Chobei, the wealthy landlord of a rural village, incurs a ghostly wrath after his indifference towards his tenets causes the death of a poor farmer. After forcing the man’s wife and beautiful daughter to work as servants in his household, he kills a snake that the farmer’s wife had tried to protect, and later the farmer’s wife herself. He finds himself and his family going mad, plagued by images of rotting corpses and deathly spirits all around him.