Seeking background material for a mystery he is working on, novelist Charles Condomine invites eccentric Mediumship Madame Arcati to his home in Lympne, Kent, to conduct a séance. As Charles, his wife Ruth and their guests, George and Violet Bradman barely restrain themselves from laughing, Madame Arcati performs peculiar rituals and finally goes into a trance. Charles then hears the voice of his dead first wife, Elvira. When he discovers that the others cannot hear her, he passes off his odd behaviour as a joke. When Arcati recovers, she is certain that something extraordinary has occurred, but everyone denies it.