Based on the classic Edgar Allan Poe short story 'Ligeia', the film is about a young, successful writer and scholar, Jonathan Merrick, who happens to fall under the spell of the bewitchingly, irresistibly beautiful Ligeia. Ligeia knows that she will die of a rare cancer and has decided to fight death by using her mystic powers to drive the soul from the human body, contain it and use its energy to transfer her own spirit so that she can become immortal. Ligeia pulls Jonathan into her dark, goth world and takes him away from his fiancee Rowena. Obsession takes over love and even after Ligeia's dramatic death, she continues to haunt Jonathan driving him to the brink of insanity.