After an au pair's tragic death, Henry Wingrave hires a young American nanny to care for his orphaned niece and nephew who reside at Bly Manor in 1980s England with the estate's chef Owen, groundskeeper Jamie and housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. But all is not as it seems at the manor, and centuries of dark secrets of love and loss are waiting to be unearthed in this chilling gothic romance. At Bly Manor, dead doesn't mean gone.

It follows a curmudgeonly instructor at a New England prep school who is forced to remain on campus during Christmas break to babysit the handful of students with nowhere to go. Eventually, he forms an unlikely bond with one of them a damaged, brainy troublemaker, and with the school's head cook, who has just lost a son in Vietnam.