Prologue

On the 3^rd of November 1993, sixteen-year old Ella Matheson went missing. With no eye witnesses or substantial amount of evidence to carry out a full investigation, the case was deemed hopeless.

          Simply put, the girl merely vanished without a trace, not a single clue left behind. For a long time, the small town of Staunton, Virginia �" especially Ella’s beloved family �" could only cling on to the last bit of hope they possessed.

          It was as if a thick black veil had fallen over their town, and despair was a living force that consumed their day-to-day lives. It was without any doubt that Ella and the rest of her family were well-known and loved by their people.

          For such a long time, the ones who dearly loved Ella prayed endlessly for her return, and others simply moved on. The most difficult task was the part where they had no choice but to let it all go. The painful truth was, they did have a choice to keep hanging on to that hope. They were exhausted.

          Thirteen years later when everyone’s live have dramatically changed and the gossip over the missing girl’s case had died out, Ella Matheson resurfaces, and the whole of Staunton and the United States of America are gripped with shock.

          It was the biggest news item of the decade; a closure to one of the most highly publicized long-term hostage takings in history. Yet, underneath all the instant cheering for the girl’s miraculous return, something wasn’t right.

          It was a fact that Ella Matheson had come back, but not as herself. She returned as a violent, mentally ill individual who was a potential harm to herself and others. Medical professionals dismissed this as effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, which everyone agreed was perfectly normal for someone who had just eluded thirteen years of captivity and psychological torture.

          But then Ella spoke out, and in her words she was as sane as anybody else. She recounted how in her so many years of isolation from the outside world, she was fed, bathed, educated and most of all, loved. This left the FBI, the media, and any concerned individual completely baffled.

          Shortly thereafter, then 29-year old Matheson was committed to an asylum in the outskirts of Staunton with the full consent of her family. They, like everyone else, believed that the poor woman had been driven to insanity from who knows what sort of vile criminal acts had been performed on her.

          In the three years that followed Ella’s return, she had gone through countless experiments under the careful eye of a team of specialists. She was diagnosed with Stockholm syndrome, which was an extremely rare disease, but not totally unheard of.

          Since the discovery of said disease, there had only been very few reported cases and most of them had been based on theories than actual fact, simply because there wasn’t much medical proof during those times.

          Ella’s case was a beacon of hope for a few professionals who had been greatly intrigued by the famous original case of the illness and wanted to use her as an experiment to gather circumstantial fact, and if all went well, hopefully make a breakthrough that could get their names recognized in the medical industry. Fortunately for them, the Mathesons were up for anything as long as they could have their old Ella back.

          However, over the course of Ella’s treatment, she had only seemed to get worse over time. The locals of Staunton assumed that if the best brain specialists couldn’t cure her, then she was beyond anyone’s help. The strangest thing to Ella’s doctors were that most times she would be perfectly normal old Ella recovering from her long-term trauma, then she would morph into a completely different person �" a vicious, cold-blooded persona with an intention to hurt and kill.

          Eventually, it was concluded that Ella was suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder and that a whole new treatment and therapy had to be carried out. More specialists were brought in, and by this time, the media had lost their interest in her case. Everyone deduced that Ella Matheson would either take her own life to evade her misery, or the constant flow of narcotics would do the job for her. Either way, she couldn't have looked any worse than she did.

          In the end, Ella did end her life at thirty-six. She had committed suicide by swallowing a large quantity of pills she had been discreetly saving up over a certain period by pretending to drink them then hiding them in a hole under her bed. It is said that she was beginning to show signs of getting better when she came to the decision to kill herself.

          This time, everyone she had left behind was not at all surprised by her cruel ending; in fact, they were more relieved than grieving. They knew that it was just a matter of time before she succumbed to the constant pumping of chemicals into her veins, and when she did, everybody actually felt happy for her.

          The time for pity was far from over, and all Ella had needed was a peaceful transition to what lay beyond. Yet in her very deathbed, in her last few words on paper before she took her final breath, Ella Matheson had no goodbyes to say to anyone but her captor. In her last few moments she desired nothing more but to see him one last time, to thank him, to tell him how much she loved him.

          Karl Seasman had been sentenced to thirty years in prison, yet he had seemed vaguely unaware of what was happening; for all they knew, he had mentally shut himself away from the rest of the world upon his separation with his hostage. His refusal to communicate was regarded as pure guilt, but Karl wasn’t in any way regretful of the events of the past thirteen years.

          Ella Matheson’s life is one that is not heard of very often. This narrative will serve as the remaining piece of the untold story of the woman whose life changed completely in a single turn of events, and ended at a battle lost against herself and the demons that fought to bring her down.

          This collection of factual data was gathered from the very people who had experienced Ella’s suffering with her; her doctors, the other patients she lived with, the asylum staff, her inner family, their neighbours �" and most of all �" Ella herself.

          In her death, Ella left behind a diary that nobody outside the asylum walls knew existed until the day her parents decided to go public with it to share their daughter’s inspiring tale of bravery.

          It was discovered that Ella had started writing down her thoughts on paper shortly after she was taken hostage and continued all the way to the day of her passing. Preserved on the crisp pages of her journal was the corrupted mind of an innocent girl who was sane in every way, yet forced to leave her sanity behind as she fought through years of what could have been a good, happy life.

          It didn’t matter that she ended her life out of fear, because Ella was already so consumed by her sickness on the eve of her death that even God himself couldn’t produce a miracle. What’s said was that she was on the path to recovery, but that had all been a lie. Ella had known until the very last minute that she was not getting any better and what her disease was capable of if she had continued that life.

          In all fairness, it’s safe to say that poor Ella was at her most sane self on her deathbed. All she had wanted was what her heart wanted. She knew nobody understood her, but by writing everything down, someone someday would discover that in spite of all the crazy things that had been going on inside her head, there was still a tiny bit of her left that had been perfectly normal.