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The film tells the story of Mary Henry, a talented young organist (played by Lee Strasberg-trained actress Candace Hilligoss ). At the film’s beginning, the car in which Mary is riding plunges off a bridge and into a river. Although the others in the car die, Mary mysteriously survives. She then travels to Salt Lake City to take a new job playing organ at a church. While driving there, she passes a large, abandoned pavilion (in reality, Salt Lake City’s SaltAir amusement park), which seems to beckon to her in the twilight. Shortly thereafter, while driving along a deserted stretch of road, she sees an apparition: a deformed, ghoulish figure (aka the Man, played by director Herk Harvey) who stares at her fixedly through the passenger window of her moving car.

As the film progresses, Mary becomes acquainted with her new landlady and a lecherous, sinister fellow tenant (played by Sidney Berger , now University of Houston School of Theatre Director). At the same time, she continues to see visions of the Man, although no one else is aware of his presence. She also begins to experience terrifying moments when she herself becomes invisible and inaudible to the rest of the world, as if she simply isn’t there.

The dynamic soon becomes one of her suspension between the regular world and the world of the Man, or, more bluntly, between the realms of the living and the dead. At times she holds herself aloof from her fellow boarder, clearly repulsed by his carnal desires; at others she seems to encourage his advances. At one moment she seems in control of her life, dismissive of anything supernaturalThe supernatural refers to conscious magical, religious or unknown forces that cannot ordinarily be perceived except through their effects. This word is often used interchangeably with preternatural or paranormal. Unlike natural forces, these putative sup (including the possible salvation of religion); at the next she is frightened of the unknown, beyond the help of science (in the person of a doctor from whom she seeks help) and religion (as represented by the minister of the church where she plays).

After arriving in town, Mary starts to become obsessed by the pavilion, as if she is somehow tied to it in a way that she can’t understand. She is also haunted by the organ music she seems to hear along with the audience--organ music which, unlike the wholesome tunes she played in the film’s earlier scenes, grows darker, more sinister, and finally somewhat demented. On her drive to Salt Lake City, she can find nothing on her car radio but this odd music; at one point while in the bath she does a series of steps to the music in her head, a cross between playing the organ and dancing.

This latter sequence foreshadows one of the film’s eeriest, best-shot, and most classic scenes. While at first Mary was unable to connect to the “real” world, she suddenly begins to open up and connect all too easily to the world of the Man. While practicing alone in church one night, she falls into a trance. Her music abruptly shifts from proper and respectable hymns to a weird, demonic melody, and at the same time her body languageThis article is about the form of communication, for other meanings see Body Language. Body language is a broad term for several forms of communication using body movements or gestures, instead of, or as a complement to, sounds, verbal language, or other turns darkly sensuous. Now playing barefoot, she gently toes the organ’s long rows of pedals in a coquettish balletBallet is the name given to a specfic dance form and technique. Dance works choreographed using this techique are called ballets and may include; dance, mime, acting and music ( orchestral and sung). Ballets can be performed alone or as part of an opera. as her splayed fingers first caress the keyboards with elaborate gestures and then grip them spasmodically. (We’re obviously watching a seduction unfold, complete with a game of footsie and perhaps a consummation.) As she coaxes her malevolent tune from the organ, she experiences an extended impressionistic vision of a throng of ghoulGhouls are a variety of monster that come from Arab folklore. The English word comes from Arabic al ghul''. The Arabian ghoul is a desert-dwelling, shapeshifting demon that can transform itself into the guise of an animal, especially a hyaena. It robs gras emerging from the water to waltz to her music in the pavilion’s ruined ballroom. At this point she seems to know that she is lost, and from here on her appeals for help to her acquaintances become at once more desperate and more despairing.

After the organ trance scene, the ghouls appear more and more often. Though Mary tries frantically to escape them--at one point boarding a bus to leave town only to find that they comprise all of the passengers--in the end she cannot resist being drawn back to the pavilion one last time, where the ghouls proceed to chase her down and spirit her away. The minister, the doctor, and the police, arriving at the pavilion to investigate, cannot explain her mysterious disappearance. The film’s final scene, however, shows us what had been hidden from Mary all along: a shot of her lifeless body in the car that plunged into the river. She has been dead all the while . . .