Dr. Siegfried Klein has vanished on a mysterious pilgrimage to an abandoned infirmary in the ghost-town of Moonville. The locals in the surrounding areas are tight-lipped, hostile to outsiders. Local legend has it that the old Sick House is packed with spirits, none of them friendly, and that to set foot in it is to enter Hell itself.

Though enjoying an increase in business following his last case, life isn't all roses for private investigator Harlan Ulrich. His newest job, another missing person's case, is unlike any other he's ever taken on. Local businessman Michael Poole hires Ulrich to find his estranged daughter. The problem? She's been dead for a decade.

College students Kenji and Dylan stumble upon a strange recording in the background of an obscure song. It's a woman's voice uttering a string of seemingly random characters. Upon further inspection, the song appears to have been embedded with a hidden message. Attempting to crack the mysterious code and becoming obsessed with the recording, Kenji and Dylan set off in search of answers. With every turn in the road however, the puzzle only seems to grow more complicated.

What was it like? Living in that house. Maggie Holt is used to such questions. Twenty-five years ago, she and her parents, Ewan and Jess, moved into a rambling Victorian estate called Baneberry Hall. They spent three weeks there before fleeing in the dead of night, an ordeal Ewan later recounted in a memoir called House of Horrors. His tale of ghostly happenings and encounters with malevolent spirits became a worldwide phenomenon. Now, Maggie has inherited Baneberry Hall after her father's death.

Edgar has a secret. In his spare time, he enjoys looking into his neighbors' windows, observing their private lives and spreading gossip. The old doctor who lives behind him has been acting strangely as of late, and witnessing his erratic behaviors over the course of weeks, Edgar begins to suspect that the retired physician, Marcel Dubois, is the kidnapper.

As Elle explores deeper into the house, she begins to unravel the property's dark and dangerous history. At its center is Jonathan Gillespie, a tyrannical cult leader and the house's original owner. And, as Elle soon learns, just because he's dead doesn't mean he's gone.

When struggling concert pianist Emil inherits a house from his late uncle, he thinks all of his problems are solved. Absconding to the mysterious Weatherby House in the suburbs of Portland where his famous uncle composed many classical masterpieces, Emil finds the place completely empty, save for one thing: his uncle's grand piano.

The move into 889 Morgan Road was supposed to be a fresh start for Joseph Dubois and his family. What they got instead was a nightmare. At night, guttural noises issue from behind the walls, and the family reports seeing a terrifying figure wandering the premises. Desperately seeking someone with experience in supernatural matters, Joseph calls upon his uncle, Marcel. Retired surgeon Marcel Dubois has a special gift: The ability to communicate with his dead wife. Harnessing this gift allows him to plumb the depths of the afterlife and to confront the paranormal. 

Kevin Taylor is an Internet-famous handyman on a mission: Find a house and renovate it in 30 days. By flipping a derelict house in a month's time and chronicling the entire thing on video for his online subscribers, he seeks to become a star. The problems that plague this property will require more than elbow grease to fix, however. Shadows throughout the home are distorted, and an enigmatic trespasser keeps showing up in his footage. Worse still are the hideous voices that issue from otherwise empty rooms in the dead of night.

Having explored the shadowed ruin of Beacon Hill, Sadie and August are drawn deeper into a dark and winding history. It was at the infamous Rainier Asylum that local horrors were first conjured, and compelled by a mix of duty and guilt, the librarians begin to look into the institution's sordid past. For years, locals have reported seeing something hideous stalking about the abandoned asylum. When a young farmhand meets this diabolical presence face to face and disappears, Sadie and August decide to visit the site to search for him.

At 16, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now 25 and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot".

Fresh from their expedition into Rainier Asylum, librarians Sadie and August attempt to dig further into the past, uncovering hideous truths related to the noxious cult. Their research into the diabolical sect dredges up more questions than answers, however - especially where Sadie's own history is concerned. She finds herself wondering just how much of what she's been told about her origins is true, and is assailed by doubts about her upbringing.

The door has been opened. It's already too late. The hunt is on for the thing that escaped from Chaythe Asylum. A life hangs in the balance. Dark plots set in motion more than thirty years ago wind to a close in this final, terrifying volume. Will Stephen Barlow intervene in time to spare the world the horrors of the Occupant?

Penny hates the outdoors, but when her boyfriend, Jared, plans a romantic weekend getaway in the woods, she decides to tag along. The pair drive to a remote Kentucky campground with a strange and sordid history. Within the confines of the Swan Creek State Park are the ruins of a town abandoned under terrifying circumstances in the 19th century. The town of Newsom's Landing had been the site of the last-known witch trial in US history, and the ghost of its defendant, the infamous Ellie Pomeroy, is said to still linger.

Professor Stephen Barlow is no longer a skeptic. Having faced the horrors of Chaythe Asylum, he turns his attention to the man responsible for the Third Ward Incident - the enigmatic Dr. Corvine - in the hopes of finding answers to his many questions. But some things, he soon learns, are better left lost to history. Traveling to a remote cabin in Michigan in search of the doctor and his research, Stephen finds himself descending deeper into a world of terror and madness.