American psychologist John Holden arrives in London to participate in a symposium aiming to expose witchcraft and devil-worship as a fraud, with attention centered on a cult run by a Julian Karswell. Debarking his plane, Holden learns that the symposium leader, Henry Harrington, has suddenly died and he is now in charge. What only the audience knows is that Harrington was clearly killed by a demon, apparently summoned by Karswell to avenge his persecution. Despite both threatening and cajoling behavior by Karswell, Holden determines to proceed, though the only cult member willing to talk about his experiences is in a prison psychiatric ward, catatonic after allegedly killing yet another cult member. However, Harrington's niece, Joanna, believes, based on her uncle's notes, that Karswell may indeed have some satanic powers derived from an ancient tome in an obscure language which he has been able to translate, and attempts to warn the skeptic Holden. Karswell's mother also attempts to warn Holden off. However, the thing which begins to most get to Holden are the occasional, but mounting, sensory and mental disturbances he begins experiencing after an encounter with Karswell, and the discovery that, during this encounter, Karswell secretly slipped a slip of parchment with a curse in runic symbols on it into Holden's belongings, a parchment identical to one Harrington recorded having had passed to him in a similar manner shortly before his death... [N.B. Holden at no point stays at the Karswell estate]. 译文(2): 美国心理学家约翰 · 霍尔登抵达伦敦参加一个研讨会，旨在揭露巫术和魔鬼崇拜作为一个骗局，注意力集中在一个由朱利安 · 卡斯韦尔运行的邪教。下了飞机，霍顿得知研讨会领导人亨利 · 哈林顿突然去世，现在由他负责。只有观众才知道，哈林顿显然是被恶魔杀死的，显然是被卡斯韦尔召唤来报复他的迫害。尽管卡斯韦尔威胁和哄骗的行为，霍尔登决定继续下去，但唯一愿意谈论他的经历的邪教成员是在监狱精神科医院，据称杀害了另一名邪教成员后精神紧张。然而，哈林顿的侄女乔安娜认为，根据她叔叔的笔记，卡斯韦尔可能确实拥有一些邪恶的力量，这些力量来自一本他已经能够翻译的古老语言的大部头，并试图警告怀疑论者霍顿。卡斯韦尔的母亲也试图警告霍尔登离开。然而，最让霍尔顿感到不安的是，在与卡斯韦尔遭遇之后，他开始经历一些偶然的、但越来越严重的、感官和精神上的干扰。在这次遭遇中，他发现卡斯韦尔偷偷地把一张带有符文符号诅咒的羊皮纸塞进了霍尔顿的随身物品中，这张羊皮纸与哈灵顿记录的一张羊皮纸相同，哈灵顿在他死前不久以类似的方式交给了他... ... [注: Karswell 庄园，霍尔顿从来不住在这里]。
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