In 2010, I launched a blog called Hayley is a Ghost. On it, I documented everything I was slowly learning as someone who had once believed in ghosts, become a ghost hunter, and then lost that belief in ghosts.
Hayley is a Ghost, at one point, could draw in tens of thousands of hits per month, but after a while that stopped being the case. I’d realised it was conflict that brought people in - when I shit talked the skeptic movement, or when I wrote a critique of a certain paranormal researcher, it drew people to the blog. After a while, those numbers began to dwindle around the time I decided to let curiosity be the driving force behind what I was writing, along with the grief I was processing after losing my mum when I was 30. Until eventually I was hardly writing at all.
It didn’t feel like there was a point.
Then, in 2025, I moved to Substack. I’d taken a period out of work due to burnout and decided that rebuilding my blog could be a useful, productive use of my time while job seeking. The Ghost Geek was born, and with it came the almost overpowering sense that I needed to be clever.
See, for the longest time, I have felt like the little kid who got invited to the adults’ table. Whenever I got invited to speak at conferences, sit on panels, work on a project etc., it felt great until I realised everyone else was there to promote something: their books, their organisation, their show, their career…
And I had none of that. It made me feel like I’d been naïve for the longest time. All I had was knowledge and ideas I thought were worth sharing, and while I still think this is enough of a reason to show up, I’m not sure other people always felt that way.
I worked hard to be the ghost researcher who was a sceptic but who was open-minded enough to acknowledge that weird shit happens. That’s who I think I am and how I work, but I also think it accidentally became a role I felt pressured to perform. I became the person who could be relied upon to be on hand to provide the nuanced sceptical take, and I jumped at the chance.
You want a sceptic paranormal researcher? We’ve got one here, she’s in her 30s, used to be a ghost hunter - I know, right? Wild shit. And she can speak somewhat eloquently, and she’s desperate for friends so she’ll say yes.
That’s harsh, but that’s what my subconscious sometimes whispers to me now that I’m no longer cool enough to get invites to collaborate.
Sometimes I think, back then, I arrived carrying usefulness when everybody else had remembered to bring ambition, and oof, does writing that sentence genuinely hurt.
But, I liked feeling useful. I’m not going to lie.
Not for some “greater cause” - I don’t view scepticism that way - but sharing knowledge is a good thing, and I like being able to help others do this. Whether that was prepping them before they went onto morning television to debunk a ghost video, being a back-up speaker, writing the article someone needed for their publication, or saying the words they wanted a sceptic to say for their podcast.
People asked for contributions, talks, commentary, writing, sceptical perspectives, and being the one who was asked felt like being recognised.
Yet, eventually I started wondering whether it was me who was being valued or the function. And the scary answer is that I genuinely don’t know, but there are enough missing credits, cold shoulders, and occasions of quietly being dropped from something that make me think it wasn’t me, after all.
And somewhere along the way, I started to think that if people didn’t value me, and like me when I was producing my honest thoughts, research, and opinions, then I needed to up my game. Get my shit together.
I started wondering if I sounded clever enough. I mean, yeah, I may have graduated with first-class honours after conducting an undergrad psychology research project with almost 700 participants while working full time, but perhaps I didn’t come across seriously enough to people?
Did they think I wasn’t legit enough, or academic enough to be taken seriously? Did my nuanced take on paranormal subjects make me seem sloppy to the sceptics, and that’s why I was no longer invited out to play? Did the believers think I was too closed-minded even when I was trying so hard to keep myself accountable for the conclusions I reached, and that’s why they bullied me?
In 2012, I spent a week investigating two lake monster mysteries with the late Joe Nickell. By the end of that week I had come to appreciate that being a paranormal researcher who uses scientific scepticism as a research method wasn’t about being the smartest sceptic in the room, or being the first to publish an explainer for the latest ghost evidence to hit the media.
He taught me that you had to take your time, talk to people, do the work, ask the questions, and not assume that your first conclusion was the final one. You had to let the investigation change what you think.
But it feels like the world doesn’t have room for that, and I think for a while I let the impulse to be someone who makes interesting content others will read take precedence over the important lessons I learned back in 2012.
I let my blog become less me and more something I thought I should be. The tone of my writing became more academic (which isn’t surprising as I’m studying for my Master’s in Forensic Psychology and all), but The Ghost Geek didn’t feel like Hayley is a Ghost anymore, and I don’t like that.
So it’s gone.
Not forever, I have a lot of my writing backed up in secure storage, so I can look at it again and decide whether I hate it or not. But ultimately, I want this to be somewhere I write because I have something in my head, rather than somewhere I continually prove what sort of person I am.
I don’t want to just be someone who is useful anymore, wheeled out of storage when needed and gathering dust when not; someone who resents when she isn’t wheeled out anymore, so tries to increase her usefulness by writing clever stuff even if it isn’t that interesting to her.
So I’m not going to be.
I do appreciate all the folks who’ve subscribed to the Ghost Geek over the last year, and maybe this will be disappointing because I’m suddenly not writing about super niche AI or psychology research and what it tells us about people who believe ghosts are demons, or computers are psychics, or whatever.
I don’t know what I’ll write about next. Maybe that’s fine.
Perhaps my subscribers will stick around to find out, or they’ll leave.
I think maybe that’s fine too.
The Ghost Geek is an award-winning blog by Hayley Stevens about the spooky and strange parts of life (and whatever else has caught her attention).
Another post I can't like, but wow, that was some soul searching stuff.
I was kind of late finding Substack, and you, but I enjoyed your writing while I could.
I'll hang around, maybe you'll come back to haunt us again, or maybe with something else - thanks either way.
Good luck in your travels!