Into the sleepy little hamlet of Salem's Lot comes a stranger who unleashes an insidious evil so devastating it threatens to destroy the entire town and everyone in it. Ben Mears, a young novelist, returns home to Salem's Lot, determined to write a book about the eerie old Marsten House which overlooks the town. It is Mears' conviction that the source of all the trouble is the house itself, which he believes attracts evil to it. With the help of his old schoolmaster and a courageous teenager, he unravels the deadly plague that is claiming the lives and souls of the townspeople of Salem's Lot.