John Baxter is a recently divorced journalist working for an investigative magazine called Reveal. Baxter's latest assignment exposes a seance scam operating within the abandoned Amityville home on Long Island, New York. Afterward, Baxter finds that the house is immensely affordable due to its sordid history of terrible things happening to those who've been inside. Baxter, apparently needing to find a new place following his divorce that has fourteen rooms covering three floors, moves into the house certain that all prior calamities were coincidences, delusions, and hoaxes. That bottomless pit in the basement others have claimed a portal to hell? Oh, that's just an abandoned well. It has plenty of space for himself and his teenage daughter when she visits, as well as solitude for writing the "great American novel" he's been talking about for years. Others around him experience strange events and implore him to leave. He won't because he's convinced the house's reputation is causing mass hysteria. Unfortunately, with his daughter staying with him on occasion, he soon discovers that being wrong might be dead wrong.