Writing about something with the purpose of proving or disproving, clarifying, reviewing, or judging its merits is writing intended to "inform" since it seeks the truth. Of course "inform" and "persuade" go hand-in-hand quite frequently.
The narrator observes that the house seems to have absorbed an evil and diseased atmosphere from the decaying trees and murky ponds around it.
The use of personification is present in this sentence= My shoes crunched on the gravel and I hear crickets laughing, and humans laugh, crickets don’t and there is the usage of personification, hope this helps
