text: This complicated story begins fairly simply, with an English journalist accepting a wager from Edgar Allen Poe and his friend Lord Blackwood that he cannot spend a night in the haunted Blackwood castle. Once there, the writer wanders around the dusty rooms and corridors, until music and a glimpse of a waltzing couple lead him into an empty room. He sits at the harpsichord and starts to play the tune he has heard, and is surprised to be tapped on the shoulder by the stunningly beautiful Elizabeth Blackwood. She informs him with an ambiguous charming/eerie manner that she has prepared his room upstairs and that someone is always expected on this night...the Night of the Dead. Thus begins a startling series of supernatural events that bewilder the journalist all the rest of the night. SPOILER AHEAD: it probably won't surprise too many viewers to learn that the lovely Elizabeth is actually a ghost. This doesn't prevent her from falling in love with the journalist, but it does make things more complicated for them than for the average couple. This is a fun movie, with absolutely everything: ghosts, the spooky castle, repeated visions of past events, sex and violence ( though both have been toned down in the version most Americans have seen over the years.) The alluring, captivating Barbara Steele is the main reason to see it. She has a strange charisma unlike anyone else you've ever seen in the movies. Recommended!