Ron Halestrom is a new author, one successful book behind him, who moves into a new home with his family, to write more. But naturally, Gabor House has a dark secret which is trying to drive them away. Two hundred years before, it was the old manor house: home to the Mainwarings, owners of much of the locality. Young children had been going missing, but it took their own daughter Isobel's disappearance for them to send out a search party. They find Bemorra, the local imbecile, throwing her into the Gabor Pool. Bemorra is hanged until he is dead, but he has enough time to curse the locals.