Ghost Story 1981

During the bitter winter of 1979, in the small New England town of Milburn, four elderly friends—Dr. John Jaffrey, Melvyn Douglas; Sears James, John Houseman; Ricky Hawthorne, Fred Astaire; and Edward Charles Wanderley, Douglas Fairbanks Jr.—form the Chowder Society, an intimate weekly club where they trade chilling tales to keep the cold at bay. The town carries a quiet, almost ceremonial pace as their conversations drift from memory to myth, and the boundaries between truth and legend begin to blur. Edward’s son David, who resides in New York, dies after a troubling incident in which a woman he’s been sleeping with suddenly appears to turn into a living corpse. Edward’s other son, Don Wanderley, returns home at his father’s request, and not long after, Edward himself vanishes during a snowstorm after calling out to David and then pursuing a female apparition that appears before him on a bridge. The two escaped patients from a nearby asylum—Gregory Bates, Miguel Fernandes, and Fenny Bates, Lance Holcomb—have taken residence in Eva Galli’s old, crumbling house, now a hollow shell of its former life.

Don’s skepticism about his father’s death pushes him to prove a point to the Chowder Society, so he offers a ghost story of his own to gain entry. In a swift, uneasy flashback, Don reveals a painful past: in Florida he begins an affair with a mysterious secretary named Alma, Alice Krige who insists she wants to marry him back in Milburn. Don’s unease grows as he senses something wrong with Alma, and a chilling moment when his touch confirms her coldness unsettles him even further. He eventually breaks things off, but not before Alma disappears from his life in a way that unsettles him deeply. A month later, he learns the devastating news that he is now engaged to Alma—an unsettling twist that pushes him toward a desperate reach for truth. He uncovers an old photograph of a young woman who looks identical to Alma, a discovery that unsettles him even more. John, sensing danger, pleads with his friends to tell the truth, but is met with resistance and disbelief.

The next morning, John awakens from a troubling nightmare of Alma and dies of a heart attack, a shock that unsettles the group. Sears and Ricky eventually reveal the long-buried history: in the spring of 1929, the four friends became entangled with Eva Galli, a flirtatious young woman whose presence unsettled the town’s moral code. Edward is drawn to Eva and brings her to bed, but he proves to be impotent, setting the stage for the others to share her company as well. One after another, the men serenade Eva outside her house, hoping for a glimpse of her, and when she appears, Edward ends up at the window instead, giving the impression that he has slept with her. After a night of heavy drinking, the four men return to Eva’s house; Eva begins to reveal the truth about her dalliance with Edward, but Edward abruptly silences her, and she slams her head on a stone mantelpiece. Believing Eva to be dead, they load her body into her car and push it into a nearby pond. The car sinks, but Eva’s voice and scream from within the car echo as she stabs at the back window, a chilling sign that the truth may be far from settled.

Back in the present, Ricky and Don grow convinced that Alma and Eva are the same woman and that Eva’s spirit has returned to avenge the wrongs done to her. Don suggests they confront Eva’s ghost in the old house, a plan that brings the four men back to a place of old memories and old anxieties. In the ensuing events, Don climbs into danger and falls through rotten stairs, breaking his leg. Sears drives off to fetch help, leaving Don and Ricky behind. On the snowy road, Sears encounters Eva’s apparition and narrowly avoids disaster, but he is attacked and killed by Fenny Bates. Ricky, now convinced of Eva’s power, continues on to get help but is intercepted by Gregory Bates and learns Eva’s larger plan for both of them. He stabs Gregory and escapes, urging the authorities to haul Eva’s car from the lake to reveal her body inside. The car is pulled up and the rusted door is pried open, and Eva’s rotting corpse tumbles out. With the truth about Eva finally exposed, Don is spared from her vengeance, and the town settles back into its uneasy, fragile peace—the kind of quiet that only a town steeped in secrets could understand.

In the end, the Chowder Society’s long-held belief in the supernatural is tempered by a harsher reality: the past sins of the four men, once buried, return with a vengeance, and only by facing what they did can their town hope to recover. The winter’s ice breaks, but the memories linger, binding the community to a cautionary tale about desire, guilt, and the price of keeping dark truths hidden.