Present day... A man returns to a long-abandoned neighborhood. Doors stand ajar, shutters hang open, lawns and landscaping are unkempt. The man sits on the curb and opens a leather-bound journal. Through the journal, he recalls the events that took place in Ravenhill decades earlier. Journey back to 1964... The man is just a boy. He and his friends find that their neighborhood, a cul-de-sac set into the foothills along the California coast, is not all that it appears. There are strange happenings; some amazing, some terrifying, and all pointing to the fact that this little community of families might just be something other than what the rest of the world perceives it to be. Thirteen year-old Ben Foster, along with his friends Peter and Louis, and his older sister Julie, set out to find the secret behind the peculiar events that the outside world doesn't see and that those living in the neighborhood either choose to ignore or are conspiring to keep hidden. Young Peter will set the tales down in his journal, which years later a grown Ben Foster will clasp to as the last surviving corroboration of their adventures and of their astonishing discovery.