It's simple really. After years of hunting ghosts in California for a living, Jay Richards is tired of the whole business. His life is full of jokers and hoaxers, swindlers and sceptics - and that's just his clients. Things soon get even more problematic for Jay when he's hired by heiress Zelda Smiling to investigate a possible haunting at Cranmere Hall, her family's ancestral seat and home to her glamorous twin sister Helena. For a start, Helena broke Jay's heart years before. Worse, Helena seems to have left her husband and run off with a lover...although this doesn't stop Jay from thinking that she's been murdered. Is our hapless hero just bitter and paranoid? Or are his suspicions reasonable? And is any of this connected with the spectral figure that seems to be stalking the corridors of the sprawling mansion each night in Helena's absence?