Intrepid journalist Creswell is fascinated with Miss Appleby, the daughter of a notorious necromancer shunned by 1880's society. Forced to watch her own father's lynching at the hands of a religious mob, she now spends her life honoring his final wish - that she continue his work of reviving the dead and using their testimony to free innocent convicts of violent crime. Determined to publish an article about her work, Creswell follows Miss Appleby into the depths of her latest investigation. A young man will hang for murdering his lover, but his father claims he didn't strangle the girl to death. Miss Appleby sets out to prove his innocence by exhuming the dead girl and hearing the truth from her own rotten lips. To do so, Miss Appleby must employ a surrogate - children she and her father take from an African village, who were born half-dead and able to be possessed by spirits. Conducting her horrific ritual, Miss Appleby learns the girl was killed in a tragic accident, her scarf caught in a water mill. But her unholy methods for obtaining the truth bring the scrutiny of the townspeople upon her. Attacked, she and Creswell are forced to flee, and the young man is hung despite their discoveries. Creswell attempts to publish his article, but his editors regard the wild tale as a work of fiction and refuse. He writes Miss Appleby with the news and tells her he's quite fond of her and finds her unspeakably beautiful, but she never replies.