Last week on Houdini & Doyle, they solved a case seemingly involving vampires. This week the dead talk when Houdini and Doyle meet up with Thomas Edison and his Necrophone.
A woman in Canada, Mrs. Reed, wakes alone in bed. She calls for her husband, then gets up to look for him. She finds him pinned to the wall with a sword. She tells the police it was a poltergeist. They hold her for committing murder.
Doyle and Stratton travel with Houdini to bring his dead mother home. Doyle says the victim’s home is haunted. The previous family all died there tragically. Thomas Edison wants to help investigate with his new invention. It supposedly communicates with the dead.
Doyle meets with Mrs. Reed. She claims she felt pinned to the bed. Doyle says there’s a state between wake and sleep that causes paralysis. Reed says evil was present in the room. Doyle brings up the death of her son. Influenza took him. Stratton asks about domestic abuse. Her husband struck her in public. Stratton suggests killing him would be a way out. Reed vehemently denies killing him. Could it really be a poltergeist?
Doyle and Stratton meet a paranormal investigator, Carson, along with Edison and an empath named Amelia. Amelia feels the emotions of other people, living and dead. Edison’s assistant, Havari, is also present. Carson tells the story of the Turner family. The father murdered his entire family and then killed himself. Carson believes Turner’s spirit is still in the house.
Edison unveils his Necrophone. Amelia and Stratton fear opening a portal to the other side.
In New York, Houdini stands at his mother’s funeral. He’s upset that his brothers ordered a religious ceremony. Houdini insists that his mother would want a party, not her family sobbing over her grave.
Stratton asks Havari for his opinion of the Necrophone. He hopes to talk to his wife. He wants her blessing to see someone new. He tells Stratton if she gets answers from her dead husband, she can move on. She asks if they know their loved ones are still around, how will they move on? It’s an excellent question.
The candles in the room go out and Amelia asks the spirit to show itself. They hear a scream and items in the room smash against the floor. The bible flips pages. Amelia says Mr. Turner is there. She feels his rage. Doyle believes Mrs. Turner turned the bible pages. She died in that room. Stratton thinks it was a breeze from the window.
They play the recording back and hear a voice. Doyle realizes Houdini staged it all. He steps from the shadows. He wanted to prove that people can be fooled.
Stratton tells Houdini he should grieve. He says it’s time he focuses on living again. He tells Stratton that Walbridge is out of business. There’s a forwarding address.
Stratton believes she hears Benjamin from the Necrophone. She asks who murdered him, but he won’t answer. She wakes with a start and realizes she was dreaming. A chair moves itself across the room.
Stratton accuses Houdini of scaring her so she’d sleep in his room. He denies it. Doyle hears them. Stratton shows them the chair. It moves again. Houdini tries to disprove that it was caused by spirits.
They hear the Necrophone and find Edison playing with it. He plays them what sounds like Mr. Turner revealing where he took his own life. They run to the cliff and find Havari dead at the bottom.
The police see only one set of footprints at the cliff’s edge. Havari’s wrists suggest he struggled with someone. There are unexplained injuries to his chest. The empath says it’s eerily similar to Mr. Turner’s death.
Houdini suggests someone tampered with the Necrophone and killed Havari. Doyle notices that the mud from Havari’s shoes is red. The mud at the top of the cliff is not.
Houdini sees a woman in the coroner’s cart who was also at his mother’s funeral. He fears she’s following him.
Houdini accuses Edison of falsifying data and killing Havari because he knew the machine was a fraud, but then he hears his mother’s voice.
Houdini recognizes that Stratton stopped looking for answers in case Benjamin wasn’t really murdered. He tells her she can deal with it because she’s strong. She returns the sentiment but says it’s okay to be weak. He kisses her then apologizes.
The cellar has red mud. Our heroes discover blood and a wall that rings hollow. They find a hidden room where Havari was murdered. Someone planted the footprints and plunged his body over the cliff. Who was it?
Houdini sees an electromagnet that was used to move Stratton’s chair. Havari must have discovered it and been killed. On the floor, our trio finds the Reed’s son’s grave. Why is it hidden? Doyle digs up the body. The baby was murdered. Houdini suggests Mrs. Reed killed the baby and her husband. Who helped her by killing Havari? Houdini believes Mrs. Reed had an affair. The baby is a product of their tryst. The killer placed fresh flowers on his grave.
Mrs. Reed says her husband found a love letter and killed the baby. She still denies killing him. It must be her lover. She won’t give him up, so Doyle suggests they check the Necrophone. The voices accuse Carson. He breaks down and admits he killed Reed. He thought if he could convince people that the house was haunted, Mrs. Reed would be set free and they could be together. Our trio fraudulently added the voice to the Necrophone to get Carson’s confession.
Suddenly, a multitude of voices comes through the Necrophone and the room shakes. Edison believes he has opened a portal to hell and smashes the machine. Houdini thinks Edison came up with the elaborate scheme to cover up his failure.
Houdini tells Doyle to bring his wife to the doctors in New York. Doyle says he can’t live having his hopes dashed each day.
Stratton goes to Walbridge and finds her husband alive! She slaps him. He claims to be an undercover agent. He faked his death to disappear when he was found out. He wants her to stop pursuing the case. He’ll come home when it’s over.
Houdini returns to his mother’s grave and mourns properly. He sees the same woman following him.