TL;DR: Hideo Kojima has publicly stated he wants to “scan a ghost for the first time” for his upcoming horror game OD. Despite there being zero scientific evidence that ghosts exist, Kojima appears to genuinely believe this is possible. Here’s what’s really going on.
What Kojima Actually Said
At the Beyond the Strand event celebrating Kojima Productions’ 10th anniversary, the legendary game director made some claims that are… let’s say ambitious:
“For OD, I want to go around, all over the world where [there] are scary kind of places. I want to scan a ghost for the first time and I want to get an award for that.”
He described recording unexplained sounds during production:
“There should be a ghost in the room that the studio scanned. But you hear this cracking sound? That’s actually a sound that was recorded in our studio.”
And then:
“Maybe the ghost was there, but she’s no longer there anymore.”
Kojima even revealed that he and Microsoft visited a shrine together “to make sure that we have a safe build of the game” – performing what amounts to a spiritual cleansing ritual on a video game project.
🎮 What’s Hot in Video Games Right Now
See which games, consoles, and accessories are climbing fast in popularity. Updated hourly, this list spotlights the biggest jumps in sales rank across the entire Video Games category – from the latest releases to must-have gear. It’s the easiest way to discover what gamers everywhere are buying today.
👉 Check out the trending picks here
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*
Let’s Be Clear: There’s No Evidence Ghosts Are Real
Before we go further, let’s establish the baseline: there is no scientific evidence that ghosts exist.
Reported paranormal experiences can almost always be explained by:
- Psychological factors – pareidolia (seeing patterns where none exist), sleep paralysis, heightened suggestibility, confirmation bias
- Environmental factors – drafts, electromagnetic fields, infrasound (low-frequency sounds that cause unease), carbon monoxide exposure, mold
- Simple misinterpretation – old buildings creak, shadows move, and our pattern-seeking brains fill in the gaps
Despite centuries of ghost stories and countless investigations, not a single piece of verifiable, repeatable evidence for the supernatural has ever been produced. Ghost beliefs are cultural artifacts – fascinating from an anthropological perspective, but not reality.
🎃 HALLOWEEN ON AMAZON 🎃
Get spooky with costumes, decorations, candy & much more! Perfect for trick-or-treat season.
Shop Halloween Deals Now
*As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases*
So Is Kojima Serious About This?
Unfortunately, yes. The tone of his statements and the shrine visit suggest genuine belief, not just marketing theater.
This puts us in an awkward position: one of gaming’s most celebrated auteurs appears to sincerely believe he can capture something that doesn’t exist using technology that can only detect physical phenomena.
The Technical Impossibility
Kojima’s scanning technology includes:
- Photogrammetry – captures light reflecting off physical surfaces
- Performance capture – records physical movements and expressions
- Audio recording – captures sound waves traveling through air
All of these tools detect and measure physical reality. They record atoms, molecules, electromagnetic radiation, and mechanical vibrations. If ghosts existed as some non-physical entity, these tools wouldn’t detect them. And if ghosts were physical enough to interact with light and sound waves, they’d be… well, just physical objects.
You cannot scan something that doesn’t exist.
What He’ll Actually Capture
So what happens when Kojima “scans a ghost”? Here’s the reality:
Environmental anomalies: Digital artifacts, lens flares, scanning errors, compression glitches – normal imperfections that occur during any capture process.
Ambient sounds: Old buildings make noise. Wood expands and contracts. Pipes settle. Wind creates vibrations. Recording these sounds doesn’t mean you’ve captured a spirit – it means you’ve captured an old building being an old building.
Pareidolia in data: Random noise that our pattern-seeking brains interpret as meaningful. See a weird blur in a scan? Must be a ghost. Hear a creak at the right moment? Ghost. It’s confirmation bias in action.
From Kojima’s perspective, these anomalies are evidence of the supernatural. From a rational perspective, they’re just… normal data imperfections that happen in any technical process.
Why This Matters (And Why It Doesn’t)
Here’s the thing: Kojima’s belief doesn’t change reality, but it might actually make for better horror.
The fact that he genuinely believes he’s working with something supernatural means:
- He’ll preserve “anomalies” that another developer would clean up
- He’ll design around ambiguity and unexplained events
- His sincerity will create an atmosphere of dread that purely cynical marketing can’t match
The irony is that his superstition might accidentally create effective psychological horror – not because ghosts are real, but because uncertainty and belief are powerful tools for manipulating emotion.
Players won’t be experiencing an actual ghost. They’ll be experiencing:
- Kojima’s interpretation of random data as supernatural
- Carefully preserved technical imperfections
- Psychological manipulation through suggestion and atmosphere
- The same cognitive biases that make people believe in ghosts in the first place
And honestly? That might be scarier than any scripted jumpscare.
The Kojima Factor
This isn’t completely unprecedented. Kojima has always been theatrical:
- P.T. created urban legends about the demo being “cursed”
- Metal Gear Solid broke the fourth wall in ways that felt unsettling
- Death Stranding leaned heavily into pseudo-scientific mysticism
But those felt like artistic choices. This feels like Kojima has genuinely bought into superstition – which is both disappointing (from a rationalist perspective) and potentially fascinating (from a “watching an artist work under self-imposed delusion” perspective).
The Bottom Line
Hideo Kojima believes he can scan a ghost. He cannot, because ghosts don’t exist.
What he will capture are normal environmental sounds, visual imperfections, and technical artifacts that he’ll interpret through the lens of superstition. He’ll then design a horror game around these “findings,” treating them as if they contain something supernatural.
The result? Probably an atmospheric, unsettling horror experience – not because it contains an actual ghost, but because it’s built on the foundation of someone who genuinely believes it does. The sincerity of delusion can be a powerful creative tool, even if the delusion itself is baseless.
Will OD be scary? Probably.
Will it contain a real ghost? No.
Will Kojima believe it does? Apparently, yes.
And maybe that’s the most unsettling thing about this whole situation.
What do you think? Is Kojima’s genuine belief in the supernatural concerning, or is it just another example of an artist fully committing to their vision? Sound off below.
Leave a Reply