She picks up a seventeenth-century Bible it suddenly flings itself open and burns her hands. Restless, Connie ventures downstairs to peruse her late grandmother’s library. With no electricity, running water, or telephone service, Connie and her dog, Arlo, are forced to spend the night by the light of the home’s only oil lamp. Her grandmother, Sophia, had lived in the house as recently as thirty years before Connie’s arrival, but no other occupants had followed and thus the house had fallen into extreme disrepair. The house, to Connie’s chagrin, is completely overgrown with vegetation and in need of more care than she had initially imagined. Slightly perturbed, Connie capitulates, remaining hopeful that the ordeal may somehow aid her in her research. Just as she’s settling into the reality of her PhD candidacy, Connie’s plans are stalled when her mother, Grace, calls from New Mexico, pleading with her to oversee the restoration and sale of her grandmother’s abandoned home in Marblehead, a town near Salem. Chilton suggests to her a troubling question: what if those executed during the seventeenth-century witch hunts actually were witches? Connie quickly scoffs at the idea, but the notion continues to haunt her subconsciously. While preparing to spend the summer finalizing the direction of her dissertation, Dr.

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