The Witch

In the present day, Julia is shocked to learn that the pelvic bone belongs to a man. Henry also notes that if Caroline had been burned at the stake as historical records suggest, her remains would be ash, not an intact skeleton. He returns the bone to Julia and advises her to rebury it. Henry also shares that he found records for a Celia Caine, who was employed at Pemberton and had a prior criminal record for theft. After leaving Pemberton, she vanished from local records. Julia gives Henry the hair sample she collected for the DNA test. As he prepares to leave, Henry expresses his hope that Julia will stay in Woodhaven.

Back at Pemberton, Julia struggles to find an opportunity to rebury the pelvic bone, as Mick is constantly working in the yard. She decides that she will have to do it at night but feels apprehensive. For now, she hides the bone in her bedroom. When she returns to her room later, she discovers that it has been completely ransacked. The two letters she took from the attic are missing. Julia concludes that an intruder, not a ghost, is responsible.

In 1692, Caroline and Jonas travel through the woods by moonlight. Still believing that Jonas is a serial killer, Caroline plans to escape from him at the first opportunity. As they rest, Jonas insists that he isn’t the Night Reaper. He claims that he loved Leonora, the last woman to be murdered, and intended to marry her, but he found her already dead. Caroline is skeptical, pointing out that he just murdered Deputy Strickland. Jonas admits to killing Strickland but argues that it was necessary to free them and that the deputy deserved to die for condemning an innocent woman.

Jonas then reveals that their destination is Pemberton. He wants Caroline to sneak into the house while Archie is asleep to steal money or jewelry to fund their escape. Seeing the money as her best chance to eventually get away from Jonas, Caroline agrees to the plan.

In the present, Julia is frustrated after failing to find any current information about Celia Caine online. Henry takes her to dinner, and afterward, they share another kiss in his car outside Pemberton. Inside, Julia finds her grandmother attempting to knit. When Julia asks her about Celia Caine, Letty becomes agitated, saying that she was forbidden from ever speaking Celia’s name. Their conversation is cut short when Ethel arrives, displeased to find them talking. Julia confronts Ethel for leaving Letty alone, but Ethel dismisses her concerns, claiming that Mick was in the house.

The phone rings, and it’s Dixon, the paranormal investigator. He tells Julia that his audio recordings from Pemberton captured something significant that she must hear in person. He refuses to play it over the phone and arranges to visit the next morning.

Later that night, Julia is awakened by an eerie glow coming from the shed in the backyard. She then hears footsteps creaking up the stairs and stopping directly outside her bedroom door, followed by the sound of someone breathing. After the noises fade, she cautiously opens her door to find the hallway empty.

In 1692, Caroline and Jonas arrive at Pemberton. While hiding, Caroline reflects on her marriage, concluding that she was wrong to suspect an affair between Archie and Molly and that Archie was justified in not defending her during the witch trials to save himself. She insists on entering the house alone to steal money, telling Jonas to wait. 

After breaking a windowpane to get inside, Caroline is briefly startled by a noise but is relieved to discover that it’s her cat, Gideon. She brings him inside and feeds him some cheese. Caroline then locates the key to Archie’s desk, which he keeps hidden in a Bible, and moves to unlock the drawer containing his money. Just as she’s about to insert the key, she hears a woman’s scream.

In the present day, Dixon plays his enhanced recording for Julia and Ethel. It captures the grandfather clock stopping, followed by hoofbeats and a woman sobbing the words “No” and “Stop.” Next, the recording plays a voice repeating the same sound that Julia remembers hearing as a child. When Dixon slows the audio, the word becomes clear: The voice is whispering the name “Celia.”

Upon hearing the name, Ethel flies into a rage, accuses Dixon of being a charlatan, and throws him out of the house. Julia is stunned by Ethel’s extreme reaction and realizes that she’s desperately trying to hide a secret connected to Celia.

Julia takes her grandmother for a haircut, and Letty is thrilled with the result. However, upon their return to Pemberton, Ethel confronts Julia in a fury. She reveals that Adult Protective Services paid a visit, citing concerns—such as Letty burning toast and wearing only nightgowns—that only Julia could have known. Ethel accuses Julia of reporting them. Julia denies it, realizing with horror that Henry must have made the call. Enraged that Julia shared their private family matters, Ethel orders her to leave the house by the next morning. Julia feels utterly betrayed by Henry, convinced he only did it to gain control of the property.

While packing, Julia receives a call from Henry, who cheerfully asks her out dancing. She immediately confronts him about calling Adult Protective Services. He admits to it but insists that his motives were born of genuine concern for her grandmother’s safety, drawing from his own painful experience with his grandfather’s dementia. Julia refuses to believe him, accusing him of manipulating her to secure the sale of Pemberton. She informs him that Ethel has kicked her out and that she’s leaving in the morning. Henry is shocked and pleads with her to stay, professing that his feelings for her are real, but Julia ends the call, convinced their relationship was a lie.

Determined to rebury the pelvic bone before she leaves, Julia goes into the backyard at one o’clock in the morning. On her way out, she discovers a message scrawled on the hallway wall in a reddish-brown substance: “JULA GET OT NOWW” (300). She takes it as a final warning from the house’s spirit.

As Julia begins digging, her phone is flooded with a series of urgent missed calls and texts from Henry from earlier in the evening. Alarmed, she listens to his short, frantic voicemails urging her to call him. Sensing that something is terribly wrong, she decides to call him back immediately.

In 1692, Caroline runs upstairs after hearing more screams and a choking sound. She enters the bedroom to find Archie strangling the pregnant Molly, who lies naked in their bed. By the time he releases her, Molly is dead. Archie collapses, crying that he can never control his violent urges. His words make Caroline realize the truth: Her husband is the Night Reaper.

In the present, Henry answers Julia’s late-night call and tells her that the DNA test results are in. As he speaks, Julia sees two flashlight beams—Ethel’s and Mick’s—approaching her across the dark yard. Before the call cuts out, Henry clarifies that the test showed no familial DNA connection between Julia and Ethel. The woman Julia has known as her great-aunt is a stranger. Just as she processes this, her phone loses service, and the two figures reach her.

Ethel confronts Julia and, referring to the pelvic bone at her feet, notes that she has “found Ethel.” When Mick nervously addresses Ethel as “Celia,” her true identity is confirmed. Celia confesses to murdering the real Ethel Eldridge decades ago by smothering her with a pillow while she was weak from giving birth to Julia’s father. Celia then convinced a grief-stricken Letty that Ethel died in childbirth and that they should conceal her pregnancy to protect her reputation. They buried the body and concealed the crime, allowing Celia to assume Ethel’s identity and Letty to claim the baby as hers. The falling-out between Ethel and her parents conveniently made the identity theft possible.

Celia also reveals that the “haunting” was a series of tricks that she and Mick performed to scare Julia away, including pumping cold air into her room and manipulating the ghost hunter’s equipment with magnets. As Julia realizes that Mick loves Celia and has been her accomplice for years, Celia shoots him.

In 1692, Archie confesses that he can’t control his compulsion to kill but claims that he never harmed Caroline because it would have drawn suspicion, especially after the death of his first wife, Temperance—whom Caroline now realizes he also murdered. Archie’s grief quickly turns to calculation. He initially plans to blame Molly’s murder on Caroline, claiming that she bewitched him. Realizing that this story would lead to his own execution, he concludes that he has no choice but to kill Caroline to silence her. He attacks her, and as she stumbles, he pins her to the floor and begins to strangle her.

In the present, as Mick lies dying and unable to speak, Celia asks him why he betrayed her by whispering her name on Dixon’s recorder and leaving Ethel’s letters for Julia to find. Celia forces Julia at gunpoint to enlarge the grave for Mick’s body. Julia understands that Celia plans to kill and bury her there as well to eliminate the last witness. Julia throws a handful of dirt in Celia’s face and makes a desperate run for the house, but she finds the back door locked. As Celia corners her and prepares to fire, Letty appears and strikes Celia on the head with a large shovel, knocking her unconscious.

In 1692, just as Archie is about to kill Caroline, a musket shot rings out, and he collapses dead. Jonas stands in the doorway, holding the gun he took from the jail. He explains that he grew tired of waiting for her.

Caroline and Jonas know that they will be rearrested and hanged if they go to the authorities. Jonas devises a new plan: Since the town believes that Caroline and Jonas died in the jail fire, they can steal the identities of the deceased Archie and Molly. They will pretend that Archie and Molly have left town to marry and start a new life elsewhere, using Archie’s money and papers. To make the plan work, they must bury the real bodies.

In the present, the police arrive and take statements from Julia and her grandmother. Julia realizes that Letty, not Mick, left Celia’s name on the recording and placed the letters where her granddaughter would find them. When Letty claims that her sister, Edith, woke her in time to save Julia, the police officer assumes she’s confused. However, Julia privately believes that her biological grandmother’s ghost saved her life.

In 1692, as they stand by the freshly dug grave in the Pemberton backyard, Jonas tells Caroline that he wants to give her a good life and asks her to be his wife under their new identities. Caroline accepts.

The timeline shifts to 1717. A middle-aged Caroline and Jonas, who have been living as Molly and Archibald Eldridge and have raised four children, return to an empty Pemberton. They plan to live out the rest of their lives there. Jonas brings a newly commissioned portrait of them to hang in the parlor, solidifying their assumed identities.

One year later, Julia and Henry are living together. The museum now owns Pemberton, and Julia manages the property. Celia is in prison for the murders of Mick and the real Ethel, while Letty has moved to an assisted-living facility and was not prosecuted for her role in the cover-up. Ethel’s remains were exhumed from the backyard and given a proper burial, and the “strange presence” at Pemberton has vanished. 

The police found three skeletons in the yard at Pemberton: Ethel’s and two 300-year-old skeletons, one male and one female. They presumed that the female skeleton was Caroline Eldridge and reburied her in the Woodhaven cemetery with a new gravestone. The identity of the man buried alongside her remains a mystery.