The St. James Orphanage fire, which in 1910 claimed the lives of twenty children and two adults, had for years fueled the imaginations of the people of Elkville. Rumors of ghastly screams and ghostly flames appearing at the abandoned orphanage grounds in the dead of night spread throughout the town and beyond its borders. In 1962, cousins Tom and Chris Sabo, already intrigued by the mystery but further inspired by a news story in the Elkville Chronicle, meet an eccentric old man who seems to have direct ties to the orphanage and its legendary past. The two boys, along with their new neighbor Sharon Smith, thus embark on a frightening trail fraught with adventure and danger as they search for and at last discover, during an unforgettable climax, the shocking truth about the tragedy at St. James Orphanage.