Now hear the ghost's story in her own words.
The miniseries is an adaptation of The Diary of Ellen
Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (2001), written by Ridley Pearson under the
pseudonym Joyce Reardon, Ph.D.
Pearson's novel was based on the script of Stephen King's Rose Red.
The plot revolves around the construction of the Rimbauer mansion, Rose Red,
in Seattle, Washington, USA. The film traces a
series of mysterious accidents throughout the mansion's early history which
eventually leads it to being haunted.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer is a prequel to the 2002 TV miniseries Stephen
King's Rose Red. In its efforts to
"explain" the supernatural events in the earlier project, it is set at the turn
of the century, when the stately, sinister Rose Red mansion is constructed by
powerful Seattle oil magnate John (Steven Brand) as a wedding present for his
timid, submissive young bride, Ellen (Lisa Brenner). The story relates the
building of the Rimbauer house (which is eventually named "Rose Red") in 1906 by
John Rimbauer for his wife, Ellen. John Rimbauer owned an oil company, and used
much of his wealth to build the mansion, which was in the Tudor-Gothic style and
situated on 40 acres of woodland in the heart of Seattle, Washington, in the
United States. The site was a Native American burial ground (a common motif in
early works by author Stephen King). The house appeared cursed even as it was
being constructed: Three construction workers were killed on the site, and a
construction foreman was murdered by a co-worker.
At the turn of the century, Ellen Rimbauer, the young bride of Seattle
industrialist John Rimbauer, began keeping a remarkable diary. This diary became
the secret place where Ellen could confess her anxieties about her new marriage,
express her confusion over her emerging sexuality and contemplate the nightmare
that her life was becoming. The diary not only follows the development of a girl
into womanhood, it follows the construction of the Rimbauer mansion -- called
Rose Red -- an enormous home that would be the site of so many horrific and
inexplicable tragedies in the years ahead.
At first impressed by her husband's extravagance, Ellen eventually comes to
hate and fear John, especially when learning a few unsavory facts about his
past. Meanwhile, the mansion seems to be festooned with ghosts, possibly those
of the many people close to John who have mysteriously vanished. The eerie
moanings and manifestations are interpreted as a warning to Ellen that she, too,
may some day disappear without a trace.
The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer is a rare document, one that gives us an unusual
view of daily life among the aristocracy in the early 1900s, a window into one
woman's hidden emotional torment, and a record of the mysterious events at Rose
Red that scandalized the society at the time.
As revealed in the miniseries, Ellen Rimbauer and Sukeena continue to live in
the house. Ellen believed that if she continued to build the house, she would
never die. Rimbauer used nearly all of her dead husband's fortune to continually
add to the home over the next several decades, enlarging it significantly (in a
plot element reminiscent of the real-life construction of the Winchester Mystery
House). Mysterious disappearances continued: Deanna Petrie, an actress friend of
Ellen Rimbauer's, and Sukeena both disappeared over the next few years. Ellen
Rimbauer herself disappeared in 1950.
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