Central to the plot is Baskerville Hall, a brooding, gloomy, ancient mansion. Its dimly lit interior suggests a place long haunted by the evil deeds of its previous owners: “The lodge was a ruin of black granite and bared ribs of rafters” (23). Inside, portraits of ancestors line the walls and give a sense of a place plagued by its past.

Outside, work continues on a new building that rises up out of the fortune gained by the late Sir Charles from business activities in South Africa. Sir Henry promises to electrify the mansion, and the new construction suggests an estate trying to climb out from under the heavy burden of a superstitious past and into the brighter light of more rational modern times.

For 500 years, ever since a huge dog ripped out the throat of Hugo Baskerville on the moorland of his estate, tales of a gigantic hound that roams the territory have haunted Baskerville Hall. Fear of this creature gets the better of the ailing Sir Charles Baskerville, who dies of a heart attack when he witnesses a spectral beast.

Stories of this creature inflame belief in the supernatural, and the hound becomes the centerpiece of a debate between those of a superstitious nature, such as

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