SYNOPSIS:

Esther Cox, a plain-looking girl of 18, goes for a wagon ride with a handsome, 28-year-old man named Bob McNeal. When McNeal's wagon reaches a remote area, he pulls a gun on Esther and tries to force her to go into the woods with him. At that moment, another wagon happens down the same road, and McNeal has to end his attempted assault. Nevertheless, the experience so traumatizes Esther, that it either triggers in her, or attracts to her, a malevolent force that nearly kills her and her family in the village of Amherst, Nova Scotia in 1878. After Esther returns home and goes to sleep, she is awakened by something moving in her bed. Esther thinks the movement is caused by a mouse. The small noise seems to move from the bed to a box under the bed. Esther pulls out the box and is frightened when it jumps into the air several times. The next night, Esther's body begins to swell. Just when Esther thinks she is about to burst, a loud, thunder-like noise comes from under her bed and shakes the entire room. At that moment, Esther's swelling goes down, she immediately resumes her natural appearance, and she falls into a deep sleep. The following night, Esther's swelling returns, but this time, continuous pounding noises are heard in her bedroom, and Esther's pillow and blankets repeatedly fly off the bed and land in a corner of the room. Members of Esther's family have to sit on the corners of the blankets to keep them on her bed. Esther's family calls in a doctor, who doesn't believe anything he has heard about Esther's experiences. To the doctor's surprise, everything happens again in his presence, and this time, an invisible hand scratches words into the wall above Esther's bed -- "ESTHER COX YOU ARE MINE TO KILL." The doctor tries treating Esther with sedatives, but nothing works. The pounding sounds move to the roof of the house, and the noises are so loud that neighbors think someone is hitting the top of the house with a sledgehammer. The local newspaper begins covering the story, and crowds of people start showing up at the house to experience the strange phenomena for themselves. In December, Esther falls ill with diphtheria. For the two weeks Esther is sick, all the noises and other unusual occurrences stop. When Esther recovers, she goes to visit an older sister in a nearby town. Nothing out of the ordinary happens until Esther returns home, and then all hell breaks loose. On her first night back, Esther hears a voice that tells her it had once lived on the earth, but has been dead for several years and is now a ghost. The voice also tells Esther that it is going to set the house on fire that night. Esther tells her family what she heard, but they don't believe her -- until lighted matches start appearing out of thin air and setting fires all over the house. Esther and her family must stay awake all night to find and put out all the fires. The next day, a fire breaks out in the cellar while Esther and her older sister Olive are home alone. The two young women are unable to put out the fire by themselves and must quickly get help from neighbors and strangers on the street. One night, the malevolent spirit appears to Esther as a "living shadow" and tells her that he will burn down the house that very night unless she leaves. The house sits so close to the other houses in the village that if one house catches fire, ALL the houses will probably burn. Esther's brother-in-law Daniel finds Esther temporary lodging in the home of John White, owner of the local tavern, whose house sits apart from the rest of the houses in the village. Meanwhile, a young actor and writer named Walter Hubbell hears about Esther. Between acting jobs, Hubbell travels around the country exposing fraudulent mediums and spiritualists. Hubbell reads a newspaper article about the events surrounding Esther, and he decides to investigate the case. When Hubbell sees objects moving by themselves and hears the mysterious noises in Esther's house, it isn't long until he becomes Esther's biggest defender. Hubbell tells Esther that there is money to be made from her misfortune, and he convinces her to go on a lecture tour with him. The audiences, however, seem to think that Hubbell and Esther are either dishonest or sacrilegious, and the people literally run Hubbell and Esther out of town. While staying in the house with Esther and her family, Hubbell discovers that he can communicate with the unseen spirits, and that there are six in all. Hubble finds out that the dominant, fire-starting spirit is named Bob Nickle and was 60 years old when he died. Jane Nickle is either Bob's wife or his sister; Maggie Fisher is almost as evil as Bob; Mary Fisher is Maggie's sister; Eliza McNeal claims to be the sister of Bob McNeal, the man who tried to assault Esther; and Peter Teed is an old man who tries to stop the others from breaking things. Soon Esther's family's landlord hears about all the fires that have started in the house, and he insists that Esther move out, or he will evict her entire family. Esther goes to live and work on a farm a couple of miles from the village. Walter Hubble gets hired for an acting job. He makes Esther promise she will say her prayers every night, and he leaves town. For a while, everything seems to be going well for Esther on the farm. Then one day, the barn burns down shortly after Esther is seen leaving it. Esther is arrested. The jury does not believe her "ghost" defense, and Esther is convicted of arson and sentenced to four months in jail. While Esther is serving her sentence, she is visited by a young man named Adam Porter, who claims that he has felt a strange kinship with Esther since he first read about her in the newspaper. Esther and Adam grow close. A month later, the judge commutes Esther's jail sentence because so many of her friends and neighbors have come to her defense, declaring that they have witnessed the supernatural events firsthand. Esther, her family, and Adam, are joyously happy. In voice-over, a writer says that Esther and Adam were married and had a son. Then Adam died. Twenty-eight years later, Esther has moved to Massachusetts, married again, and had two more sons. Sadly, her youngest son, 4 years old, dies of scarlet fever. A writer asks Esther if she is still visited by ghosts. Esther says she "dares not talk about it" because she is "afraid they'll come back." In voice-over, the writer says that five years after his interview, Esther had a brief illness and died at age 52. No one knows if Esther was ever free of the demons that tortured her, or if she carefully concealed the signs to the end.