Has Douglas Lockwood inadvertently resurrected the ghost of a long dead man after a hiking accident on Wildheath Crags, a vast tract of treacherous moorland surrounding Watholme, a Yorkshire village?

What will be the effects of this on Jane, Agnes and Violet Dean, who own the hotel where he is staying?

What is the meaning of the mournful wailing coming from the moors?

Did the three famous novelists, the Ayre sisters, who have made Watholme a popular tourist attraction, die young or did they fake their deaths and emigrate to Sicily?

Will Douglas ever know the truth?