Halloween is traditionally filled with ghosts, goblins, and ghouls but this year the holiday brings something more sinister to the small South Carolina barrier island of Folly Beach. The popular fall holiday has never been a favorite of retired bureaucrat Chris Landrum but that didn't stop his friend Charles Fowler from convincing him to tour a haunted house sponsored by a local charity. In addition to being faced with the scary scenes that appear in most haunted houses, they stumble across a dead body—a real dead body.
Stir into the cauldron a Wiccan family, a Christian minister, an egotistical dentist, a ghost-hunting couple, and a dog the size of a Fiat and you have the makings of a mystery that Chris and Charles must solve before their bodies are added into the haunted house.