The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer (2003)

The plot revolves around the construction of the Rimbauer mansion, Rose Red, in Seattle, Washington, tracing a series of mysterious accidents throughout the mansion’s early history which cause it to become cursed. Set at the turn of the 20th century, the stately, sinister mansion is constructed by powerful Seattle oil magnate John Rimbauer as a wedding present for his timid, submissive young bride, Ellen. Rimbauer uses much of his wealth to build the mansion in the Tudor neo-Gothic style and situate it on 40 acres (16 ha) of woodland. The site has been a Native American burial ground. The house appeared cursed even as it was being constructed: three construction workers are killed on the site, and a construction foreman is murdered by a co-worker.

Shortly after her marriage to Rimbauer, Ellen begins keeping a diary in which she confesses her anxieties about her new marriage, expresses her confusion over her emerging sexuality, and contemplates the nightmare that her life is becoming. Ellen soon has two children which helps soothe her painful relationship with her husband. First, a boy named Adam, and then a girl (born with a deformed withered arm) named April. At first impressed by her husband’s extravagance, Ellen eventually hates and fears John, especially when learning unsavory facts about his past. Meanwhile, the number of individual hauntings in the mansion increases, possibly including ghosts of the many people close to John who have mysteriously vanished. Ellen interprets the eerie manifestations as a warning that she, too, may some day disappear without a trace.