Widow's Point

The narrative unfolds entirely through found footage: video recordings, audio transcripts, journal entries, surveillance feeds, emails, and news clippings. A framing sequence of November 2025 emails establishes that a wealthy collector of murder memorabilia, operating under the alias "johndoughboy," arranged for a hard drive to be stolen from a police officer's home and hired a data specialist named Jezebel Faust to transcribe its contents. Faust notes the material is far more disturbing than anything she has encountered before and then goes silent past her deadline, creating tension that brackets the two central narratives.

The first narrative takes place in July 2017. Thomas Livingston, a bestselling author of nonfiction books about the supernatural, arrives in the coastal town of Harper's Cove, Nova Scotia, to spend an entire weekend locked inside the Widow's Point Lighthouse, a stone tower atop seaside cliffs ringed by a razor-wire fence. In a scripted introduction, he recounts the lighthouse's violent history: Built in 1838, it has been the site of nearly two dozen mysterious deaths, including a 1933 massacre in which Joseph O'Leary, claiming a ghostly woman instructed him, bludgeoned the Collins family to death with a hammer before leaping from the catwalk at the top of the tower. In 1986, nine-year-old twin girls vanished near the property and were never found.

Ronald Parker, the elderly and hostile owner, locks Livingston inside. At the moment he crosses the threshold, his video camera malfunctions, though audio continues to record. He switches to a voice recorder and documents 268 spiral stone stairs, cluttered living quarters full of decaying boxes and mannequin limbs, and a service room where he sets up camp. The first night brings distant chains and footsteps. The next day, he discovers a leather diary belonging to Delaney Collins, the 12-year-old girl murdered in 1933. Her early entries are innocent, but later ones describe a ghostly woman in a white nightdress, objects moving by themselves, and the feeling of being watched.

The phenomena escalate rapidly. A violent storm arrives despite clear forecasts. From the catwalk, Livingston witnesses what appears to be a massive sailing ship crashing on the rocks below, but the recorded footage shows only empty ocean. By Sunday, all his sealed water bottles contain salt water, his food is rotten, and the staircase seems to have gained extra steps. A bloody hammer appears on his sleeping bag; when he touches it, he experiences a visceral vision of being O'Leary, killing Delaney. His cell phone receives a call from his dead father taunting him about childhood abuse. In his final entry, he identifies approaching heavy footsteps as O'Leary: "He never left. None of them did."

When Parker unlocks the door Monday morning, Livingston is gone. Police find a blood-soaked sleeping bag, symbols in blood on the walls, and no trace of the author. A Baltimore Sun article reports some medical professionals attribute the recordings to schizophrenia. In an online question-and-answer session on Reddit, ghost hunter Rob Elliott dismisses that theory. The framing emails resume: Faust destroys the hard drive and calls the footage evil.

The second narrative begins in October 2025. Trent Bell, a famous YouTube personality in his mid-twenties, has purchased the lighthouse and arrives with his crew: Steph DuPree, his longtime friend and camerawoman; Jeff Koch, his editor; and Phil Park, his producer. They are joined by Rob Elliott, now 34 and host of Paranormal Investigation Bureau, and Professor Catherine Durand, a 56-year-old anthropologist and author of Spiritual Tumors who grew up in Harper's Cove but has not returned in 33 years. Jeff outfits a surveillance van with live camera feeds from throughout the lighthouse. Phil, deeply unnerved after seeing a woman in a white nightdress on the stairs, leaves before the first night.

Ronald Parker, now approximately 89, confronts the group and warns them to leave. Once settled, Trent reveals key acquisitions: replica diaries of Delaney Collins's journal and Livingston's unedited audio recorder. Strange events begin immediately. A child-sized tooth appears in Trent's sleeping bag. Rob wakes to girls singing "This Old Man" from the stairway. His electromagnetic-field (EMF) detection equipment records spikes at 1:52 a.m., with peaks at exactly 7 or 21 milligauss. Durand decodes the pattern as Morse code spelling "HIGH TIDE," transmitted at the exact time of that night's high tide, proving the spirits can adapt to real-time conditions.

Parker returns for an interview, revealing that deaths have continued near the lighthouse and admitting Livingston was "bait." During an Ouija board session, the planchette claims to be a worker killed during the lighthouse's construction in 1838. When Durand gives her name, the board aggressively spells NO and begins K-I-T-C-A. She flees, later explaining that "Kitcat" was her father's secret nickname for her, known to absolutely no one else. Trent confronts her about undisclosed family ties to several of the lighthouse's victims.

Phenomena intensify. Mannequins move on their own. Steph counts 351 stairs during a solo descent, though the number returns to 268 when the group counts together. Trent grows increasingly drawn to the catwalk. On a hike to the beach, the group discovers the cave from Delaney's diary, containing Indigenous Mi'kmaq pictographs of an enormous 13-tentacled creature. Trent slips into a submerged pool and surfaces beside Phil Park's ravaged corpse. Meanwhile, Jeff, alone at the van, is lured into the lighthouse by a voice mimicking Phil. The service room transforms into its pristine 19th-century state. On the catwalk, standing naked among mannequins with the cave creature's symbol in blood on his chest, Jeff tells Trent that "no one ever leaves" and falls to his death.

When the group reenters the lighthouse, a blasphemous crucifix with tiny human teeth props the door open. Time codes corrupt to zeros. Night has fallen though it should be midday, and Harper's Cove has vanished from the coastline. Rob encounters O'Leary's ghost and is thrown through an impossible corridor of doors, including the Collins family bedroom in 1933, where he sees the battered body of Delaney's younger brother Stephen and O'Leary preparing to murder Delaney. Steph's phone rings: Durand's dead father addresses Durand as "Kitcat" and tells her to take the hammer. Durand finds O'Leary's gore-encrusted weapon in the lower level.

Trent's possession deepens. Speaking in Livingston's voice, he taunts Durand about having once spent the night with the real Livingston and reveals Trent's deepest guilt: His younger sister Amanda drowned at 12 while Trent was distracted. He strangles Steph, telling her Trent is gone. Durand strikes Trent with the hammer, killing him, then revives Steph with CPR.

As dawn breaks, the two women descend the staircase. They find Rob's GoPro but not Rob. The lighthouse door is unlocked, with "SNOOPY," her father's crew nickname, carved beside the knob. Durand hands Steph the truck keys but does not follow her outside. She closes the door, saying she cannot leave her father. Through the door, Steph hears Durand's voice, happy and fading, as she climbs the stairs.

Steph drives toward the gate, but Trent's ghost materializes in the passenger seat. The truck accelerates on its own, veers toward the cliff, and launches into open air. Shadow figures watch from the catwalk as it erupts in flames on the rocks below.

In closing materials, Faust is found dead in her apartment, its walls covered in lighthouse photographs and mannequin heads. On January 3, 2026, Rob Elliott's dormant Twitch account goes live at 3:13 a.m., showing a dark screen and ragged breathing before moonlight pierces the frame and the lighthouse's door slowly swings open, revealing a snow-covered field beyond.