An amateur astronomer's wife reports her husband's depression to her pastor in a small town in Pennsylvania's Pocono mountains. He seems fine when the pastor brings the church youth group for an observing session, but soon after is found dead in his observatory, which is locked from the inside. During the funeral, the pastor announces the suspicion that it wasn't a suicide and then works with the owner of a local New Age shop and the police chief to solve the mystery as the three of them had done in Testing the Spirits, the first novel in the series.

Tocksville, that quiet town in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, is enjoying the normal Hallowe'en excitement of the annual parade and a youth group scavenger hunt when it is suddenly spooked by colored flames appearing mysteriously in the cemetery, an attack on a local coven, a church intruder who disappears through locked doors, and the murder in impossible circumstances of one of the coven's witches. Pastor Lou, Larche, and Police Chief Mac join forces once again to solve the murder and exorcize the haunted town.

At a senior citizen residence to lead worship, Pastor Lou watches the elevator dial move from the third floor to the first. The elevator door opens to reveal the corpse of Tony Pinelli, who got on the elevator well and healthy at the third floor in the sight of five friends. Naturally, the Tocksville pastor, discovered alone with the corpse, is a prime suspect among a long list of local folk who wanted the visiting Hollywood womanizer dead. Once again Larche and the local police chief work together with Lou to solve the crime, but not before another death along the way.