A young British girl who lives with her parents and brother in India has spent her life surrounded by ghosts, or at least by ghost stories. A relative of theirs, who died long ago of hydrophobia, reputedly haunts her old house, and a family friend loves to tell them about Hubert, the dog who haunts his house. In the summer of 1915, the girl and her brother meet Arun, a young Hindu boy who tells them about churels, the spirits of women who die in childbirth. One night, they decide to find one in a pipal tree near their house. When her brother sees something, they run away, but no one knows what actually happened. Years later, the family moves back to an old house of theirs elsewhere in India. According to many of their servants, it is haunted. A mysterious gray-haired man in a gray suit, they say, appeared all over the premises. No one has ever seen him except from the back, and no one has ever caught him. One day, the girl comes home from the country club and, to her shock, sees the man in gray standing in their yard. Akbar, the elderly servant who first reported the ghost decades ago, and his son are there as well, but they both deny seeing anything. No one believes her then or after a second sighting, and even her flighty brother is skeptical. A month later, she sees the man again, and her mother is nearby. Luckily, they trap him in her dressing room. When they each open one of the only two doors to the room, they are at once terrified and perplexed. The man in gray is there, but despite being on opposite sides of him, both the girl and her mother can only see his back. An instant later, he vanishes.