Nancy Drew's jewler's customer Mrs. Putney asks Nancy and her friends to help recover her stolen jewels. The search for the thieves takes Nancy, Bess, and George into a series of dangerous circumstances .The odd behavior of Mrs. Putney and two other young women involve Nancy in a case about a cruel hoax of haunting "spirits" at the abandoned Blackwood Hall, believed to be haunted. It is later revealed that the Brex brothers have been holding fake senacès, and cheating innocent people into investing their money in a fake organisation, known as the three branch ranch, cheating mostly young girls into giving them their hard earned money.