High school freshman Mai Taniyama likes to spend her free time telling ghost stories with friends. One day she hears a ghost story about the cursed old school building. Overcome by curiosity, she decides to check it out. After peeking in the window, she spots a camera. After a twist of fate, she ends up breaking the camera and injuring an unknown man. It turns out that both belonged to the young Kazuya Shibuya, a paranormal investigator and high school senior. In order to pay him back, he forced her to become his assistant for his paranormal investigation company.
Although it starts slow, Ghost Hunt provides a surprisingly well-researched story about ghost hunting that, at times, can actually be pretty creepy. If you are chasing after that same ghastly feeling, give these anime recommendations a try.
Anime Like Ghost Hunt
For Fans of Ghost Hunting
Psychic Detective Yakumo
After one of her friends committed suicide and another ends up possessed, high school sophomore Haruka Ozawa is in fear for her life. Her only hope is her mysterious classmate and paranormal investigator Yakumo Sato whose red eye allows him to communicate with the dead.
Psychic Detective Yakumo is often most associated with Ghost Hunt, but usually referred to as the less fleshed out version. As Mai’s thoughts are heard internally, it gives her much more character depth, and it is the characters that carry Ghost Hunt. However, it you like ghost hunting, than Yakumo offers a decent follow up.
Mushishi
In this world, spirits called Mushi go unnoticed by most humans. However, aside from just simply existing, Mushi can also mimic things from the living world like plants or diseases. Ginko is a man that travels around researching Mushi and solving the problems they cause, trying to unravel the meaning of their existence.
If part of the reason you enjoyed Ghost Hunt was the unique ghosts, spirits, and psychic individuals that it explored, then Mushishi might be right up your alley. Although you don’t have the same interesting characters, the varieties of Mushi that are shown makes each episode an adventure.
Mononoke
Mononoke follows the story of a man simply known as the Medicine Seller. However, it is not medicine he sells, but rather he travels feudal Japan ridding villages of malevolent spirits called mononoke. Before he can kill each spirit he encounters, he must first learn its Form, Truth, and its Reason.
A good majority of Ghost Hunt is spent exploring why the ghost exists, and that is exactly what the Medicine Seller does with each case in order to fully fight the spirit. This plot device allows both shows to fully explore the spirits themselves, making each haunting unique and interesting.
For Fans of Dark Detective Stories
Heaven’s Memo Pad
Narumi Fujishima doesn’t really fit in at school, but still craves friends. When another misfit introduces him to a strange NEET girl that lives above a ramen shop, he is drafted into her ultra elite private detective agency.
What can a bunch of NEETs and outcasts do to fight crime? Surprisingly a lot. It is the varied characters in Ghost Hunt that carry the show, and in Heaven’s Memo Pad, you get to meet a similar array of weirdoes that work towards the same goal of solving more violent crimes.
Witch Hunter Robin
Robin is a witch that has recently traveled from Italy to Japan in order to join the STN-J, an organization of witch hunters. There Robin learns that the organization tries to capture the ESP, telekinesis, or mind control-wielding witches of Japan alive in order to study them, but not all is as noble as it seems.
If you like your mysteries and your settings dark with that same aura of supernatural, then Witch Hunter Robin fits you to a T. While having more psychic-oriented witches rather than those from other series like Fairy Tail, it ends up creating a darker series of mysteries and magic.
Demon Detective Nougami Neuro
Neuro Nougami is a demon that feeds on mysteries and puzzles. However, as a demon who must remain unnoticed by humans, he pairs up with a human girl in order to solve mysteries, a job she hopes will help her solve her own personal mystery.
Although Ghost Hunt has sparse humor, Nuero is as comedic as he is vicious. The partnership between him and his human really rings true to that between Mai and Kazuya. This is a series for fans that still want dark and horrible mysteries while also want to still have fun while watching it.
For Fans of Ghost Stories
Kaiden Restaurant
Kaiden Restaurant follows the creepy and mysterious events that surround a sixth grader and her friends. Each episode is served up in three parts – an appetizer, an entree, and a dessert – with the first two parts being about the aforementioned student while the dessert is a ghost story told by the friends.
While featuring younger characters, Kaiden Restaurant is still about a group of people solving paranormal mysteries. However, even if the story takes a turn for the dull, you still get a creepy ghost story at the end of each episode that can be as scary as some of Ghost Hunt’s better arcs.
Ghost Stories
Satsuki and Keiichirou Miyanoshita move back to their mother’s hometown after her tragic death, it is there that the siblings find out that their mother banished a number of ghosts from the old school building, but suddenly they are all starting to reappear again. It is up to Satsuki and her new friends along with the help of her mother’s journal to seal them away again.
Viewers should be aware that subbed Ghost Stories is aimed at a younger audience while dubbed Ghost Stories turns it into a dark comedy for adults. It doesn’t matter which version you watch, the story stays the same, but the dub is much funnier. What is actually the best part is that some of the ghost-related mysteries they solve are actually still scary even if you are laughing at the dialogue.
Dusk Maiden of Amnesia
For 60 years, the Seikyou Private Academy has been haunted by a ghost known as Yuuko, a young woman that died in the basement. With no memory of her life, the ghost founds the Paranormal Investigation Club to find answers.
Both Amnesia and Ghost Hunt tackle the paranormal in a rather light way. Both tend to weave in humor and dark investigations, but Amnesia is generally a little bit funnier than Ghost Hunt. Both stories also have a fair amount of romance in them as well.
Have your own recommendations for anime series like Ghost Hunt? Tell us about it in the comments section below.
