This summer, Rachael O'Brien must participate in a work-study apprenticeship and has lined up a job running an art gallery in Beaufort. Free rent in the owner's plantation-style home, and having Francine, her bayou-bred college roommate working as a law intern in the same town sealed the deal. Majestic waterfront views impress, but the emotional tide turns when the girls discover a corpse in the garden shed. When the police can't find the body, the girls are accused of pranking the authorities.

Balancing her Baptist morals with her Voodoo heritage, Francine calls a local root doctor who declares that a malcontent spirit lurks. Rachael's not buying the mystical woo-woo, but with the body's disappearance she's spooked. Ruining any semblance of normality, her kooky mom and tag-along "psychic friend" show up. Mom's partner wastes no time launching into a trance in which she reveals a vision of the property's gruesome secrets, eerily similar to what the roommates witnessed.

When art and heirloom silver go missing, Rachael and her mishmash of companions become drawn into the mystery and she must delve into local history to find answers in this tale that dances on the toes of age-old Gullah folklore in Paisley Ray's Swamp Cabbage.