Episodes 01

“Lot 36”

Xenophobic, right-wing veteran Nick purchases the rights to an abandoned storage room lot. He refuses Mexican immigrant Amelia’s pleas to let her recover her familial belongings from her lot, which was mistakenly sold to him. Desperate for funds, he acquires a lot belonging to a recently deceased old man and searches for valuable items. He finds a German seance table and three volumes on demon summoning. A broker contacts a buyer, Roland, who urges him to find the rare fourth volume. While searching the lot, they find a secret chamber that contains the fourth volume and a dormant demon, summoned and sealed into the desiccated body of the old man’s long-missing sister. Ignoring Roland’s warnings, Nick breaks the seal trapping the demon while retrieving the book. The demon emerges as a writhing tentacled mass, consumes Roland, and chases Nick through the dark warehouse. Finding the exit locked and Amelia outside, Nick begs her to help him, but she leaves him to be consumed by the demon.

Episodes 02

“Graveyard Rats”

Masson is a grave robber in desperate need of funds. His attempts have been thwarted by terrifying rats, who rapidly swarm and remove any valuables held by recently buried corpses. When his financial situation becomes dire, he learns of a recently buried aristocrat and attempts to unearth him and his valuables. Masson finds the rats have already dug dragged the corpse underground. Crawling in after them, he encounters an enormous mother rat who chases him through their warren. He falls into a hole and lands in a subterranean temple filled with skeletons and riches. He steals a talisman from a corpse, which animates and chases after him demanding its return. Crawling back through the tunnels, he accidentally causes a cave-in that kills the mother rat and traps the corpse in debris. Climbing toward a light above that he believes to be the moon, he finds to his horror that it is the glint of a coffin lid’s plaque. Trapped inside and buried alive, he is swarmed by rats. Later, other grave robbers unearth his corpse, adorned with the treasures he took from the shrine, and rats emerge from his body.

Episodes 03

“The Autopsy”

Sheriff Nate Craven asks friend Dr. Carl Winters to perform autopsies on several dead miners. One of them, Joe Allen, caused an explosion while carrying a mysterious object. As Winters records his autopsies, Allen’s body reanimates, revealing that it is inhabited by an alien parasite. Allen encountered the parasite by chance and unsuccessfully attempted to destroy it. The parasites have no sensory organs and use their hosts for pleasure and nourishment. They revel in stimulating their host’s senses to extremes and keeping the host conscious as it consumes them from within. Sensing Winters’s cancer, it subdues him and plans to parasitize him, using his cancer as a replenishing food source. It cuts itself out of Allen’s body, temporarily senseless. As it burrows into Winters’s body, Winters grabs Allen’s scalpel, gouges out his eyes, punctures his eardrums, writes a message on his chest in blood, and cuts his throat. Inside their shared mind, Winters reveals to the parasite that he has trapped it in his senseless, dying body. The message on his chest instructs Craven to listen to his recordings, which captured the conversation, and burn his body.

Episodes 04

“The Outside”

Stacey, an awkward woman, longs to be accepted and beautiful like the women in her workplace. After being invited to her coworker’s Christmas party, Stacey is given a popular lotion called Alo Glo, while her taxidermy Secret Santa gift is poorly received. Despondent, she tries the lotion but finds that it gives her a rash. At home, her husband fails to reassure her that she is perfect just the way she is. After mysteriously being contacted by the creator of the lotion through her TV, she agrees to buy more Alo Glo, but her rash persists. The lotion leaks from the bottles, forming a humanoid that Stacey embraces and kisses, before it discorporates into her bathtub. When her husband tries to shake her from her obsession, she murders him. Climbing into the lotion bath, she scratches off her rashed skin and emerges, finally beautiful. She taxidermies her husband, cuts her hair, and arrives to work, stunning her coworkers, who invite her to join them. Having finally lost herself, Stacey revels in her coworkers’ attention and new shallow social status.

Episodes 05

“Pickman’s Model”

Art student Will Thurber becomes friends with Richard Pickman, whose horrific works of art mesmerize him. Years later, Thurber, now a museum curator, remains enthralled but disturbed by Pickman’s works, suffering horrific dreams. Pickman, now a successful artist, visits Thurber; his wife, Rebecca; and young son, James. When James also has terrifying dreams after seeing Pickman’s work, Thurber confronts Pickman. Pickman begs him to come to his home and see his works. Thurber lights the works on fire and accidentally shoots Pickman, who says the works were not based on imagination, but real life and scenes of the future. A demon depicted in one of the paintings emerges and drags Pickman’s corpse away. The next day, Thurber is horrified to find his museum displaying Pickman’s works, completely undamaged, and that James and Rebecca have viewed them. He sends the two home and orders the paintings destroyed. Returning home, he talks to Rebecca, promising that he will be a better husband, but discovers that the paintings have driven Rebecca mad. She has gouged out her eyes, butchered and cooked their son, and is going to make James into a meal, as depicted in one of Pickman’s paintings.

Episodes 06

“Dreams in the Witch House”

Walter Gilman witnesses his twin sister Epperley’s spirit be dragged away upon her death to the Forest of Lost Souls. As a grown man, he seeks to enter the location in hopes of saving her. He rents a room in the house of an executed witch, Keziah Mason, and takes an Indigenous drug named Liquid Gold designed to take him to the Forest. After several attempts, he locates his sister and brings a piece of her dress into the real world with him. His attempts gain the attention of the spirit of Keziah and her familiar, a human-faced rat, Jenkins Brown. When Walter successfully brings Epperley back, they learn that Keziah and Jenkins have also come back, and that Walter must die before dawn to bring one of them back permanently. Keziah attempts to kill Walter, but Epperley kills her and peacefully dies herself. However, Jenkins takes advantage of the situation and burrows into Walter’s body, bursting forth and killing him just before dawn. He burrows back into Walter’s body and triumphantly possesses him.

Episodes 07

“The Viewing”

Wealthy recluse Lionel Lassiter invites musician Randall Roth, physicist Charlotte Xie (who studies extraterrestrial life), best-selling author Guy Landon, and psychic Targ Reinhhard to his home for a special viewing, intended to help them all expand their consciousness. Flanked by his physician Dr. Zahra, he encourages them all to take a mixture of cocaine and a custom drug made by Zahra, to place them on the same wavelength. He takes them to a secret room containing an otherworldly meteor. The meteor reacts to their collective presence, and they fall into a trance. The meteor cracks open, and an oozing entity emerges. The power emanating from the being melts Targ’s face and Zahra’s body, explodes Landon’s head, and causes Xie and Roth to flee for their lives. The entity melts down and possesses Lassiter’s body, stalking the grounds of his home and killing his guard with electricity. Xie and Roth flee by car, stopping eventually to question what occurred. The entity, now merged with Lassiter into a grisly form, enters the sewers, disrupting the electricity of the city with its uncontrolled aura.

Episodes 08

“The Murmuring”

Nancy and Edgar Bradley are ornithologists studying bird murmurations. After their daughter Ava dies, they go to a remote country home to continue their studies and get away from their grief. Nancy sees ghostly apparitions of a crying boy and a screaming angry woman. Edgar believes these visions are from the strain of her grief. Nancy learns that the former owner, Claudette, drowned her son and committed suicide. During a fight over these visions, Edgar expresses frustration over Nancy never crying following Ava’s death, nor wishing to talk about it, and his hopelessness over their strained relationship. Despondent, he leaves for his research site the next morning. Alone, Nancy is chased by Claudette’s screaming ghost and hears her son crying that his mother is angry with him. Comforting him, Nancy encourages him to run into the light. He does and disappears. Nancy witnesses Claudette kill herself, realizing that her angry screams were in despair over drowning her son. Claudette’s spirit is carried by an enormous bird murmuration, which envelops Nancy, allowing her to finally cry and confront her grief. Edgar is relieved when she says she is finally ready to talk about Ava.