In a Victorian country-house hotel on the Welsh Border, ex TV producer Ben Foley hosts murder mystery weekends and nurtures his dream - to show beyond all doubt that this hotel is the mansion on which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based his famous Baskerville Hall. This intrigues young Jane Watkins, on her first weekend job, but her mother, the Rev. Merrily Watkins, exorcist for the local Diocese of Hereford, is unhappy about how Ben Foley proposes to prove his theory.

As the days shorten and the weather worsens, Foley's dabbling uncovers more than he can handle. For the history of Stanner Hall is linked not only to the Victorian fascination with spiritualism and the legacy of a terrifying medieval exorcism but with a chain of death that proves far from fictional.