Ivan Opalin, a young operative from the criminal investigations department, receives an unusual assignment: to go to an old country estate in the Moscow region, where a ghost suddenly appears, figure everything out, and punish the guilty. The estate has its own rules, and the scars from the revolution that ended quite recently have not yet faded—so a detective’s work turns out to be anything but easy. Everything is complicated further by the fact that strange things really do happen in the house, and materialist Opalin can’t find an explanation. What is it—machinations of the former owner, who earned a reputation as a sorcerer? Something truly supernatural? Or a clever hoax? Ivan must find out.