A Preview of Episode Thirteen

if you enjoyed

HOW TO MAKE A HORROR MOVIE AND SURVIVE

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EPISODE THIRTEEN

by

Craig DiLouie

From the macabre mind of a Bram Stoker Award–nominated author, this heart-pounding novel of horror and psychological suspense takes a ghost hunting reality TV crew into a world they could never have imagined.

Fade to Black is the newest hit ghost hunting reality TV show. Led by husband-and-wife team Matt and Claire Kirklin, it delivers weekly hauntings investigated by a dedicated team of ghost hunting experts.

Episode 13 takes them to every ghost hunter's holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This brooding, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place there in the 1970s. It's also famously haunted, and the team hopes their scientific techniques and high-tech gear will prove it. But as the house begins to reveal itself to them, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. A story told in broken pieces, in tapes, journals, and correspondence, this is the story of Episode 13—and how everything went terribly, horribly wrong.

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.

As for the researchers, we know they went missing in 1972. The police files themselves vanished in the Election Day Flood of 1985.

So what are we investigating, exactly? Over the years, neighbors driving past the property reported seeing the ghostly apparition of an abnormally tall woman appearing in the upstairs window. Local kids using it as a party hangout said they heard invisible feet stomping on the grand staircase, experienced cold spots, and witnessed strange flashing lights in the woods around it.

In Episode 13, Fade to Black's crack team will spend seventy-two hours at Foundation House. According to the owner, nobody's lived in it since 1972, so we are hoping to find it more or less how the scientists left it.

Using cutting-edge techniques and the latest technology, we'll investigate the paranormal claims and also see what we can learn about the Foundation itself. Which makes a great opportunity for me to brag about my team.

As our camera shooter, Jake Wolfson is the eyes of our little operation. Because the show is unscripted, we have to be careful about what we shoot so we don't flood out postproduction. Hence his motto: "The most story for the least footage."

Camera shooters are usually pretty stressed out. They track the action on their little black-and-white viewfinder while being aware of everything that's going on and anticipating what will happen next. Jake's a solid pro, though. Nothing ever seems to faze him. He's a big, muscly guy with a braided gold beard and runic tattoos running down his arms. A real badass in look and deed.

Then there's our tech manager, Kevin Linscott, the man with the mustache, our operation's ears and technical wizard. He helps set up all our gear and monitors it while mixing audio for the show. If the camera doesn't see it, the audio catches it.

Kevin's a retired Philadelphia police officer who did a lot of ghost hunting with me at Ralston Investigates the Paranormal (RIP), an amateur local ghost hunting group, before joining the show, and he's got all these great stories. When Claire tells me to trust the equipment, Kevin reminds me to trust my instincts and senses.

Jessica Valenza is our understudy and protégé. She's a professional actress the producers added to the show to round out the team. She has turned into quite the paranormal investigator, and she fits right in.

For a reality show, we keep things lean and mean, as we don't want people crowding around bumping into stuff and producing false positives on our instruments. Jessica not only helps with the investigating but does a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff for the show, a real jack-of-all-trades.

And then there's Claire, my wonderful wife. The best of the best. Adorable and smarter than a bullwhip, she graduated magna cum laude from Virginia Tech with a PhD in physics. She designed all our ghost hunting protocols and is a crack investigator.

I honestly couldn't do this without her.

Working together, we're a team. But more than that, we're family. A family that explores the unknown with a spirit of comradeship and a whole lot of scientific curiosity to solve the oldest and greatest of human mysteries: What happens to us when we die?

Oh, and I should give a shout-out to one more person who makes all this work.

You.

Seriously, without you, there's no show, so as always, thank you for watching and participating. This show is heaven for me, as I get to earn a living doing what I love doing most, something I'd be doing either way.

So really, it's about you. I'm proud that you're on our team.

And I hope you're as excited as we are about Episode 13.

It's going to be amazing.

Foundation House, here we come!