Living on an estate on the shores of Lake Geneva, Lord Byron is visited by Percy and Mary Shelley. Together with Byron's lover Claire Clairmont, and aided by hallucinogenic substances, they devise an evening of ghoulish tales. However, when confronted by horrors, ostensibly of their own creation, it becomes difficult to tell apparition from reality.

In the 1920s, Michael Arlen was one of the most popular and acclaimed writers in the world, but he mysteriously stopped writing altogether. His son tries to work out why this was.