[Everyone in town knows the house on the hill is haunted.
The mansion is an absolutely singular fixture, when it comes to hauntings. It's not somewhere kids dare each other to spend the night. It's not a place teens like to vandalize in passing. It's not a house where the adults insist that kids' imaginations are just acting up. It's not someone's cousin's brother's friend who saw a ghostly woman beckoning him into the house, head tucked under her arm. No one doubts the place is haunted anymore. In fact, it's not even run down; its spookiness lies in its reputation and its architecture, not in any sort of dilapidated state. (The fact that it still looks decently maintained, after seven solid years of no one being able to approach the place, is another part of its mystery.)
It's been haunted too long, now, for there to be any skepticism left to it. The credulous who go in don't simply come out; they're thrown out, or run out screaming. No one who goes in fails to be driven out by something terrifying. Ghost hunters have been driven away. People actually being injured by the ghosts - or 'creatures', as those who actually catch glimpses tend to describe them - is rare, but it has happened. With so much consistent evidence, the mansion's status as haunted is an accepted, even immutable fact. The entire town is scared stiff of the place.
Still, it draws in people who refuse to believe the stories and have to have it proven for themselves. And, truthfully, the mansion and the land it's on belong to an out-of-town business, so it couldn't be removed if people wanted it to be. It just sits there, alarming in its existence.
The gates aren't locked. No one bothers. Anyone determined enough to go into the mansion, despite everything, isn't going to let themselves be deterred by a locked gate.]
How does journalist Shoichi sound for this
The mansion is an absolutely singular fixture, when it comes to hauntings. It's not somewhere kids dare each other to spend the night. It's not a place teens like to vandalize in passing. It's not a house where the adults insist that kids' imaginations are just acting up. It's not someone's cousin's brother's friend who saw a ghostly woman beckoning him into the house, head tucked under her arm. No one doubts the place is haunted anymore. In fact, it's not even run down; its spookiness lies in its reputation and its architecture, not in any sort of dilapidated state. (The fact that it still looks decently maintained, after seven solid years of no one being able to approach the place, is another part of its mystery.)
It's been haunted too long, now, for there to be any skepticism left to it. The credulous who go in don't simply come out; they're thrown out, or run out screaming. No one who goes in fails to be driven out by something terrifying. Ghost hunters have been driven away. People actually being injured by the ghosts - or 'creatures', as those who actually catch glimpses tend to describe them - is rare, but it has happened. With so much consistent evidence, the mansion's status as haunted is an accepted, even immutable fact. The entire town is scared stiff of the place.
Still, it draws in people who refuse to believe the stories and have to have it proven for themselves. And, truthfully, the mansion and the land it's on belong to an out-of-town business, so it couldn't be removed if people wanted it to be. It just sits there, alarming in its existence.
The gates aren't locked. No one bothers. Anyone determined enough to go into the mansion, despite everything, isn't going to let themselves be deterred by a locked gate.]