Two PA metros ranked on list with most “real-life haunted houses”

If you are looking to seek out ghosts and ghouls this weekend for Halloween, you’re in the right state.

According to lawnstarter.com, the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area, along with Pittsburgh, are two of the top 13 metros with the potential for the most real-life haunted houses in the county.

To determine the metros most likely to have haunted houses, the website analyzed two sets of data for the 100 largest metro areas in the country, including the number of homes built prior to 1940 and the number of vacant homes in the area, thanks to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2015 American Community Survey. “Older homes and vacant homes have a perceived, if not actual, chance of being haunted. In our ranking, we assigned 75 percent of our score to the percentage of homes in a metro that were built before 1940 and 25 percent to the percentage of homes in a metro that are vacant,” the site explained. The analysis included houses, apartments, condos and other dwellings.

The Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area was ranked first overall in the nation. The area has 259,918 homes, with 96,993 built in 1939 or earlier, or 37.3 percent of homes. The number of vacant homes is 38,718, or 14.9 percent. Coming in ninth place was the Pittsburgh area. With 1,107,498 homes, 299,855 were built in 1939 or before, a percentage of 27.1 percent. The number of vacant homes is 117,143, or 10.3 percent.

Other towns on the top 13 list included Albany, N.Y., Syracuse, N.Y., Toledo, Ohio, Cleveland, Ohio, New Haven, Conn., Providence, RI, Buffalo, N.Y., Rochester, N.Y., Youngstown, Ohio, New York, N.Y. and New Orleans, LA.