the first target is clearly already lost.