History YMMV / Phasmophobia

* BreatherBoss: The Deogen, widely agreed to be the ''least'' threatening ghost in the game. While the fact that you outright ''cannot'' hide from it sounds scary on paper, in practice it's very easy to outrun it or simply circle-strafe it around a table or other sufficiently large piece of geometry due to its pitifully slow chase speed when close enough to the player.

** Despite The Twins' name and ability descriotion, they do ''not'' count as two separate ghosts; rather, it is one ghost with a greatly extended range at which it can perform interactions, thus creating the illusion that there are two ghosts in two separate rooms.

** The Apocalyse Update screams this since it allows you to create a custom game. Only a true masochist would want to start a game with zero sanity, no flashlights, and absurdly-long hunts.

* SelfImposedChallenge: Some players find that Professional difficulty is just too easy. So they decide to challenge themselves by only allowing the use of candles or even foregoing light sources altogether, making the game that much scarier in the process.

** The game uses the same engine and many of the same furniture/object assets as ''VideoGame/HouseFlipper''. Your mileage may vary on whether this makes ''Phasmophobia'' less creepy or ''House Flipper'' more creepy. Funnily enough, one of the late-game missions in ''House Flipper'' [[spoiler:has you dealing with an actual haunted house--though instead of busting out the EMF reader and spirit box, you simply have to rebury the coffin in the background.]]

* ParanoiaFuel: The ghosts can be hard to find, but they're never too far away. Sometimes they'll open doors and turn off lights on their own. But if you don't see them do it, you might suddenly be questioning whether it was an actual ghost event or maybe one of your own teammates did it.

* ThatOneLevel: The larger maps qualify, but one of the primary offenders and possibly the most difficult map to navigate is the Asylum, mainly due to the sheer size of it. Featuring two main wings, each large enough on their own to be considered a small sized map, a large central area, and a basement with two smaller wings, it is by far the largest map in the game. Combined with the slow movement speed of characters, getting from one end to the other takes several minutes. On Professional difficulty, with the faster Sanity drain, it's almost a guarantee that you'll run out of sanity if you don't find the ghost room quickly. The only saving grace is that there are plenty of side rooms to hide in when a hunt occurs.

** The Spirit Box responses from the ghosts, such as "Adult", "Here" and "Attack", especially the flat synthetic male voice delivery of the words.

** Even the slightest bit of paranormal activity can qualify, ''especially'' when the ghost becomes more active. The absolute worst moment is when the ghost starts hunting and catches the player, killing them and dragging them off to '''somewhere''' that resembles a demented basement with bagged-up bodies hanging from the ceiling and the ghost facing a corner before the sole light bulb shatters.
** The game's maps have a surprisingly oppressive and creepy atmosphere, with the eerie background noise that plays through all of them and the game's aversion of HollywoodDarkness. The three larger maps, the [[OldSchoolBuilding Brownstone High School]], the [[HellholePrison Prison]] and the [[AbandonedHospital Asylum]], are particularly creepy to explore due to their decrepit nature and how easy they are to get lost in.
** The January 2021 patch added a ''massive'' change; Ghosts will now open doors during hunts in attempts to hunt players, and doors can also be held shut in a desperate attempt to keep them out. This changes hunts into far more terrifying and dynamic events as hunts are no longer filled with just the sounds of stomping, but the slinging open and slamming shut of doors as the ghost methodically walks through the location looking for someone to kill while praying that if it checks your room, the door holds steady and doesn't swing open on you.
** The August 29 patch revamps the game, for better ''and for worse''. The ghosts will now start to ''sing'' when they begin a hunt, serving as an audio cue and a warning for players to hide, and adding to the already creepy atmosphere of the game.
** The appropriately named Nightmare Update. In addition to adding in new ghosts types and maps, a new difficulty mode was implemented. What makes this mode so scary you ask? Well, to put it simply, hunts will not end immediately once a ghost kills someone. It will ''continue'' to hunt your ass. In other words, Nightmare Mode makes the ghost capable of doing a TotalPartyKill. [[SarcasmMode Good luck!]]

* MemeticMutation: The Spirit Box responses from the ghosts, such as "Adult", "Here" and "Attack", especially the flat synthetic male voice delivery of the words.

* NightmareFuel: Has a subpage now.

* HarsherInHindsight: One of the ghost name combinations for the ghost can be "Betty White". Actress Betty White would then go on to pass at the very end of 2021.

* NightmareFuel:

* ThatOneBoss: Raiju are uniquely enraged by having electronics on in their presence, drastically increasing their likelihood of hunting and their speed. The main issue comes because of how all of the evidence gatherers requires electronics means that it's incredibly easy for hunters to max out its aggression and speed by forgetting to turn off tools they weren't using. Even worse, tools that were still turned on when dropped by players still anger it, which can result in a brutal feedback loop on higher difficulties where a hunter dies, drops all of their turned-on electronics, which sit there continuing to anger the Raiju until it hunts again shortly after. To many players, a Raiju is considered a scarier ghost to deal with than a Demon because of this behavior.

* BreatherLevel: Downplayed, since Nightmare Mode is going to be difficult and dangerous regardless. It's often NintendoHard by design, including determining the type of ghost, since the ghost suppresses one of their three pieces of evidence, meaning that players can only find two of them to narrow the ghost down to a few possible choices, and depending on which combination of evidence you get, it can be very difficult to determine decisively and may require an educated guess. However, as of the holiday update, having a Mimic makes the ghost much easier to identify; since the ghost orbs surrounding it are not one of its three "official" evidence types and will thus never be suppressed, if players find orbs and two other pieces of evidence (out of Fingerprints, Freezing Temperatures, and Spirit Box), this immediately reveals the ghost as The Mimic, making it the easiest ghost to determine fairly quickly.

* BreatherLevel: Downplayed, since Nightmare Mode is going to be difficult and dangerous regardless. It's often NintendoHard by design, including determining the type of ghost, since the ghost suppresses one of their three pieces of evidence, meaning that players can only find two of them to narrow the ghost down to a few possible choices, and depending on which combination of evidence they get, it can be very difficult to determine decisively and may require an educated guess. However, as of the holiday update, having a Mimic makes the ghost much easier to identify; since the ghost orbs surrounding it are not one of its three "official" evidence types and will thus never be suppressed, if players find orbs and two other pieces of evidence (out of Fingerprints, Freezing Temperatures, and Spirit Box), this immediately reveals the ghost as The Mimic, making it extremely easy to determine fairly quickly.

** The ghosts in the game can be horrifying, but the character models are... strange to say the least. Bodies will contort in odd ways when looking up or down, the players appear to be seeing from the characters chests, and characters hold objects away from their body in bizarre ways. As a result, a normally scary environment can become hilarious in certain contexts.
** The ghosts can strike rather slinky poses at times, similar to bikini or lingerie shoots. This despite the fact that the figures are sometimes male. And ghosts. And covered in blood.

** Special shoutout also goes to the "Willow Street House", which has ''no'' closets or lockers to hide in, meaning the ghost has a higher chance of running into their prey due to the sheer amount of space.

* GameBreaker: The thermometer, even if the ghost isn't one of the types that causes below freezing, there's still a sharp enough drop where they're present that regardless of type you can pinpoint its room and even its spawn point within a minute of walking into the map. The Halloween patch dialed this back a bit though, by making the area the temperature drops in much wider so you can get a general idea of where the ghost is, but until you find the freezing point it's wide enough it could still be two or three different rooms.

** The game uses the same engine and many of the same furniture/object assets as ''VideoGame/HouseFlipper''. Your mileage may vary on whether this makes ''Phasmophobia'' less creepy or ''House Flipper'' more creepy. Funnily enough, one of the late-game missions in ''House Flipper'' [[spoiler:has you dealing with an actual haunted house--though instead of busting out the EMF reader and spirit box, you simply have to rebury the coffin in the background.]])

** The game uses the same engine and many of the same furniture/object assets as ''VideoGame/HouseFlipper''. Your mileage may vary on whether this makes ''Phasmophobia'' less creepy or ''House Flipper'' more creepy. Funnily eenough, one of the late-game missions in ''House Flipper'' [[spoiler:has you dealing with an actual haunted house--though instead of busting out the EMF reader and spirit box, you simply have to rebury the coffin in the background.]])