After enduring some hard times, college professor Douglas Hatcher and his teenage daughter Blaire move to the old Connecticut town of Fairfield to restart their lives. But things soon become strange. They meet a beautiful blonde bartender, a woman who displays mysterious powers and seems to know all their secrets. When Blaire enrolls in high school, the headmaster approaches her with evil intentions, leading to a town-wide scandal and an act of terrible violence. Then things become even stranger. Douglas learns about Goodwife Knapp, a woman hung in Fairfield in 1653 for practicing witchcraft, and he comes to realize that she remains a ghostly presence in the town-one who looms over everything that is happening to them.