Episode Thirteen, page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Craig DiLouie
Excerpt from The Children of Red Peak copyright © 2020 by Craig DiLouie
Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio
Cover photographs by Arcangel and Shutterstock
Cover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Author photograph by Jodi O
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
Redhook Books/Orbit
Hachette Book Group
1290 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10104
hachettebookgroup.com
First Edition: January 2023
Redhook is an imprint of Orbit, a division of Hachette Book Group.
The Redhook name and logo are trademarks of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to www.hachettespeakersbureau.com or call (866) 376-6591.
Redhook books may be purchased in bulk for business, educational, or promotional use. For information, please contact your local bookseller or the Hachette Book Group Special Markets Department at special.markets@hbgusa.com.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: DiLouie, Craig, 1967– author.
Title: Episode thirteen / Craig DiLouie.
Other titles: Episode 13
Description: First edition. | New York : Redhook, 2023.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022018763 | ISBN 9780316443104 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316443203 (ebook)
Subjects: LCGFT: Ghost stories.
Classification: LCC PS3604.I463 E65 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220425
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022018763
ISBNs: 9780316443104 (trade paperback), 9780316443203 (ebook)
E3-20221201-JV-NF-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Editor’s Note
Fade to Black Website
Foundation House
Day One
Day Two
Day Three
Day Four
Mandala
The Maze
Three Years Later
Four Years Later
Five Years Later
Acknowledgments
Discover More
Meet the Author
A Preview of The Children of Red Peak
Also by Craig Dilouie
For Chris Marrs, who loves a good ghost story
Explore book giveaways, sneak peeks, deals, and more.
Tap here to learn more.
I believe that if we are to make any real progress in the psychic investigation, we must do it with scientific apparatus and in a scientific manner, just as we do in medicine, electricity, chemistry, and other fields.
—Thomas Alva Edison, interview with Scientific American, 1920
EDITOR’S NOTE
Foundation House in Denton, Virginia, is the most documented haunting in American history. Countless media have sought to explain the bizarre events that occurred in the autumn of 2016 during the shooting of Fade to Black’s now legendary Episode 13.
So why this book?
The problem with Foundation House is that the haunting is so well documented. The amount of data is vast, requiring countless hours to consume. Even so, I find it amazing how much information supports events that stubbornly remain occluded in mystery, as they are so startingly impossible and have proven irreplicable.
As a result of this, another problem is that the haunting’s veracity has become deeply contentious. Most literature covering the bizarre events at Foundation House is heavily biased, aiming from the outset to either propagandize belief in the haunting or debunk it step-by-step.
This book was written for the open minded with a highly curated but neutral, documentarian approach. I sifted the vast trove of information and edited it down to a straightforward and digestible narrative.
The narrative is presented without judgment, accepting the authenticity of what is presented on its face value while leaving it entirely up to the reader to decide whether to believe or not. And it takes an approach of combining transcripts of audiovisual media with written documents, resulting in what might best be described as a written documentary.
For me, this involved deciding what to include and just as critically what to leave out. Readers will note the extensive material focusing on the participants in the haunting—the paranormal investigators and staff of Fade to Black, who recorded it all—notably their journal entries. I felt this was important so you can experience the events through their eyes.
In these pages, we see their wants, pressures, strengths, and flaws. If nothing else, the events at Foundation House present a fascinating study in the psychology of terror, the pursuit of knowledge at all costs, and the madness that results when the human mind is confronted by a miracle that resists comprehension.
In the end, I became as obsessed with framing the story of Fade to Black’s Episode 13 as the paranormal investigators displayed in creating it. The result is a book that is a rabbit hole about a rabbit hole. An invitation to explore it yourself while experiencing everything its trailblazers felt and witnessed.
And then make up your own mind whether to believe.
Welcome to Foundation House.
Fade to Black Website
Page: “The Team”
Matt Kirklin, Lead Investigator
Hi, I’m Matt Kirklin, paranormal investigator. Welcome to my bio.
I’m not going to tell you about where I worked or went to school. I want to tell you about my imaginary childhood friend who turned out to be something else.
The time I first learned about death.
My life had just turned upside down. Mom and Dad had packed my whole life into cardboard boxes so it could be moved to a new house in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. Only a little downstate, but for ten-year-old me, it was like moving to another planet.
We were going to Grandma’s house.
At her viewing, my grandmother had looked lifelike yet deflated without her soul. I pictured a balloon with all the air let out and replaced with sawdust.
“You should say goodbye,” Mom told me.
I didn’t know what to feel. I hadn’t really known her. She’d always been cold to me, and I’d convinced myself she didn’t like me.
Her house had a lot of old-fashioned furniture in every room with patterned pillows and glass knickknacks everywhere. When we’d visit and I’d end up in the same room with her, she’d keep an eye on me to make sure I didn’t break anything.
I felt like a tourist in a hostile country. The worst part was Mom always went along with it. She became a different person around her mother. To my ten-year-old mind, this was frank betrayal. At Grandma’s house, she’d turn cold and watchful too, and I’d get angry and sullen imagining everybody ganging up on me.
Mostly, I stayed outside. The house backed onto woods, where I could explore and invent stories. In the winter, though, sometimes it was too cold, and I’d be stuck in the house for most of the day with my books and drawing pads and LEGO sets.
Standing in front of the open casket, Mom tugged my hand. “Say goodbye to your grandmother, Matt.”
Usually a warm if looming presence, Mom wept and seemed distant.
“Goodbye, Grandma.” Then I imagined her soul was still here, watching me like a hawk, so I added, “Thanks for making me cookies.”
By the time we arrived at Grandma’s house to start our new lives there, it had been emptied. Like her soul, everything that defined her house had gone somewhere else, leaving a hollow shell. The rooms still smelled like her, though, just a hint of bitterness.
Mom seemed both sad and happy. “I grew up here, Matt.”
This time, we weren’t visiting. From now on, this would be my home. Because we’d moved in the middle of June, I hadn’t been able to make any friends at my new school before it locked its doors for the summer.
As I always did, I went outside and played in the woods, inventing stories.
That’s when I first saw the girl.
Walking back at the end of the day, the sky glooming with twilight, I spotted the pale face shining like a candle in my bedroom window.
When I blinked, she was gone.
That night, after I went to bed, she climbed in next to me and whispered, “I want you to be my friend.”
Half-asleep, I said, “Okay.”
Several times, her coughing woke me up. It would start as a rattle, the kind of involuntary dry cough that sounds like an engine trying to start. I could hear it in my dreams. Then it turned into a wet, violent hacking, alarming and sad, the desperat
The next day, I stayed in my room hoping to see her, but I grew bored just sitting there on my bed, so I played with my PlayStation for a while, and then after that I started to build a robot with my LEGOs.
When I looked up, she was there, kneeling on the carpet.
She was around my age, maybe a little younger, cute but frail looking. A lot of her cuteness came from the bonnet she wore, along with an old-fashioned Revolutionary War dress.
“What’s your name?” I said.
“I’m Tammy. You’re Matt.”
“You woke me up last night coughing. You were so cold.”
“I’ve been sick, but Mommy says I’ll get better soon.”
“Where do you live?”
“At the house next door.”
“Do you want to play LEGO with me?”
And just like that, we became friends. Because Tammy wasn’t allowed to play outside, I spent a lot of time in my room. Mom didn’t like that. She’d hear me talking and come in to find me alone, as Tammy vanished whenever grownups were around.
When she caught me stealing a bottle of NyQuil from the closet, she became furious. “What are you doing with this?”
I said nothing.
“Were you going to drink it?”
“No!”
“Then what? Tell me. This is medicine, Matt. You don’t play with it.”
“It’s for my friend.”
“What friend?”
“Tammy. She’s really sick.”
Mom’s scary when she’s mad. She’d get what I’d call evil eyes. Her face would turn into an angry mask. I’d feel helpless, cast out, alone.
This time, her face became a Medusa mask of fury.
“That’s not funny, Matthew.”
I started crying. “It’s true. She’s real.”
Mom took me to our new family doctor.
“Six out of ten kids between the ages of three and eight have an imaginary friend,” the doctor said. “He’s a little old for one, but it’s perfectly normal.”
“His imaginary friend told him to take medicine from the closet,” Mom said.
“You told me it wasn’t for him but his friend.”
“He doesn’t go outside. He just stays in his room playing with LEGOs, puzzles, and board games.”
“Tammy doesn’t like PlayStation,” I explained.
“He’s not the same boy. It’s like he’s regressing.”
“Tammy’s favorite is puzzles.”
The doctor smiled. “He’ll grow out of—”
“Stop it, Matt.” She was so angry, she scared me and I think the doctor a little.
When we got home, I went to my room, only for her to call me back to the kitchen, where she started making dinner.
“You can watch TV in the living room. Or better yet, go outside.”
I stuck around the living room for a while, but the angry rattling in the kitchen made me nervous, so I went out. In the backyard, I checked my bedroom window, but no face appeared, so I went back in.
A dark shape stood in the hallway.
“Where are you going?” Mom eyed me from the kitchen.
Skipping past, I yelled, “I have to pee!”
In the hallway, Tammy whispered in my ear. Told me what to do.
I went to the kitchen. “Mom?”
She placed a fistful of dry pasta into a boiling pot. “What is it?”
I gazed down at my feet. I did not want to be doing this, but I’d promised. “Tammy said she’s sorry about the NyQuil.”
“You’re going to stop this right now, Matthew.”
“But she wanted me to tell you something else.”
“What.” Not a question but a warning.
“She said the Bicentennial is coming up, and she wants, wants…”
Mom blanched and turned bone white.
I steeled myself to keep going. “She wants to wear her special costume dress to school. She just wants to get better so she can do that.”
Mom turned away to grip the counter with both hands. Her shoulders started to shake, and I heard her sobbing.
I started crying too. The look on her face had terrified me. Maybe I really was just seeing things. Maybe I had a mental illness.
“Sorry, Mom. I’ll stop talking to her. Just stop crying. Please.”
Mom slowly collected herself and started talking in a quiet, flat voice. “Tell Tammy that Pat sends her love. Tell her I’m sorry I couldn’t visit her before.”
“Okay,” I sobbed.
“I’ll bet she looks beautiful, so beautiful, in her dress.”
I wasn’t sure what was happening. Either Mom believed me, or she was now humoring me. I didn’t want her humoring me. In a way, it was worse than her telling me I’d made Tammy up.
When I gave my friend the message, she smiled and vanished.
School started then, and I quickly made new friends. When I got home from school, I avoided my room. When I did have to go in there, I announced I didn’t want any guests. I didn’t want to make Mom upset anymore. I didn’t want an imaginary friend. I wanted real friends. I wanted to be normal.
It wasn’t until years later that Mom filled me in on the whole truth, which explained everything.
Tammy had been her friend before she was mine.
At the age of nine, the girl died of a lung infection, a complication of cystic fibrosis. The year was 1976, the two hundredth anniversary of America’s founding. The Revolutionary War dress was the costume her mother had made for her to wear to school for the Bicentennial celebration.
Tammy never wore it to school. She’d been kept home sick all week. Mom hadn’t been able to see her. Then one day, she was told her friend died.
My mother had never known peace with it until the day I gave her Tammy’s message and was able to relay hers back. As for me, I never saw the girl again, though I’ll always be grateful to her. She was a good friend when I needed one.
This is why I started Fade to Black. Because I know there is life after death. Because I know spirits are real. And by finding them and trying to communicate, perhaps both they and the living can find the same comfort.
FOUNDATION HOUSE
Fade to Black Blog
Matt Kirklin, Lead Investigator
Jackpot! We got it, gang.
Foundation House for lucky thirteen.
During my five-plus years as a paranormal investigator, I’ve always wanted to check out this house. In our little community, it’s pretty infamous. Not for the haunting, which is honestly kinda run of the mill, but for the general weirdness.
This place has some wild lore connected to it. Seriously, I could write a book.
Nobody’s ever been given access until now, a real stroke of luck. You heard me right. It’s never been investigated. Ghost Hunters, eat your heart out!
Built in 1920 near the historic Belle Green Plantation a few miles from the little Virginia town of Denton, the mansion is a throwback to antebellum architecture. Picture large, wrap-around porches where you sip mint juleps while you enjoy the sunset. The house was built by Jared Wright, heir to a sugar company. When he died in the sixties, it stood intestate until the Paranormal Research Foundation, or PRF, bought it and moved in.
That’s when Wright Mansion became Foundation House.
In 1972, while the Republicans renominated Nixon for president, the last American troops left Vietnam, and Bobby Fischer became the first American world chess champion, five paranormal all-stars lived in this house and recruited dozens of people to take part in weird experiments.
Their motto was “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” They believed paranormal powers reside in all of us, dormant in our DNA. They were members of the Human Potential Movement, which believed humanity only used a fraction of its potential intelligence and ability. They wanted to identify paranormal abilities in people, discover the underlying mechanisms, and learn how to train and develop them to make a utopia.
In short, they were wacky as hell, but see it through their eyes for a minute. They envisioned a world where people could talk to the dead. Could read minds, control objects remotely, travel out of their bodies, know the future. And they weren’t stereotypical hippies. They were some of the leading scientists of their time, and two of them—Shawn Roebuck and Don Chapman—were certified geniuses.
