In 1967, Sam Baker discovers his young daughter Henrietta hiding in the basement after she kills her cat with a pair of scissors. He locks her away to punish her, and later he and his wife discuss a troubling possibility: could Henrietta be under a spell or a curse? Henrietta’s mother rejects that theory, but soon after, Sam and his wife are brutally murdered by an unseen killer upstairs. As the carnage unfolds, Henrietta sobs in the basement and clings to a strange clown doll that begins to play an eerie lullaby.
Twenty years pass, and amateur radio operator Paul Rogers picks up a chilling signal—a pair of screams, likely from an attack. He tracks the location to the old Baker house and heads there with his girlfriend Martha. They are met by the house’s hostile caretaker, Valkos, who tries to scare them off and accuses them of snooping. Martha insists the house exudes an evil aura, and the odd atmosphere only deepens their unease.
Inside, the couple encounters a group of four intruders: three siblings, Jim, Tina, and Mark Dalen, along with Mark’s girlfriend, Susan. Jim’s voice on Paul’s tape sounds exactly like the scream he heard, and Jim admits the likeness but denies being the killer.
Later, in the basement, Jim comes face to face with the spirit of Henrietta, who smiles macabrely while cradling the clown doll and the haunting lullaby swells again. Immobilized, he screams—just as Paul recorded—before a rusted fan blade suddenly comes loose and slashes his neck, killing him instantly. Valkos then lunges at Tina, Susan, and Mark, who manage to escape his attack. When the police arrive, they wrongly blame Valkos, interpreting Jim’s death as the work of a deranged man who has a fixation on the house.
Paul and Martha dig into the house’s past and uncover a disturbing pattern: Sam Baker, a funeral director, stole personal items from the dead, including Henrietta’s clown doll, which had belonged to a deceased child. They race back to warn Mark, Tina, and Susan to leave, but the supernatural forces prove too powerful for the group, and deadly events unfold one after another. By the end, only Paul, Martha, and Susan survive the horrors.
As the trio steps back into the daylight, Martha and Paul walk through the city and glimpse the clown doll again, now displayed in a storefront window with a menacing smile. Across the street, the traffic light flicks from red to green, and Paul is suddenly struck by a bus, leaving Martha screaming in horror.
