Twelve-year-old Anthony Petrucci moves with his parents to a quaint, old farmhouse outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; the house and the barn out back were built sometime in the 1870s. Anthony feels drawn to the barn and sometimes thinks he hears whispers when he's inside; strangely, the voices do not haunt but instead bring comfort to him. Anthony soon makes the acquaintance of a boy his age named Sammy, and they become fast friends. Little do they know a dangerous serial killer lives a mere ten minutes from where they play. Jigs Seederly has no soul; he's already sold himself to the forces of evil. He decides to summon evil incarnate, a course that requires Jig's own death to set the plan in motion. Anthony's father, Army, buys an item at Jig's estate sale that turns out to be imbued with the evil Jigs was trying to resurrect. If all goes according to Jig's plan, evil will rise at the time of Halloween harvest. But Anthony and Sammy have a ghost on their side, and the apocalyptic chaos surrounding them centers around the barn in Anthony's backyard.