Light

Lights are a map feature that facilitate navigation across the investigation area as well as providing a way to mitigate sanity drain.

Mechanics

A ceiling light in 6 Tanglewood Drive.

A bedside lamp in 13 Willow Street.

There are several elements counting as lights: ceiling lights, lamps, TVs, and computers. When the fuse box is on, players can toggle these on or off by interacting with their respective switch: a wall switch for ceiling lights, the lamp itself for lamps, a TV remote for TVs, and the keyboard for computers. If the TV remote is held, players will instead need to press the Primary Use button.

Ghosts can also interact with the switch to toggle the lights, and will leave fingerprints on it if Ultraviolet is among their types of evidence. Occasionally, ghosts may perform a special interaction with turned on lights, making them flicker for a short duration. An EMF Level 2 reading (33% chance to be an EMF Level 5 reading instead for applicable ghosts) will be left on the switch in all these cases.

Outside of hunts, lights will sometimes flicker near the ghost without any EMF reading being created. The player will also start seeing lights flickering across the entire map when their own sanity is below 50%, but these flickers are only "imaginary" as they cannot be recorded in the journal and other players cannot see them.

Lights in the player's current room will turn off at the start of a ghost event. There are two exceptions: the lights will turn off at the end of the event if it is a red-light event, and the lights will flicker before shattering if it is a light-shattering event. For all ghost events, ghosts will never leave EMF readings on the light switches.

During a hunt, ghosts will make lights flicker within 10 metres on the same floor, and light switches cannot be toggled and will turn off at the end of the hunt. All switches also turn off when the fuse box trips.

Affecting sanity

Main article: Sanity

Rewards

Main article: Media

Filming a light switch being toggled by the ghost will yield a Lights Switched video in the journal, rewarding up to $7 and 7 XP, depending on the tier of the video camera and whether there is a Unique stamp. Two other videos, rewarding up to $12 and 12 XP, can be captured from lights: a Light Exploded video upon capturing lights exploding, and a Light Flickering video upon capturing lights flickering outside of hunts.