In 1928, near Shreveport, Louisiana, sheriff’s deputies accompany banker Benjamin Sanford to the farmhouse occupied by the Monroe family who have been served with several eviction notices. Inside the house, Dwayne Monroe and his brother, Todd, who wears eyeglasses with a cracked lens, prepare to fight for the property, while Dwayne’s wife, Anna, gathers ammunition. When Sanford presents a court order to immediately vacate the premises, the brothers initiate a shootout with police. As additional officers arrive, the living room is riddled with bullets, and the three Monroes fall to the floor. Nearly twenty years later, in 1942, real estate agent Jake Rudd sells the former Monroe farmhouse to a young couple, Ben and Ruth Watkins, from New Orleans, Louisiana, who have relocated for Ben’s new job at the cotton mill. Soon after unpacking, however, Ruth finds an anonymous note in the mailbox scribbled, “I want you to move,” but Ben dismisses it as a juvenile prank. Ruth is further alarmed when a local peddler, Roy Lee, informs her that previous owners, Mr. and Mrs. Mullins, were mysteriously killed on the property in 1934. That night, Ruth screams when she sees a man outside the kitchen window. The intruder disappears, but Ben notices footprints on the porch and thinks the man might be a vagrant looking for a place to sleep. The next morning, Ben travels to Arkansas on business, while Ruth visits the friendly widow next door, Olie Gibson, who is confined to a wheelchair. Olie confirms that a violent incident did happen at the Monroe house in 1934 and reveals that another tragedy occurred five years later. During Christmas 1939, owner Frank Rhinehart was electrocuted while fixing the fuse box, and the body of his wife Ethel was found burned to death nearby. The following day, Ruth hears footsteps upstairs. At that moment, Ben telephones from the train station in Arkansas to say that he will be arriving home that evening. Ruth tries to alert Ben to the intruder in the house, but there is a poor connection, so Ben hangs up. When Ruth sees a man at the top of the stairs, she breaks open the kitchen door, which the intruder barred shut from the outside, and escapes to Olie’s house, unharmed. Later that night, Ben picks up his wife at Olie’s home and asks the old woman if she has a gun he can borrow. From a locked room, Olie retrieves a rifle that belonged to her late husband. After Ben searches the farmhouse and finds no one, Ruth tells him that she wants to move back to New Orleans, but Ben reminds her about his commitment to the new job. The next day, Ben purchases a handgun and teaches Ruth how to shoot. Sometime later, Ben calls Ruth from the mill to say that he must work extra hours and instructs his wife to stay with Olie that evening until he gets home. Taking the handgun with her, Ruth knocks on Olie’s door, but no one answers. She returns to the farmhouse and discovers the phone is not working. Meanwhile, Ben decides to leave work after being unable to reach his wife or Olie on the telephone. When Ruth sees the intruder’s shadow on the front porch, she fires the gun repeatedly at him, but misses and eventually runs out of bullets. The intruder breaks the living room window with a machete, but retreats at the sight of a car approaching. As Ben enters the dark house, Ruth thinks he is the intruder and shoots him. As soon as she realizes her mistake, she tries to help her wounded husband, but the intruder returns and chases her to the bedroom, where he grabs her. After struggling up the stairs, Ben shoots and injures the intruder, who falls out the window and scurries away. Later at the hospital, Ben dies. During the funeral, Olie appears distraught and goes home where she finds the wounded intruder, Dwayne Monroe, sleeping in the locked room. He wakes and threatens her with a machete. Angry, Olie takes off her disguise and is revealed to be Anna Monroe. She orders her deranged husband to put the weapon down and reminds Dwayne that their revenge plan has always succeeded, ever since they escaped with Todd during the raid in 1928. Although the gun battle left her crippled, she will never allow anyone to live in their old farmhouse. However, Dwayne screams that he is tired of being confined to the bedroom, except when called upon to murder new inhabitants next door. He then kills Olie as she tries to leave. After Ben's funeral, Ruth stops by Olie’s house to say goodbye. As she goes inside and calls out for her friend, Dwayne surprises her, but Jake Rudd hears Ruth screaming and arrives in time to shoot Dwayne dead. Five years later, Ruth lives in town and is remarried to Rudd. One day, Mr. and Mrs. Bumford arrive at Rudd’s office and announce that they want to pay cash for a house along Route 2. Rudd puts on his cracked eyeglasses, revealing his true identity as Todd Monroe, and hands over the necessary paperwork for the Bumfords to review. When Rudd informs Ruth that the Bumfords are buying the Monroe farmhouse, she says that he promised her no one would ever live in that house again. The following year, Mrs. Bumford is found dead in the well behind the house and three months later, the coroner determines that Mr. Bumford committed suicide. The house has remained vacant ever since.