A woman has died in a rental house owned by a New York couple who are quite curious not only how she died but of what was going on inside. The couple had been wanting to spend time in the house as it's in the country away from the city. They find several mysterious things within the house, which was turned topsy turvy from the inside...books and everything scattered about. The detective thinks the lady may have been frightened to death.

They come up to visit with police there about the tragedy, and end up spending the night upstairs there, but are awakened frightfully by what appears to be a terrific storm. However, the night outside is clear...no rain, wind or lightning outside. It appears the storm is coming from within the house...gale force winds, thunder, and screeching cats. (To those of you who are Rush Limbaugh listeners, this particular sequence almost sounded, amusingly, like one of his old "Animal rights updates" minus Andy Williams singing.)

After that episode (where their den is pretty much torn apart) the police detective who has become their friend through this investigation thinks someone else needs to be brought in...a college professor who also happens to be a parapsychologist. He finds evidence that black magic was practiced in that house. (The tenant, he says, wasn't a witch, or if she was was quite an amateur.) Looking at a discovery on the floor he says...well, here's part of his description of what he sees:

"In the middle ages that material all around the inside of large circle would have been the skin of the victim who fastened to the ground by four nails from the coffin of an executed criminal. Don't be too alarmed, I think you'll find that this is only a simulation, as with the crude representations of the skull of what ought to be the skull of a "patricide"...someone who killed his father. The other three (symbols) are the horns of a goat, a male bat drowned in blood and a black cat who has been fed human flesh."

Yeesh...wonder if Harry Potter ever learned that stuff? Fortunately, the prof is on their side, because he believes something evil has been set loose in the house... 