Carl Kolchak takes a job at the L.A. Beacon as a crime reporter and begins investigating a strange case in which a pregnant woman has gone missing. When her body is found fingers point to the woman's husband, but Kolchak believes in the man's innocence, believing that there is a supernatural angle to the story. His investigations are frustrated when Perri Reed, the newspaper's senior crime reporter, digs into Kolchak's mysterious past.

When a peaceful lawyer takes a baseball bat to his wife then kills himself, Carl suspects that a cult leader the man prosecuted is responsible, and has the ability to influence others into unwittingly killing their loved ones. But it soon becomes clear that Perri, whose story helped put the man in prison, is his next target.