Uncle Gard and Aunt Cornelia's NYC brownstone is being expanded to make more room for Samantha and the three O'Malley sisters. While the renovation is underway, the family moves to an apartment on the top floor of Ravenscourt, a fashionable new 13-story "apartment-hotel." Samantha is excited about their luxurious new digs--until she learns there's a terrible curse on the building's owner, Horace Raven! From the day Samantha and Nellie arrive at Ravenscourt, one thing after another goes alarmingly wrong. With the heating system on the fritz, rats in the walls, and the elevator crashing, tenants begin moving out. Worst of all for Samantha and Nellie, the little O'Malley girls get sick--and Aunt Cornelia makes a hasty and mystifying departure to visit her mother in Connecticut, leaving the girls alone at Ravenscourt with grumpy housekeeper Gertrude. Are all these troubles happening because of the curse--or is something else scaring the residents from Ravenscourt?