Hunt Threshold: 50% and Every Ghost's Own Limit

The single most useful number in Phasmophobia is the hunt threshold — the sanity level at which a ghost is allowed to start hunting. The standard is 50% average team sanity, but a cluster of ghosts overrides it, and knowing which one you are facing can be the only clue on reduced-evidence difficulties. These values are community-verified across multiple wikis and guides; Kinetic Games has not published an official threshold table, so treat them as the best available consensus rather than hardcoded law.

The standard rule

For most ghosts, the game checks the average sanity of all living players every few seconds. Once that average is at or below 50%, the ghost can roll a hunt, and the lower the sanity, the higher the chance. Dead players do not count toward the average.

Ghosts that change the threshold

• Demon — hunts at 70%, and its ability can start a hunt at any sanity.
• Mare — 40% with the ghost-room light off, 60% with it on (breaker status does not matter).
• Yokai — normally 50%, but 80% if players talk in its room.
• Raiju — normally 50%, rising to 65% near active electronic equipment.
• Onryo — 60%, and can hunt at any sanity after extinguishing a flame.
• Shade — 35%, and will not hunt while at least one player is in the same room.
• Banshee — ignores the team average entirely and reads only its chosen target’s sanity (see the Banshee page).
• Thaye — starts at 75% and its threshold drops as it ages, down to around 15%.
• Deogen — 40%.
• Obambo — state-based: roughly 10% when calm, 65% when aggressive.

Why this is a diagnostic, not just a warning

A crucifix burn at 66% sanity, for example, instantly narrows the candidate list to the few ghosts that can hunt that high. Combined with behavior tells, the threshold is often the tiebreaker when evidence is hidden on Nightmare or Insanity. The crucifix and incense page explains how those tools interact with these thresholds, and sanity management covers how to keep the average high enough to avoid the roll entirely.