THE CITY OF THE DEAD

In 1692 in fictional Whitewood, Massachusetts, a witch named Elizabeth Selwyn is burned at the stake. Before her death, Selwyn and her accomplice, Jethrow Keane, sold their souls to Lucifer for eternal life and revenge on Whitewood in return for providing the Devil with two yearly virgin human sacrifices on the Hour of Thirteen during Candlemas Eve and the Witches' Sabbath.

In the present day, following his lecture on witchcraft, a university history professor, Alan Driscoll, advises an interested student named Nan Barlow to visit Whitewood during her vacation to slake her interest in witchcraft by studying Whitewood's history. Nan settles in The Raven's Inn, a hotel owned by eccentric Mrs. Newless, becoming acquainted with the only normal-seeming local resident Patricia Russell, who loans her a book on witchcraft. Reading the book, Nan learns that this night is Candlemas Eve.

She is lured down to the basement and is restrained on a satanic altar by Mrs. Newless and members of her coven. Mrs. Newless reveals herself to be Elizabeth Selwyn before proceeding to sacrifice Nan.

Two weeks later, Nan's concerned fiancé, Bill Maitland, and her brother, Richard, learn The Raven's Inn does not exist in any phone directory. They are visited by Patricia, who is also concerned with Nan's disappearance. The men travel separately to Whitewood, and Bill barely survives a car crash caused by an apparition of Selwyn.

Richard reaches Whitewood and meets up with Patricia before visiting her grandfather, Reverend Russell, who reveals that Whitewood is under the control of Selwyn's coven. Soon after, Patricia is kidnapped as the coven's sacrifice, and Richard attempts to save her before they are cornered in the graveyard. Professor Driscoll is revealed to be a coven member. A severely-injured Bill arrives at the last minute and succeeds in extricating a large wooden cross from the ground. After being gravely wounded by Selwyn, Bill uses the last of his strength to burn the coven members alive under the cross's shadow. Selwyn escapes during the chaos. Her pact with the Devil has been undone by the intervention, and Richard and Patricia find her charred corpse in the hotel which was earlier revealed to have been built on the site of her burning.

The coven's ritual is disrupted when a wounded Bill uses a large wooden cross to burn the coven members alive, breaking the pact and leaving Elizabeth Selwyn dead in the hotel.

The intervention with the cross symbolically and literally ends the coven's reign, breaking Selwyn's centuries-long pact with Lucifer. This resolution underscores the film's theme of the persistence of evil and the power of faith to counter supernatural threats, while tying the town's cursed history to the present in a final act of retribution.