Plot Summary: A young couple, Steve and girlfriend, is gorily skinned while dallying in an abandoned house, While she discovers him mutilated, the killer rouns a large knife through her head and out her mouth. New York. Little Bob seems to have gotten a message from a photo of a his house with a frightened girl shouting from a window. Bob asks why the girl in the window, only he can see, warns him not to go "over there". An old woman tells May it's time to go but she refuses arguing "It's important". Bob's father mentions a colleague, Peterson, who killed his lover and hanged himself. New Whitney, Boston (huh?)Somewhere, Meg observes a mannequin gorily beheaded. Real Estate agent Harold correctly call the keys to the Freudstein place, but is corrected with a new Euphemism by his colleague, Mrs. Giddleson, Oak Mansion. Meg is sending the messages to Bob, trying to warn him away, but Bob's parents are here for research sabbatical. "You shouldn't have come Bob". The parents rush back from the house to find Bob playing with Meg's weird lifesize doll. Father Norman Boyle admits the house looks like the one in the photo in his office--the one in which the murders took place. Norman hides from his wife they are staying at the house in which the Peterson massacre took place. Wife widshes they had stayed in New York, but Norman stresses the career advancement it will mean. She picks up the doll and freaks out, Norman advises her to take the pills that Joe Baker prescribed for her nerves. A "babysitter", Anne, who seems to have come with the house, was sent over with Mrs. Giddleson sent over, and who looks like the mannequin Meg saw executed. Noerman reads a letter from 1879 that Dr. Freudstein was banned from pracrticing medicine. As Norman examines documents, he hears sounds in the house and crying. Norman hears some whimpering in the middle of the night and checks on Bob. He seems sound asleep. Further sounds are heard, and Anne turns up, taking the boards off the cellar door. Norman and Ann stare at each other. Norman finds the key to the cellar door and he and wife investigate.Suddenly, Bob burdts in and babbles on about a little girl, May, who he claims was with him the whole time. Anne claims there was no such little girl. Norm manages to jimmy the lock to the cellar and heads down to see what's what. Both Norm and Lucy, his wife, are attacked by a bat, and the process of dealing with it takes a good five gory minutes before Norm is able to kill the bat by stabbing it hundreds of times, leaving Norm with a nasty hand wound. Norm thinks Pererson's (the murderee) research materials (medical reports, death certificates, and missing persons reports) were both odd and intriguing. The weird archivist leaves him to his reading, but not before gleefully informing Norm that Peterson hanged himself in that very room from a railing. Meg tells Bob that Mary Freudstein (died 1915), whose stern visage adorns an old tombstone, an original inhabitant, is not really buried in the neighboring cemetary. Lucy finds a box with "Jacob Tess Freudstein" written on it. She hears bumping, whimpering and growling, and pretty soon she's frantic. When Norm finally gets home, Lucy is a wreck. He tries to pass off the tomb in the house as normal for the area. The next second, a few of mother's little helpers together with the decision to move have calmed her down. The real estate agent forsees problems, and mutters about the Freudstein house "Oak mansion". The old woman in victorian garb has convinced Meg of something, and then she's urging someone not to "go inside". The real estate lady, who's gotten the word on the impending move, pokes around the now vacant house soon falls prey to a corroded handed groaner, the blood spurting freely. That's what you get for calling the Freudstein house "Oak Mansion". Call things by their names if you want to survive in a horror movie. Anne dutifully mops up the gore as though it's spilled tomato juice, remarking that she's made coffee. Hmm. Lucy is evasive about what she's been doing. Lucy finds her off-putting. Norman reports that Peterson was doing research on Freudstein, who was a ninteenth centrury surgeon who was involved in some illegal experiments. Norm is trying to prove a connection between the Freudstein experiments and the Petersons' suicide. Seems a safe theory. To check it out he needs to go to New York. Bob is chased by Meg, but it's just a game. Against Meg's warning, Bob goes back inside the house. Meanwhile, Norm listens to a rambling personal tape made by Peterson documenting his deterioration. Peterson goes into a hysterical reverie on the subject of Freudstein's voice and blood, and the victims lured there. It appears Peterson was driven mad by the house. There's evidence of children being killed as well. Norman, unaccountably, burns the tape. As he leaves, Meg watches him go. Lucy sees Norman in town and realizes he never went to New York. Looking for Bob, Anne hears some whispering in the basement. But wasn't Bob upstairs? Bob is dawdling while going to open the door in response to her anguished cries. An uncorroded hand holding a knife advances on her. (Undeniably the best scene in the film). Watch that blood flow. Bob follows down the stairs when the noise stops.Anne's head bounces down the stairs to his feet and he hurries up the stairs screaming. His hand is causght in the door, and he escapes just as a corroded hand reaches for him. Lucy comes home to find Bob whimpering in the corner. Mommy is skeptical about Bob's story regarding Anne's current state, and heads down to have a look. She fails to see the demon eyes staring at her. There are no Anne-parts to be seen, so it looks to her as though Bob was telling tales out of school. Meanwhile, Norman is told by the mean caretaker that Freudstein's tomb isn't in the cemetary in spite of what the official records say. What the significance of this oft repeated factoid is remains a mystery. Bob is put to bed, but he knows what he saw and is soon up and exploring the basement, confused by his mother's assurances that Anne is not dead. The demon eyescome at him and he bangs at the door. Mother is having trouble opening it as the keys are still a struggle. The key breaks off in the lock and she must use a knife to pry the door open, but that too breaks off. Something ascends the stairs toward him. Norman arrives and seems to know what is going on. He takes an axe to the door as Bob is dragged off by someone with an alternately corroded and uncorroded hand. Norman has deduced that it was Freudstein who killed Sheila. Bob escapes, and sees that the corroded rubber man's got quite a bundle of bodies lined up down there. As he runs down the stairs, Norman narrates Freudstein's need for human victims to renew his cells. Norman puts some holes in Freudstein with a knife, and maggotts come tumbling out. He's been collecing vicitims all this time. For all their mortality postponing properties, the experiments didn't do much for Freudstein's preservation. Norman gets his throat torn out. Mother and Bob find a stairway out to the yard, but Freudstein shambles after them. Lucy is dragged down the stairs leaving Bob at the top. Bob manages to escape just as Freudstain snatches at him. The stern old lady leads Meg and Bob away. No one will ever know whether children are monsters or monsters are children. Will Freudstein's lust for human tissue consume the family?