Dr. Gregory House, a drug-addicted, unconventional, misanthropic medical genius, leads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton–Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey.

A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.

A local priest tries to rid 112 Ocean Avenue of unclean spirits, but what he doesn't yet suspect is that teen Sonny Montelli has been possessed, body and soul, by a murderous demon bent on total destruction.