Glitches

This page is not an official list of bugs.
This Wiki is not moderated by, nor affiliated with, the official Phasmophobia developers or its volunteer staff in the official Discord server. This page should not be used to report bugs. Any bugs you encounter should be reported on the Discord server, instead of here. As bugs may be fixed without notice. Additionally, this page is updated very sporadically, meaning anything written here has a very good chance of being out-of-date. As such, this page should not be used as a reference, but instead as a novelty.
This page lists several glitches or bugs that can be found in-game.
== Acknowledged bugs ==
This is an informal list of bugs that have either been currently designated as "known" under the pinned comments of the #bug-reports channel of the official Discord server, or have a Known Issue tag to the relevant bug report.
* If a player loads into a lobby while holding an item, it will appear floating
* Hunts occasionally occur without anyone being in the house
* Summoning circle candles can be rapidly lit to bypass the candles being blown out at 0 sanity
* Bones occasionally spawn in inaccessible/difficult-to-reach areas
* Players may not see items in the truck if someone loads in improperly
* Lighting may appear warped in certain places
* Some language fonts have white blocking around the letters
* DOTS may not render correctly
* Player hair can disappear in the fog or when viewed through the paramic
* Sunny Meadows boilers cannot be lit
* Prison monitors are very bright
* Placing items (such as DOTS) may teleport it back to the truck
* Items and props can spawn in the wrong place, and will bug the player's inventory when picked up
* Salt can occasionally be placed mid-air/into the ground
* Multiple players can grab the same item at the same time, resulting in the item doubling or being unusable
* Hands may fall when grabbing equipment in certain cases
* Global Chat occasionally cuts out
* Audio may muffle incorrectly between floors, when dying or being resurrected with High Priestess/Monkey Paw
* Dead bodies may occasionally be invisible to some players
* The map may disappear through doorways (portals)
* There are places where the player can get stuck/be invincible
* The player may get killed through the stairs in 42 Edgefield Road
* Ghosts can get stuck behind certain furniture
* The Deogen can kill through walls
* Using VOSK voice recognition may cause the game to crash upon ending a round
* The ghost may not hunt when all the Voodoo Doll pins are pulled at once
* Journal case number may not match the paramic's
* Video cameras may desync in position if a non-host player placed it
* The ghost may not register moving between floors correctly, resulting in electronics not flickering
* Airball event may not move to the player correctly
* Front door locking on farmhouses cannot be heard
* The mannequin being teleported in Edgefield may cause it to teleport into a hiding spot filled with boxes
* Photos of the ghost can be duplicated if two players take it at exactly the same time
* When loading back into the lobby, the difficulty will show as challenge mode while the host has not exit the debriefing screen
* Using a text interface may soft lock the game if another player runs away with the equipment
* Photos of certain things do not count under rugs
* Photos of keyboards may not count
* Lights may flicker infinitely after certain events/hunts
* An extra character may sometimes appear in the lobby/map
* You cannot buy items if you have the exact amount of money required
* Dying with the black fog effect via the Monkey Paw will cause it to persist for the rest of the round
* Muting between the lobby and maps is not synced
* Dividers on farmhouses may not have collision
* Raindrops cannot be seen in certain cases
* Lights will turn off after a crucifix prevented a hunt
* The "CCTV" screen saver will sometimes appear off the monitor
* When ambient occlusion is turned off, odd reflections will appear
* The ghost's footsteps and sounds may be inconsistent
* Ghosts may remain invisible and not produce any footsteps if they started hunting while in D.O.T.S state
== Informal bugs ==
This is not an exhaustive list.
This is a list of bugs that have not been routinely acknowledged by the developers or Discord staff, though they may still be aware of the bugs.
*Opening one tent door may sometimes open another tent door instead
*Setup timer ticks over to negative briefly when the time reaches 00:00
*A player's model may remain if they disconnect while finishing loading into the contract
*Sound Monitor is sometimes desynced between players
*The ghost/smoke ball in a ghost event sometimes goes up the stairs first before attempting to collide with players
*Ghosts in Brownstone High School occasionally spawn within walls during hunts
*Ghosts occasionally get stuck pathfinding on furniture or walls during hunts
*Upon starting a contract, the exit door might be missing, allowing players to walk in without unlocking the door and thus keeping the ghost's AI into a "standby" state
*Some props, cabinet doors or drawers might spawn floating outside the building
=== "Low to ground strategy" ===
The low to ground strategy is a maneuver that can be performed by VR players in an attempt to avoid being killed during a hunt. It was fixed in the 0.26 update on 6 March 2021. A similar bug reoccurred in the VR Overhaul Update.
To perform this maneuver, the player had to lie on their stomach or back as low to the ground as possible. A ghost successfully kills their target player when hunting by colliding with them, but reducing the character's size also reduces the chance of collision. In this case, the character's hitbox (an arbitrary shape that the game uses to determine whether the player is colliding with things) shortens and possibly descends into the floor, meaning that the ghost cannot touch it, and thus could not kill the player.
Doing this could help the player get photographic evidence of the ghost by pointing a photo camera upwards and taking pictures, without risk of death.
Youtuber hudzell released a video demonstrating this strategy in October 2020, adding during the video that players might not need to crouch too low to perform it.
Players using this trick would find their vision possibly restricted from being prone (unless they lie on their back), and they may also find the experience physically uncomfortable. Also, moving too close to some objects may cause the player to go out of bounds, teleporting them back outside the house or in the van.Tanglewood Street House | VR | Professional SOLO Demon | Phasmophobia | hudzell | YouTube.
Obviously, Non-VR players cannot use this strategy, as they do not have the ability to lay down.
== Not bugs ==
The following behaviours, although they may seem unexpected, are intended features:
* Losing consumable items even when not dying (such as salt and sanity medication)
* Seeing freezing breath with non-freezing ghosts. Since 0.9.0, freezing breath occurs whenever temperatures drop below 5°C (41°F).
* The Goryo changing favorite room after using the "I wish for sanity" wish on the Monkey Paw.
* UV flashlights not working when flashlights are disabled in the custom difficulty settings.
* Summoning Circle candles extinguishing right after lighting them when at 0% sanity.
* Crucifixes being used while inside the truck. Although very unexpected (usually occuring on 42 Edgefield Road due to the proximity of the truck to the house), this is simply due to the range-based functionality of the crucifix.
* Labeled photos with no visible subject in the frame. Photos are intentionally not synched over with other players for performance reasons, therefore it is possible that photos taken by other players may appear incongruent in the journal.
== References ==
Category:Gameplay