ROSE RED
Location: Rose Red is located in a nature reserve at the end of Spring Street
in
Description: Affectionately known as Rose Red, the Rimbauer
Estate is a Tudor Gothic mansion painstakingly constructed between 1906 and
1909 on forty acres of land covered in cedar, spruce, elm and pine. Because of
its eclectic style, it has an indiscernible number of rooms placed somewhere
between a number of seventy to seventy five bedrooms. Secret doors link rooms
to hallways stretching over the elegance and royal opulence of the whole
edifice. The house has a sixty-foot
long entry hall, a banquet hall, Grand Ball Room, on-site gymnasium, and in-door
swimming pool. Other prominent locations in the mansion have been created with
a flair for creativity and artistic license such as the Perspective Corridor,
the Mirror Library and the Upside Down Hall. One floor at the bottom of the
back stairs was designed so that anyone looking at it from above would sense
the illusion of being a hundred stories up instead of just two or three. The
Health Room is actually a green house attached to the kitchen. The library
boasts 6,000 volumes and the study includes a suit of armor, a brown bear shot
and killed in the Swiss Alps, a Bavarian pipe organ, Eastern carpets and a
display of German mark smith pistols. Probably greater in size even to the Belasco House in Maine,
the stone and brick facade is behind a wrought iron fence and a set of stone
pillars holding up the Rimbauer crest. There is an island in the round driveway
and statues from
Ghostly Manifestations: In a period of forty-one years between 1919 and
1960, twenty-six people have been described as having vanished in the confusing
labyrinthine halls known as Rose Red. Numerous searches have been started for
these people, but to no avail and every venue has been explored. To those who
believe the extraordinary, Rose Red has swallowed them all up. The truth of the
matter is that logical reasons, however unproven, have been found made for most
of these disappearances, but then it is the last thirty two percent that have
made Rose Red so much to be feared.
Following the disappearance of Ellen Rimbauer
herself, the few servants still working in the house started reporting random
sounds and strange occurrences such as the sound of Ellen crying from empty
rooms or laughing from vacant halls. Many of them started leaving their jobs
behind or trying to follow the sounds while many tried to stay close to their
duties, but with Ellen missing and reportedly vanishing from the house, even
the most loyal did not want to stay in the imposing edifice. By time Adam
Rimbauer was old enough to come home, there was not a servant left and without
the family fortune, he did not even want the house, haunted or not.
In his short time there, Adam reported
several things about the house. Rooms he measured seemed to change in dimension
when he measured them later. He started getting lost as he searched and
explored the house as if new walls were popping up and new rooms were
appearing. His wife reported seeing a
figure that vanished just out of eyesight. Photos he took of rooms did not
match when he compared them later. He once stepped out of a third floor bedroom
and found himself a few steps from the first floor foyer. It was almost as if
Rose Red was some huge organism constantly restructuring itself.
After his death, his widow started entering
the house looking for antiques to sell for money. Her son, Stephen, became lost
while exploring the place and in a story he told several years later, he said
he had encountered the ghost of his grandmother standing on the steps to the
attic.
There have been only two documented
investigations of the house and the two of them cite similar and practically
identical phenomenon. The parapsychologists staying in the bedrooms of Rose Red
with the permission of Steven Rimbauer have described a majority of phenomenon
bordering between typical and the unusual. The ghosts have been described as
resembling decomposed and desiccated corpses wandering the estate and peeking
around corners as well as in traditional spectral anamorphous shapes. Ellen
Rimbauer’s ghost has been glimpsed flitting around the halls and corridors or
standing in thought just out of eyeshot. However, her personality and behavior
remains bipolar. To the people she considers as guests, she can be kind and
endearing to the point of leaving gifts. To all others, she can be frightening
and merciless. Members of Max Burnsteim’s investigative team felt they were in
critical danger as things fell close to them, just short of causing major harm
and presences seemed to chase them through the house. One observer remarked that
Ellen seems determined to control everything in the house, and by all terms and
purposes, that seems to be what is occurring. Another source practically
describes her as possessed.
Other members of Max Burnstheim’s team
remarked they thought they saw a ghostly little girl wandering the upstairs
with a deformed left arm pulled up close to her chest. Sometimes accompanied by
temperatures of extreme cold, she is believed to be April Rimbauer, but she is
much more distant than her mother’s spirit and refuses to be acknowledged or
confronted. Much more active is the presence of Sukeena, Ellen’s best friend
and companion. During the short times tours were conducted through the place, a
woman of slender build and African descent believed to be the housekeeper has
met a few people at the front entrance. Often conducting informal tours beyond
the knowledge of the Seattle Historical Society, Sukeena has described to
visitors the most intimate details of Rose Red that only a person who lived
there would know. Often appearing as a normal living person to those who have
seen her, Sukeena has surprised and received scoffs from visitors refusing to
believe she is one of the ghosts. Others who have encountered her, mostly men,
are quite the opposite by reporting they have been put off by an indefinable
aura of danger as she tries to lure them into parts of the house and grounds.
One of Burnstheim’s researchers noted the odd
moving around of a female statue seen on the grounds while observing from an
upstairs bedroom window. Over the course of a few nights, he reported that it
seemed to be closer to the house on some occasions and nearly obscured by a
tree on others. Noting its placements by time, day and circumstance, he made
note that it seemed to circle the pool it overlooked and even turned on
occasion from facing it. One night, it actually seemed to turn its head up to
him in what was most likely an optical illusion.
Visitors have detected the sound of hammering
from far away. Individuals within whole tour groups claimed they heard this hammering
despite the fact no one else heard anything. Others reported the scent of fresh
wood being cut or the vibration of activity from deserted parts of the house.
Despite the fact that all work had been ceased from some time before, guides
and witnesses would find tools in innocuous places or a fine layer of saw dust
over a surface of floor or furniture in locations lacking any physical change.
As the placement of furniture and the known layout of the mansion began
conflicting with the memories of the guides, it was rumored that the ghost of
Ellen Rimbauer had found a way to alter the physical shape and layout of Rose
Red from the afterlife.
In 2002, Dr. Joyce Rearden found the diary of Ellen Rimbauer in a trunk, which she had bought in an estate auction. Reading it, she became entranced by its accounts of early Twentieth Century life but much more by Ellen’s documentation of the hauntings and disappearances. She published it to fund a brand new investigation of the house under the eyes of Steven Rimbauer, the last known member of the Rimbauer family. Her investigation confirmed and paralleled many attributes of the investigation by her mentor, Dr. Max Burnstheim. Experiencing the house first hand though, she remarked that even when she was by herself and taking tactile readings that she never felt quite alone in the place. In her mind, she felt that the house was teeming with ghosts.
History: John P. Rimbauer, founder of Omicron Oil with Douglas Posey, built
Rose Red in 1906. The grand structure was reportedly built on cursed Indian
ground and according to records, numerous Native American bones and remains
were being hauled away by the cartload during the building and laying of the
foundation. So many were being found that Rimbauer stopped having them hauled off
and began burning them. Several Chinese workers became spooked as odd
occurrences started happening already. Teamster Harry Corbin killed a co-worker
for no apparent reason and fled to the tavern where the police caught him.
Three more deaths eventually occurred. One man was decapitated by falling
glass, another person broke his neck in a fall and another choked on an apple.
John and Ellen Rimbauer decided to take their
honeymoon by traveling to get away from the “bad luck” and ended up traveling
the world collecting the curios that would illuminate and decorate the place.
Ellen, however, caught fever in
1909 was also the year that Rose Red started
showing her sinister side. One of Ellen’s guests, Constance “Connie”
Fauxmanteur vanished from the West Hall. Servants and police searched the
entire house suspecting she had become lost or disoriented in a hallway or
trapped in a closet, but no trace of her was ever found.
Ellen soon began to suspect John was
entertaining young ladies behind her back. He also ended up buying Posey’s
share of Omicron Oil and bankrupting him, but Posey returned later to Rose Red during
one of John’s absences after a four-year period of seclusion. Dressed as a
cowboy, he started to hang himself in one of the rooms in full view of the
children. He tossed his hat to Adam and a Rose to April and then kicked the
chair out from under him. It is believed this happened in the downstairs study.
Ellen began seeing a psychic named Cora Frye
for advice. Billing herself as Madame Stravinski, Frye visited Rose Red once to
never return again, but she did instruct Ellen to constantly build and add to
Rose Red. If she did, Frye claimed, Ellen would live forever.
Eight-year-old April Rimbauer vanished on the
estate in 1919 to be never seen again. Her brother was away in school at the
time as fifty men searched for her and the police took Sukeena for questioning
in her involvement. In her interrogation, she was badly beaten and left the
police station with a broken nose, broken arm and three teeth knocked out.
April was never found, but months later someone recalled the ice being broken
on nearby Lasky Pond. Though it was postulated she had wandered over the lake
and fell through, no one ever bothered to check the lake.
Sukeena’s treatment completely estranged
Ellen and John’s marriage and he reportedly committed suicide from the tower in
1921 although there was no indication to the contrary. Ellen mourned for a
while before she started throwing her lavish parties. The highest socialites
from Seattle’s High Elite were always invited. During a party in 1946, actress
Donna Petrie, a star of several musicals and comedies vanished while wearing
her favorite cocktail dress. She had been one of Ellen’s favorite guests. Her
disappearance made Rose Red’s reputation. No trace of her was ever found except
for her earrings. That was the last party Ellen ever had.
After John’s suicide, Ellen began the
majority of the building that is seen today. The carriage house ended up
partially razed and added to the house as it was converted to more rooms. They
style and layout of the house became creatively more eclectic as anything and
everything that Ellen or Sukeena could dream up was incorporated. Workmen and
contractors were often frustrated as Ellen changed plans or dropped ideas in
mid-status. Parts of the basement were inadvertently closed off, never to be
seen again, and plans were rarely consulted as hidden rooms, secret passageways
and more architectural curiosities were being created.
In February of 1928, Sukeena herself vanished
and Ellen Rimbauer was heart-struck. She describes in her diary how after her
vanishing the plants in the greenhouse started coming to life. She had them
ripped out, but as soon as she did so, they grew back in just as prosperous as
before. She also described in her diary the sound of the house laughing at her.
In 1950, Omicron Oil was sold and Ellen
Rimbauer vanished shortly thereafter on January 15. The last person to see her
alive was a maid who later testified that she had seen Ellen seem to walk in a
trance-like state toward the Perspective Hallway. The servants carried on for a
while unaware of their mistress’s absence and gradually began to leave the
house. By now, Rose Red’s legend had now officially begun.
Investigations began in the Sixties as
scientists and geologists converged on the house trying to solve the riddle of
the house. Some of them thought the noises in the house were caused by sounds
amplified by old water pipes. In the Seventies, parapsychologist Max Burnstheim
vanished during a visit in the house. The Seattle Historical Society had been
leading tours in the house since Ellen Rimbauer’s disappearance, but they all
stopped in 1972 when a guest named Liz Albert broke away from the tour and
vanished somewhere in the house. The most recent investigation occurred in
Autumn 2001 by Dr. Joyce Reardon from nearby
Identity of Ghosts: Unknown. While it is plainly
obvious that Ellen Rimbauer and Sukeena haunt the structure, there are some
suggestions Native American spirits haunted the area before them. Before her
disappearance, Ellen Rimbauer herself spoke of a curse that had followed her
from
Comments: Rose Red (2002/2003). Loosely based on the Winchester Mystery House
in
Summerwind was
featured in the Discovery TV Series, “A Haunting.” The Winchester Mystery House
has been overly exposed in several TV Series including “Sightings,” “Most Haunted,”
“Ghost Hunters,” “Paranormal Borderline,” “Haunted Travels” and countless
paranormal documentaries.