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Charles
Condomine, a successful novelist wishes to learn about the occult for a
novel he is writing, and he arranges for an eccentric medium, Madame
Arcati, to hold a séance at his house. At the séance, she inadvertently
summons Charles's first wife, Elvira, who has been dead for seven years.
Madame Arcati leaves after the séance, unaware that she has summoned
Elvira. Only Charles can see or hear Elvira, and his second wife, Ruth,
does not believe that Elvira exists until a floating vase is handed to
her out of thin air. The ghostly Elvira makes continued, and
increasingly desperate, efforts to disrupt Charles's current marriage.
She finally sabotages his car in the hope of killing him so that he will
join her in the spirit world, but it is Ruth rather than Charles who
drives off and is killed. Ruth's ghost immediately comes back for
revenge on Elvira, and though Charles cannot at first see Ruth, he can
see that Elvira is being chased and tormented and his house is in
uproar. He calls Madame Arcati back to exorcise both of them, but at
first far from banishing them she materializes Ruth. With both his dead
wives now fully visible, and neither of them in the best of tempers,
Charles, together with Madame Arcati, goes through séance after séance
and spell after spell to try to exorcise them, and at last Madame Arcati
succeeds. Charles is left seemingly in peace but Madame Arcati, hinting
that the ghosts may still be around unseen, warns him that he should go
far away as soon as possible. Charles leaves at once and the unseen
ghosts throw things and destroy the room as soon as he has gone. (In the
David Lean film the ghosts thwart Charles's attempt to escape and his
car is again sabotaged, he crashes and joins them as a ghost, with
Elvira at one arm and Ruth at the other.)
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