The Book: The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red, edited by Joyce Reardon, Ph. D.
The Story: This is the diary of a young woman living in Seattle around the turn of the century. She is courted by and then marries a rich oil tycoon named John Rimbauer. He is in the process of building a huge house when they start courting. Things are already shaky, with workers dying during building, digging up a cemetery to build, and the foreman being shot on site. After the wedding, the Rimbauers take off on a year long honeymoon around the world to give time for their home to be finished.
When they return, they are greeted by a monster of a house. It is just huge and majestic and they are now super high society. Then the creepy stuff starts happening.
People come up missing on the grounds, never to be seen again. As a result, Ellen sort of flips out. She starts consulting psychics and having seances in the house.
The diary documents this, but also just what life was like for a young rich woman at this time. You can almost feel Ellen losing touch with reality as her house starts becoming crazier and crazier. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are some goosebumpy moments in this one.
What I Thought: Maybe I’m just totally naive, but the whole time I was reading this, I thought it was real. It’s not. I guess when it came out, it was one of the first viral marketing campaigns that really did what it was supposed to: advertise for a mini-series that was about to come on tv.
Call me a sucker, I had no idea.
I guess, when it was published, other people believed it, then found out it was fake and got mad. There was all kinds of hubbub surrounding the book. I vaguely remember hearing of the book, but didn’t know any of the details. Crazy.
Anyway, fake or real or whatever, I thought that this was a worthy read. I tend to like books that are written in diary or letters. This was no exception. I felt myself cringing for Ellen when John was mean to her (which happened a lot) and gasping with her when creepy stuff happened (which also happened a lot). I really grew attached to her, which is maybe why her downward spiral was so fascinating to read.
For me, the creepiest part was her young daughter, April. She has this model of the house that the designers used. She kind of becomes obsessed with it and mumbles to it, and for some reason that imagery is just about enough to give me nightmares.
This is one of those books that you read more for the story than for the writing. The writing isn’t awful, but it’s not great. I’m guessing that that was to keep up the appearance of it just being a normal diary. The story more than makes up for it, however.
Conclusion: A quick, spooky read. Not going to become a classic, but worth the few hours it takes to read it.