During his time in the Deep South, a graduate student works on his dissertation, which investigates the origins of a mysterious southern folk song. The ode calls for people to go pray at a river, and the student is interested in a line that mentions a “starry crown." He learns that the song was written by someone named Llewelyn Cobb.   The student travels to Evanstown, South Carolina, where Cobb used to live. He stays at a bed and breakfast that was formerly a plantation home. The student asks one of the proprietors, Ted, about the hymn, who tells him about the popular river baptisms in the town. In the city hall’s records, the student finds Llewelyn Cobb's home location. The clerk at the desk refers the student to Thomas Jeery at First Baptist Church, who is one hundred and one years old and a descendant of slaves. She then begins to creepily hum a tune as she smiles and stares blankly past the student. The student gets frightened and quickly leaves.   The next morning, the student locates Llewelyn Cobb’s cabin, where a murder of a young black man recently occurred. He heads to the worn-out and dark cabin that smells like old meat. He then finds Thomas Jeery’s address online and drives to his trailer home by a humid swamp. There, he asks Jeery about the starry crown and learns its horrifying truth: that the Starry Crown is a white supremacist cult known for its river rite sacrifices of black people. He researches the Old Pride Realty, speculating on its ties to the cult since it purchased the church as well as various Antebellum South-related sites. He finds Ted on the list of the realty’s governing body. 

The student heads back to First Baptist at night and sees hundreds of white-robed people holding candles and humming a hymn. He immediately knows a Starry Crown rite is taking place. He climbs up a nearby tree and sees a human-like creature wearing a starry crown float across the river. A member gives him a sword, and another member brings out a crying adolescent black boy. The figure kills him with the sword, and the boy’s body is dumped in a river. The student checks out of his inn that night, seeing mud residue on Ted’s shoes as he says goodbye. He drives straight home and decides to delete his dissertation because he knows it would be dangerous and no one would believe him. He decides to write a new work about his experience with the dark truths about Evanstown, expecting it would be deemed fictional.