Ghost Girls

This Halloween season, one spooky decoration is delivering more tricks than treats.

Online ads for a so-called “girl ghost” yard decoration show two eerie ghost figures dancing side-by-side in a haunting display.

It’s a chilling sight – if only the ghosts could actually move.

According to product descriptions on the retailer Lumisly’s website:

The ghost girl is not just a Halloween figure … she is an interactive experience powered by artificial intelligence. Thanks to motion sensors and a programmed response system, the figure can detect the presence of nearby people and react in real time, with a size of 4.5ft ideal for your garden.

Tempted by these descriptions and convincing video demos, a TINA.org reader ordered two ghost girls from Lumisly for a total of $55.10. What she received, however, was far from supernatural.

Here is a photo the reader sent of what came in the mail:

“There is no possible way for these to be interactive/motion censored,” the reader wrote. She also reported that the decorations were less than 2 feet tall, not the advertised 4.5 feet.

Despite the disappointing bait-and-switch, however, Lumisly refused to provide our reader a full refund. And soon after, the Lumisly listing vanished.

But the story doesn’t end there. The same “ghost girls” are listed (by several different sellers) on a slightly bigger retailer site: Amazon.com.

While some Amazon listings omit any mention or depiction of AI-powered creepy dancing, others feature videos of the ghost girls dancing similar to those that had been on the Lumisly website.

Some consumers have left reviews about the misleading videos in the Amazon listings. One consumer wrote:

Although they are well made, I feel that they were deceptive in advertising them as if they actually moved around like in the video.

The consumer added that the ghost girls “are just metal cutouts, nicely painted, but they don’t do anything.” After TINA.org reached out to Amazon and the seller of this listing for comment, the problematic videos in the listing were removed.

TINA.org did not receive an official response from Amazon or any of the sellers we contacted. Nor did Lumisly respond to our inquiry.

The bottom line

Before making an online purchasing decision, be sure to look beyond alluring videos and try to read the fine print, as well as consumer reviews on a variety of third-party review sites.

Find more of our coverage on bait-and-switch schemes.