THE GHOST

In 1910 in Scotland, the ailing Doctor Hichcock (Elio Jotta), a wheelchair user, presides over seances in which his housekeeper, Catherine (Harriet Medin), acts as the medium. According to Hichcock's theory, shots of lethal poison followed by an antidote could cure his physical disability shortly after. The younger Doctor Livingstone (Peter Baldwin) stays with him in the house to regularly administer this dangerous treatment.

Hichcock's wife Margaret (Barbara Steele) finds living with her husband increasingly unbearable. Possibly suspected by her husband, she is having an affair with Livingstone. She implores him to murder Hichcock, which he eventually does by injecting the poison but not administering the antidote. During the distribution of Hichcock's estate, Margaret and Livingstone learn Hichcock only recently changed his last will and testament. Margaret gets the house and its contents, but only a third share of her husband's bonds, shares, currency, and jewels, kept in the doctor's safe.

Upon Catherine telling them that the key to the safe containing the valuables was in the jacket buried with him, they secretly visit his vault, open his coffin and retrieve it, intending to take a larger share of the valuables. Livingstone opens the safe while Margaret is out of the room with Catherine. It is empty. Later, they hear Hichcock's voice calling to them and experience other poltergeist phenomena, including the appearance of the ghost-like Hichcock himself. One night, Catherine, apparently possessed by Hichcock, speaks in his voice and tells Margaret that his valuables are buried beneath his coffin. She returns to the vault to find a golden box. Upon opening it, she cuts herself. The box contains nothing but a skull. Catherine then insinuates that Livingstone took the valuables for himself when he opened the safe in Margaret's absence. Margaret finds jewels in his bag, much to Livingstone's surprise. Margaret slashes him to death with a razor and drags him into the cellar, where she uses kerosene from a lamp to burn his body.

Margaret is drawn to Hichcock's study by the ringing of his handbell, where she contemplates suicide by poison, pours it into a glass of gin, but does not drink it. She starts feeling ill and sits down when Hichcock appears, alive and no longer disabled. He tells her that he poisoned the box with a non-lethal dose of curare, which is now quickly paralyzing her. Hichcock shoots his accomplice Catherine dead and makes Margaret touch the gun to incriminate her. Finally, he toasts Margaret's ill health with the glass of gin she poured for herself and drinks it. When he realizes it is poisoned, he begs Margaret for the antidote. She laughs and destroys the vial of antidote. Hichcock seals himself inside a secret room behind the bookshelf, locking himself in. The police arrive and arrest the laughing and paralyzed Margaret for Catherine's murder, carrying her out of the room.

When Canon Owens, the parish priest, arrives and hears muffled noises from behind the library bookshelf, he addresses Hichcock's portrait with the words, "I told you, Doctor Hichcock, the devil is a very real person." He then leaves the room.

Margaret is paralyzed by a poisoned box, Hichcock reveals himself alive, shoots Catherine, but accidentally drinks poisoned gin and is trapped. Margaret is arrested while laughing as the police arrive.

The ending delivers poetic justice and Gothic irony: the conspirators’ betrayals spiral into their undoing, with Hichcock’s orchestrated revenge ensnaring both his wife and her lover. Margaret’s paralysis and maniacal laughter underscore the film’s theme of self-destruction, while Hichcock’s own demise by poisoned gin reveals the ultimate futility of vengeance and control. The cycle of treachery and supernatural retribution closes with no true victors—only haunted survivors.