Writer Mike Enslin ( John Cusack ) crisscrosses the country writing travelogues of supposedly "haunted” hotels and mansions. Mike is a skeptic, however, and despite his spectrographic equipment, he has never seen anything to make him believe in ghosts.

When Mike receives a postcard warning him of the notorious Room 1408 in New York 's Dolphin Hotel , he does some digging. He finds several mysterious deaths tied to...