Dear Reader:

In the summer of 1998, at an estate sale in Everett, Washington, I purchased a locked diary covered in dust, writings I believed to be those of Ellen Rimbauer. Beaumont University's Public Archive Department examined the paper, the ink and the binding and determined the diary to be authentic. It was then photocopied at my request.

Ellen Rimbauer's diary became the subject of my master's thesis and has haunted me ever since. (Excuse the pun!) John and Ellen Rimbauer were among the elite of Seattle's turn-of-the-century high society. They built an enormous private residence at the top of Spring Street that became known as Rose Red, a structure that has been the source of much controversy. In a forty-one-year period at least twenty-six individuals either lost their lives or disappeared within its walls.

Ellen Rimbauer's diary, excerpts of which I offer here, set me on a personal course of discovery that has led to the launching of an expedition. Shortly I will lead a team of experts in psychic phenomena through the doors of Rose Red, the Rimbauer Estate, in an effort to awaken this sleeping giant of psychic power and to solve some of the mysteries my mentor, Max Burnstheim, was unable to solve before he went missing in Rose Red in 1970. (I never met Dr. Burnstheim, but I consider his writings the most progressive in the field of psychic phenomena.)

Many thanks to my publishers, Beaumont University Press. I hope the publication will widen the public's perception and acceptance of psychic phenomena, and firmly anchor a fascinating historical period in the growth and expansion of the Pacific Northwest. I have taken great pains to edit this document to a readable size, deleting the repetitive sections and omitting those I found offensive. For the extremely curious, or the voyeuristically minded among you, a portion of those edits can be found archived on the World Wide Web at www.beaumontuniversity.net. Photos of the house can be viewed on the Web site as well.

Good reading. In the name of science I will pursue the truth of Rose Red, wherever it may lead me.

Sincerely,
Joyce Reardon, P.P.A., M.D., Ph.D.

17 APRIL 1907 --- SEATTLE

Dear Diary:

I find it a somewhat dauning task to endeavor to place my thoughts here inside your trusted pages, I scarcely know if I am up to the task, but as my head is filled with lurid thoughts, and my heart with romance and possibility, I find I must confide in someone, and so it is to your pages I now turn. I have lived these nineteen years in full premonition of that time when a man would come into my heart, into my life, and thrill me with love, passion and romance. That time has now come. I swoon just thinking about John Rimbauer, and some of my thoughts are not at all becoming the lady I am expected to be.