A mysterious stranger enters a home uninvited, drawn from the street by the haunting music of Beethoven's "Geister (Ghost) Trio" that three musicians are performing. The pianist is immediately smitten with the woman of obvious wealth and status, soon proposing they marry. She says it is impossible, as the man would be forced to choose between her or his music.
Jeff Morgan reads a story in a pulp fiction magazine exactly like one he'd written and filed away years earlier. His meeting with the author, Frank Joyce, is eerie; he already knows everything about the man without having met him before. Convinced Frank is his doppelganger, Jeff panics when he dreams Frank steps onto an elevator that malfunctions and plunges fifteen stories. Frank just scoffs at his frantic warning.
Bird lover Waldo Bryan leaves behind his big city art career to live in the country. His wife, Adele, has turned hateful, angry that he made her give up the city life. To get even, she lets Waldo's beloved parakeet out of it's cage to be killed by her cat. The birds outside seem to know of Adele's evil deed and turn on her, turning her into the caged one.
Dede attends the silent supper, a ritual the single Bayou women conduct to foresee their future husbands. Old voodoo woman Miss Watkins had told Dede that she'd meet her husband at the supper that night. Miss Watkins has the misfortune of meeting up with troublemaker Jean Duval, who stabs her and steals her silver. Then, uninvited, he crashes the silent supper.
Ambitious defense attorney David Stevenson has high political aspirations and believes his romance with a nobody like Sylvia Willis will only hold him back. Calling in a favor from a murderer he once saved from conviction, he has his bride-to-be shot. Sylvia, however, is not so easily silenced. She demands justice and forces the great attorney to defend himself before a jury of the dead.
In 1890s London, Mrs. Manifold runs a boarding house for sailors on the waterfront. New hire John hears from a customer that her wine-guzzling husband, Ambrose, long ago disappeared and that some say she killed him. The old lady gets jumpy when a strange man reeking of wine signs the register "Ambrose Manifold.