History Literature / GhostHunt

Mai and Naru are accompanied by an Australian Catholic priest, a spirit medium, a Buddhist monk, a self-styled Shinto priestess, and Naru's really tall and really quiet assistant Lin. The series was originally published as a series of novels by ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'' author Creator/FuyumiOno; it was later adapted into a manga, and then a 25-episode anime. A manga adaptation of the relatively-unknown sequel, ''Akumu no Sumu'', was also released.

Mai and Naru are accompanied by an Australian Catholic priest, a spirit medium, a Buddhist monk, a self-styled Shinto priestess, and Naru's really tall and really quiet assistant Lin. The series was originally published as a series of novels by ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'' author Creator/FuyumiOno; it was later adapted into a manga, and then a 25-episode anime. A manga adaptation of the relatively-unknown sequel ''Akumu no Sumu'' was also released.

Mai and Naru are accompanied by an Australian Catholic priest, a spirit medium, a Buddhist monk, a self-styled Shinto priestess, and Naru's really tall and really quiet assistant Lin. The series was originally published as a series of novels by ''Literature/TheTwelveKingdoms'' author Creator/FuyumiOno; it was later adapted into a manga, and then a 25-episode anime. A manga adaptation of the relatively-unknown sequel "Akumu no Sumu" was recently announced, and is being released on a bimonthly schedule.

* CerebusSyndrome: A mild case. While the series never quite loses its comedic tone, it does slowly transition from cases like a lonely girl with latent ESP to an angry god that uses tortured spirits as its puppets, actually killing two people during said case.

* AdultFear: A lot, but notably the Cursed Doll arc and the Silent Christmas arc. [[spoiler: Your child is kidnapped in front of you and drowned, or your mute child hides somewhere, gets trapped, and silently freezes to death while rescuers frantically search within earshot, respectively.]]

[[caption-width-right:250:''[[MultinationalTeam So a Priest, a Monk, a Shrine Maiden, and a paranormal researcher walk into a haunted house..."]]'']]

* AdultFear: '"A lot,'' but notably the Cursed Doll arc and the Silent Christmas arc. [[spoiler: Your child is kidnapped in front of you and drowned, or your mute child hides somewhere, gets trapped, and silently freezes to death while rescuers frantically search within earshot, respectively.]]

* BadassNormal: Naru never showcases any overt supernatural ability (apart from an academic knowledge of magic) and goes through practically the whole anime solving cases with little more than wits, ego and a healthy amount of skepticism. [[spoiler:The trope is subverted in the last episode, in which we find out he ''has'' supernatural powers, extremely strong ones, but using them taxes him so much that it can be very dangerous for him.]]

* YouGetMeCoffee: Mai's occasionally on the receiving end of this joke. Somewhat justified in the beginning since that's what her job entails and she had no powers to speak of.

* GratuitousEnglish: Right away in the first episode, a bunch of "technical terms" pop up in English that Shibuya needs to translate for Mai. Makes you wonder why he didn't just say them in Japanese. Naru can also be seen writing notes on his computer in perfect English. Justified in that [[spoiler: Naru was adopted by a married couple of parapsychologists in England, raised there and actually is the famed Oliver Davis that gets mentioned from time to time. As such, he's probably been speaking mostly English for most of his life.]]

* InSeriesNickname: Kazuya is called Narcissistic Naru (Naru the Narcissist in the English version) by Mai from the Japanese word ''naru''shisuto, or narcissist. Can also be an InsultOfEndearment. In the manga, Yasuhara actually blames Mai for doing this because it [[spoiler:hid the fact that Naru was actually supposed to be Noll, a shortened form of Oliver]].

* MyParentsAreDead: In the Bloodstained Labyrinth case, Mai reveals she's an orphan, having lost her parents at a young age and lived with her school teacher before beginning to live on her own.

* NoPeripheralVision: One ghost involving a mysterious bell sound at a school ran into this issue. Specifically, the ghost is [[spoiler:the spirit of a young boy who couldn't speak and used to go to that school -- he carried a small bell with him if he wanted to get someone's attention. One day while playing hide-and-seek, he climbed up to a high, out of the way cove of the building and got stuck up there, dropping his bell onto the ground in the process and so he was never found. Mai realizes what had happened when the present-day class plays another game of hide-and-seek and observes that all the kids look around the grounds but none of them think to look upwards.]]

** It's very hard to forget that Naru's actual name is Kazuya Shibuya, as most of the cast only ever refers to him as Naru. [[spoiler:This continues even after they learn his actual name Olliver Davis.]]

* OrdinaryHighSchoolStudent: Mai. She's the only "normal" member of the cast and lacks any knowledge of the supernatural barring familiar ghost stories. Yasuhara is also this, albeit to a lesser extent as his school is caught up in a mass series of hauntings.

** Quite a bit with Naru and Mai. Also, there is Ayako and Monk, further ship-teased by Mai identifying them as TeamMom and TeamDad respectively.

* WorkOffTheDebt: Subverted when [[spoiler:Mai eventually learns that the camera she broke was insured. Naru just led her to believe otherwise because he wanted a free gofer.]]

* AfterActionPatchup: There is a scene like this during the Cursed House arc in the manga, it was cut in the anime.

** [[spoiler: Mai also starts to count after she learns some evil-warding chants.]]
* BadassNormal: Naru never showcases any overt supernatural ability (apart from an academic knowledge of magic) and goes through practically the whole anime solving cases with little more than wits, ego and a healthy amount of scepticism. [[spoiler:The trope is subverted in the last episode, in which we find out he ''has'' supernatural powers, but using them taxes him so much that it can be very dangerous for him.]]

* BigBrotherMentor: Monk hits this early on for Mai, Ayako follows up soon after as a CoolBigSis

* BondingOverMissingParents: In the light novels, Mai asks Naru if he employed her because [[spoiler: they were both orphans]].
** Naru admits the fact and offhandedly tells her that [[spoiler: people in similar situations should help each other out]], and that [[spoiler: he first found out about the fact that she was an orphan from her high school principal, way before she actually told SPR about it in the Urado case]].

* CreepyChild: Creepy ghost children to be precise.

* CrossoverCosmology: Among the main cast are a Shinto Miko, a Buddhist Monk, a Catholic Priest, and an Onmyoji/Taoist priest who successfully use rituals from their respective religions to interact with spirits and perform exorcisms. Natural disposition and energy is shown to be a factor in dealing with spirits, as seen when Naru describes Mai as having ''latent'' abilities as an Esper rather than ''developed'' abilities as an Esper, so it's likely that their respective religions are just ways of processing that energy in a direct and focused way. On the other hand, spirits for sure exist, and definitely remain in this life because of conflicts before their death that didn't allow them to move on.

* DemonOfHumanOrigin: [[spoiler:The reason Urado can't be exorcised is he's no longer a ghost, he's become something ''much'' worse. Naru flat out says calling him a demon is accurate.]]

* GhostlyChill: Happens on occasion, usually when a ghost ramps up the haunting or becomes especially malicious.

* HarsherInHindsight: When they first arrive at the church in Silent Christmas, Mai sees a skull at the base of the angel statues above the door, and having never been to a church before assumes it's a creepy but normal religious decoration. [[spoiler:It's Kenji's skull, and her attention was drawn to it so quickly because her ESP was flaring up.]]

* UnlimitedWardrobe: With the exception of Naru and Lin, everyone wears a different outfit for new days.

* PowerAtAPrice: [[spoiler: Naru appears to have no paranormal powers, but in actuality, he's an ''extremely'' strong psychic with dangerously powerful psychokinetic abilities that can easily be lethal to others. Unfortunately, Naru's '''SO''' powerful that a human body can't take the stress of wielding that much psychic energy. The one time he displays his psychokinesis to a noticeable degree (to destroy a god-possessed statue), Naru ends up collapsing from temporary respiratory and heart failure]].

* BloodBath: Based on both the Elizabeth Bathory legend and UsefulNotes/VladTheImpaler, one of the scariest villains was a Japanese Lord who bathed in the blood of numerous servants in the hope of extending his life and took up the moniker "Urado" (Vlad). [[spoiler: Even more frightening is the part where dozens of young people who wander into his empty mansion disappear, even ''decades'' after Urado's death. It's implied that the power of Urado's multiple HumanSacrifices [[note]]the team find a burial chamber set up like the famous Paris catacombs, and looks to have ''triple-digit'' numbers of skeletons [[/note]] has [[PoweredByAForsakenChild preserved the spirit of Urado, and his two attendants/accomplices, in a constant re-playing loop of kidnapping and sacrifice]] even after Urado is no longer alive to benefit from it.]]

* {{Bishonen}}: Pretty much every main / recurring male character in the series (i.e. Naru, Lin, Takigawa, John, Yasu).

* PeekABangs: Lin.