Informant Information:

Vivek Ramachandran is a student at the University of Southern California studying Computer Science and Business Administration. He is originally from Milton, WA and moved to Los Angeles, CA for college. He is from an Indian background and enjoys watching the Seahawks win.

Story:

“We always used to go trick or treating in my friend’s neighborhood and there was always this one house that was never decorated and never lit up except for this one room that had this little blue light. We always thought that there was someone in the house and we thought we could see someone moving. One time, my friends actually decided that we were going up the said house and he went up to the door but before he could knock we just saw him running away. He swore that somebody grabbed him, and that was that.”

Q: Was this house well known for being haunted?

“It was just like a normal looking house that was just not decorated. To us it was haunted but to everyone else it wasn’t really considered haunted”

Q: Did your friend ever tell you what he thought was grabbing him?

“Nope, he just said someone grabbed him and he ran away.”

Q: What are your thoughts on it?

“I think it was just somebody that didn’t want to be bothered on Halloween. I think my friend was probably pulling a prank on us, but whoever lives there really needs to fix the lighting because I can imagine that single blue light is annoying for everyone involved.”

Analysis:

From listening to the informant’s story, I can tell that the fact that this incident not only took place on Halloween, but also when he was a child, made this “haunted house” more difficult to believe. Because Halloween is associated with darkness, a child’s senses can be heightened which can make normal looking places seem infinitely more terrifying. In this case, when the informant looked back on the experience, he thought that the whole scenario was a prank made up by his friend. This notion, along with the fact that the house wasn’t recognized as “haunted” by other people in his area, makes this incident seem like a one time thing.