When Kit and the other three high ESP-quotient pupils [in Down a Dark Hall] who have been chosen for Mme. Duret's new boarding school get their first sight of isolated Blackwood manor only one word comes to their minds—evil. But you don't have to be psychic to anticipate some fishy goings on—what with the locked gates, unmailed letters home and those nightly dream visitors who inspire the girls to discover hitherto non-existent artistic talents. When the spirit guides, including Emily Bronte, Schubert and landscapist Thomas Cole, start using the increasingly weary girls as a channel for delivering their posthumous masterpieces to Mme. Duret (who will use them for financial gain) only resolute Kit has the will to resist openly. Stranger still, Mme. Duret's honest and irresistibly handsome son Jules considers the whole undertaking a noble experiment—until he learns the fate of his mother's previous pupils...