It was a time of ghouls and most ghastly of all, the fine art of grave-robbing. Arthur Blake is a 19th century corpse snatcher, who pilfered the cemeteries and coffins of England until his capture by police. But just before Blake is to meet the hangman's noose, he will confess to a peculiar priest his gruesome tale of vampires, zombies, and cadaver-dealing that takes him from the savagery of the criminal underworld to the terrors of the undead.