Flickering during hunts

During a hunt the ghost flickers in and out of sight. Almost every ghost flickers the same way, but the Phantom, Oni, Deogen and Obake don’t: watching how it flickers is one of the strongest tests there is, even with no evidence.

Compare them

Each row is a ghost in the same hunt, with the game’s timings. The silhouette only shows during a flicker; the strip keeps the last few seconds so you can see the rhythm.

Normal ghost: 25 ghosts. The Mimic: it flickers like whichever ghost it is mimicking.

Train your eye

A random ghost flickers with no name or strip, the way you would see it in the game. Watch it for at least 10 seconds (the Obake takes about 7 to shapeshift) and pick who you think it is.

Who is it?

How to tell them apart

Invisible for more than a second between flickers: it’s a Phantom. Its gaps last 1.0 s or more, while a normal ghost’s last 0.1 to 0.9 s. It is only visible 11.5-14% of the time.
Visible more than it’s invisible: it’s an Oni (55-63% of the time) or a Deogen (53-56%); a normal ghost is visible 31-33%. Their flickering looks almost the same. To tell them apart, watch the speed: the Deogen crawls when it gets close.
A different shape for one flicker: it’s an Obake. The first change comes about 7 s after the grace period, and then every few seconds. A Video Camera pointed at it shows “Ghost Shapeshift.”
The Mimic: when it mimics one of these four, it flickers like them, but in multiplayer only the host sees it. If your friends see something different from you, keep it in mind.

Where this comes from

The timings are the game’s timers, as listed in the Phasmophobia Wiki (“Ghost flickering”). Each ghost has a list of base timers and another of visibility timers that repeat in order; the animation follows them exactly.
The Oni’s visibility timers sometimes last longer than its base timer and overlap with the next one; when that happens it disappears as soon as the first one ends. With that rule the animation shows it visible about 63% of the time, the top of the range the wiki gives (55-63%).
The hunt starts at second 0, right after the grace period. Every row starts at the same moment.