^ I grew a few Chocolate Jamaicans, a few more hybrid Habaneros and a lot of Savina Habaneros this year among other types, but no ghost chilis. They have similar needs though so I'll detail how I started those. They do seem to need both > 70F day temperature and > 50F night temperature at a minimum for good results.
Some say don't use peat, that it's too acidic. I read that after I had already had success using it so I still do use a largely peat based product, Miracle Grow Seed Starting Potting Mix and I put some regular topsoil at the bottom of the pots to make the Miracle Grow mix go further. In this case it might help that my tap water is slightly alkaline to change ph a little, or it could be that those claiming peat is a problem were doing something else suboptimal.
I only bury the seeds about 3/16" and loosely sprinkle the potting mix over them. I put 3 seeds in each pot about 1/4" apart and later cut away the slowest smallest one then wait a couple weeks to cut away the other runt leaving the biggest sprout. Cover with plastic wrap (in a few days if fungus grows, spray with a 1:10 solution of OTC hydrogen peroxide:water only as needed), place under some grow lights in a homemade structure with cardboard and polycarbonate sides to keep a lot of the heat from the grow lamps inside. That keeps the soil at about 15F above the ambient room temperature of 70F, so they're 85F for 16 hours a day and 70F at night.
After about 2.5 to 4 weeks practically all have sprouted. At that point I had little popsicle sticks in them with markings so I wouldn't lose track of what they were. Use an oil based (usually ballpoint type) pen to make markings on popsicle sticks, once I used magic markers and the water wicked up the popsicle sticks and made the markings completely illegible.
That kept the plastic wrap up high enough to not interfere with their first couple inches of growth. Because I had ample light from the grow lights (about 6 square feet of space per 8 x 18W CFL "daylight" (6500K color temp) bulbs), they don't get very leggy and I can keep the plastic wrap propped up like a tent by the popsicle sticks until nearly all have sprouted.
They'd stayed at about 85F till now on a platform that kept the pots closer to the grow lights. As they got taller I had to get them off the platform, further away from the lights so they were at about 80F the rest of their time inside and then the plastic wrap tent came off so with faster water loss I start watering daily, every two days at most instead of once every 3 days. With those in plastic pots instead of peat or rolled up newspaper they could go even longer than 3 days while the plastic wrap was over them.
That's about it. I put some miracle grow fertilizer in their water once a week and when they were about a month old I pointed a small computer fan sideways blowing not on them but past them, so they wouldn't dry out too fast but were hardened a little to grow thicker stems. This and the aforementioned items worked much better than years ago when I just put them next to a sunny window, though that too worked well enough that I kept at it till I got motivated enough to start monitoring temperature and build a grow light housing.
Some people say you "need" or "must" harden them by taking them outside for a few hours every day before leaving them outside, but I did not do that and saw no ill effects. That could be because I already had a lot of light, heat, and a breeze. I don't mean to imply it is an unnecessary step. I try to time my seeding so they have about 12 weeks from seeding till there's less than 10% chance of frost outside. That way I can move them straight from under the grow lights to outside and it'll stay warm enough for them to survive, at which point the sunlight helps them more than keeping them at higher average temperature inside. With faster sprouting plants, 2 weeks less time is needed. Jalapenos for example I can pull out and put outside leaving more room under the grow lights for the slower sprouting chinense peppers.
There may be ways to improve upon my methods, I'm still learning a lot about the topic myself. I'm thinking about expanding my grow light area this spring so I can start seedlings earlier, by putting some aluminumized plastic reflective emergency blankets over cardboard box panels as cheap DIY faux mirrors to reduce light loss.
Anyway, keeping them at 80F or above and a LOT of light are the two most important things. I'd need a control group and testing to figure out if any of the rest really matters.
Maybe I need to eat a few more before I decide, they were delicious on a pizza last night but I'm a fiend for spicy hot food.
