Few attend Mrs. Alice Drablow's funeral, and not one blood relative amongst them. There are undertakers with shovels, of course, a local official who would rather be anywhere else, and one Mr. Arthur Kipps, solicitor from London. He is to spend the night in Eel Marsh House, the place where the old recluse died amidst a sinking swamp, a blinding fog and a baleful mystery about which the townsfolk refuse to speak.
Young Mr. Kipps expects a boring evening alone sorting out paperwork and searching for Mrs. Drablow's will. But when the high tide pens him in, what he finds -- or rather what finds him -- is something else entirely.