Joan Fairchild is a woman traveling along a dark rural road when she accidentally runs her car off the road. She immediately has an hallucinatory vision of a drowning woman in a lake, and seeks refuge in a large house nearby. Inside the house are a group of young people interested in experimenting with the occult and ESP. They offer her shelter for the night, but they hardly have her best interests in mind: under the guidance of their sinister leader, they intend to use their psychic abilities to telepathically send Joan distressing images of her deceased daughter--images that they hope will actually frighten Joan to death.