He starts to hear accusatory voices all about him and eventually his fears solidify in the form of a sinister bird, a pet owl owned by his fiancée, Miss Montague.

A cruel judge in the Court of Common Pleas, Elijah Harbottle, finds himself under attack by vengeful spirits, and in a disturbing dream he is condemned to death by a monstrous doppelgänger.

A naïve young Englishman travelling in France attempts to save a beautiful and mysterious woman whom he is duped into believing to be the unhappily-married wife of the avaricious and sexagenarian count of St. Alyre.

In the prologue Le Fanu describes the catalepsy-inducing drug employed by the St. Alyres as one of a class of 25 or so philtres known to mediaeval physicians, two of which are still used by the criminals of Dr. Hesselius’s day.

The effects of the (fictional) drug, however, are curiously reminiscent of those of the alkaloid bulbocapnine,[1] which occurs in the medicinal herb Corydalis cava, a plant known to mediaeval herbalists.