Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie

 

Synopsis From Back Cover:

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

Episode 13 takes them to every ghost hunters holy grail: the Paranormal Research Foundation. This crumbling, derelict mansion holds secrets and clues about bizarre experiments that took place their in the 1970s. It's undoubtedly haunted, and Matt hopes to use scientific techniques and high-tech gear to prove it.

But as the house begins to slowly reveal itself to the crew, proof of an afterlife might not be everything Matt dreamed of. 

I’ve been in love with found footage horror ever since I first saw The Blair Witch Project back in 1999. Since then, I’ve watched everything from the movies that show the genre at its best—like Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum, The Taking of Deborah Logan, and Hell House LLC—to the ones that make me roll my eyes, like Apollo 18 and Classroom 6. Truthfully, even when they’re bad, I almost always have so much fun watching them.

So when I first heard about Episode Thirteen, I was a tad bit skeptical. How could a movie genre I love so much possibly translate to the page? But here’s the funny thing—it’s the book’s flaws that made me love it even more. Those rough edges, that slightly chaotic structure… they gave the story the same immersive, jittery energy that makes found footage films so addictive.

If you’ve seen even a few of the more popular found footage movies, you already know the formula: a group of people make terrible choices, the camera keeps rolling, and eventually someone finds their footage because—well, no one made it out alive. And yes, the book follows that tradition in terms of the body count. But unlike a lot of movies in the genre, I didn’t find everyone annoying. In fact, I grew really fond of Matt and Jake. By the end, they’d joined the short list of horror characters who genuinely broke my heart—right up there with the narrator from Security by Gina Wohlsdorf.

The story unfolds through journal entries, emails, text messages, video transcripts, and interviews, which perfectly captures that chaotic found footage rhythm. One moment it’s frantic and terrifying; the next, it slows to a crawl, letting the dread seep in. It was those journal entries that really got me, though—they made Matt and Jake feel so real that I couldn’t help rooting for them, even knowing it wouldn’t end well.

By the time I reached the final pages, I was completely wrecked. Episode Thirteen nails everything I love about the genre: the tension, the intimacy, the creeping feeling that I shouldn’t be reading what I’m reading.

If you’re a horror fan, especially one who loves the found footage style with all its chaos and nerve-shredding suspense, this is one book you absolutely need to read.