I find selling of items to useless much like Destiny it is better to break down and use for crafting mats, and since green mats can be upgraded to blue mats and so on by taking say 5 green mats to make one blue mat it is in your best interest to break it all down, than sell it for the only chump change.

the intern must have tripped on the cord

@Doomguard3 to be fair the light is the ghost and if it is preoccupied I found you will not get it's help in dark areas while it goes through the actions it is working on. They show this to you in the first few minutes after you are revived by the ghost and he goes off to turn on the lights in old Russia.