Investigator Jonathon Fletcher and his assistant Sajeed Rau investigate an apparently haunted mansion at the request of the woman who has inherited it.
A group of people are shipwrecked when their yacht runs aground on a South Pacific island. The usual hierarchy in an upper-class British family breaks down quickly when it becomes apparent that only the servant, Crichton, is capable of surviving on his own and he becomes the community's leader.
The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant, Madame Arcati, to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book.