The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer 2003

Rose Red unfolds as a sprawling, atmospheric tale about the rise and haunting life of a grand Seattle mansion. The project is funded by oil magnate John Rimbauer Steven Brand as a lavish wedding gift for his shy new wife Ellen Lisa Brenner. The Tudor neo-Gothic estate rises on forty acres of woodland, built atop land long considered a Native American burial ground, and from the start the house seems to carry a menacing presence: three construction workers die during the project, and a foreman is murdered by a coworker.

After the marriage, Ellen begins keeping a diary in which she confesses her growing anxieties about John, her emerging sexuality, and the creeping nightmare of life under his shadow. She soon gives birth to two children who briefly anchor her: Adam Jacob Pearce Guzman and April Courtney Taylor Burness, the latter born with a deformed, withered arm. While John’s wealth initially dazzles Ellen, she gradually uncovers troubling facts about his past, and the couple’s uneasy dynamic deepens into fear and suspicion.

The mansion’s hauntings intensify as eerie manifestations multiply—voices, apparitions, and unexplained phenomena that seem to presage harm and disappearance. The house appears to grow almost of its own accord, extending with new hallways, corridors, rooms, and staircases overnight, as if it possesses a life of its own. Ellen’s confidant and maid Sukeena Tsidii Leloka grounds her amidst the escalating dread, even as the circle around Ellen grows thinner. Among those touched by the house’s reach is Deanna Petrie, a famous actress friend of Ellen, who vanishes, leaving the world of Rose Red shrouded in rumor.

As the years pass and the estate expands, Ellen endures further losses: Sukeena’s fate remains tied to the mansion’s mysteries, and even after John’s death Ellen believes that continuing to enlarge the house might stave off her own end. She spends nearly all of her inherited fortune in a bid to keep Rose Red growing, hoping to imprison a fate she cannot escape. But the supernatural pressure does not abate; more disappearances haunt the inhabitants, and in 1950 Ellen herself disappears, vanishing without a trace and sealing the enigma of Rose Red in legend.