Episode Thirteen

Definitely reads like a found footage movie, epistolary story with video scenes, diary entries, interviews, and text messages.

A husband who claims to have had a ghostly encounter when he was a kid grows up forever searching for proof of ghosts and ends up dragging along the college scientific PhD woman he fell in love with when they get an opportunity to do a reality tv show hunting for ghosts. The wife plays the skeptic and works to debunk what the husband and his crew find, an actress added to the show to liven things up, a tech guy who was a former police officer who claims to have meet a demon, and the camera guy just taking a job.

They're coming to the end of the season and looking for a way to end on a high note and ensure they get a second season, with the wife wanting to bounce because she's sick of dealing with pseudoscience. Their last job is the Foundation House, a place where in the sixties two professors conducted experiments on a group of people trying to further the Human Potential Movement but as the wife reads through the papers left by the profs, realizes they were doing unethical experimentation.

The first half starts off a little slow with getting to know the characters and their intra/interpersonal drama and then the house starts to wake up and eventually reveals a well with a door at the bottom that has the group doing an Alice in Wonderland and traveling, what the wife comes to realize is a Mandala loop.

It all starts to get a bit out there, a little bit of a The Cabin in the Woods down the rabbit hole, and I ended up feeling like this was more SciFi (think movie The Abyss like) and less horror. I also struggled a bit with the flow of the story that was probably a personal issue with the epistolary style and not novel form.

You'll get a fantastical major ending that also stutters epilogue final endings, the last epilogue I felt delivered the best chill, and a story that will work to expand your mind while delivering some creeps.

This will be my 2nd book by Craig DiLouie and I just can't get enough of his writing. Peter Clines states, "It's House of Leaves meets Haunting of Hill House, in all the best possible ways." I haven't read House of Leaves but I am a HUGE fan of Haunting of Hill House. This book also reminds me of the movie House on Haunted Hill in the aspect of what you will read towards the last 20% of the book.

In Episode Thirteen you get to read Website information for the investigation team via journals for all the characters involved as they move forward in their investigation of Foundation House. You get interactions within video recordings, get formatting of the files they read that the previous people filed, and much, much more.

I've been reading books like crazy here lately trying to catch up from only reading one book in March and April this year due to wedding planning. So, I've become sleep deprived and decided, "Why not give an audio book a go for the first time this year?" So, I read the book while listening and to my surprise, the audio book made this book much more immersive with the different voice narrators and ambience. Heck, when they were in an echoey room, you could hear them like they were in a basement.

Reading this book makes you feel like you're in a paranormal investigation. Craig DiLouie does his RESEARCH very well with all his books, making each one unique, realistic, immersive, and atmospheric. He can make you believe in anything he writes.

WOWOWOW. This book was so good! I loved the science and theories, I was looking stuff up left and right (axion particle, I see you now!). I will be buying the hard copy for my bookshelf, reserved for only my favorites. And I'll be reading DiLouie's other book as well. A good book has you thinking about it after you finish, and this hits the mark. I found this gem searching for "found footage" type books and I really enjoyed the style of a "written documentary" along with a real-seeming "Editor's Note". Great story, scary and scientific and goes way beyond simple life after death. Very cool!