In 2014, during a birthday celebration in a country pub, members of historic researcher Naomi Wilkes’ family are intrigued to see an old and faded, countryside photograph attached to a chimney breast entitled ‘The Man In The Photo’. Despite careful studying by everyone else, the only person who can see anyone is Naomi’s six-year-old daughter Francesca, who says that she can see the man’s eyes, that she doesn’t like him, and that he is trying to escape from a hole.

In 1854, a work detail of selected prisoners from a nearby gaol arrive at Wordale Nabb in Lancashire with the intention of extending an abandoned mine to help improve the water supply to the nearby Whitewall Estate. But nobody is aware that their endeavours are going to take them through land that has for the previous three hundred years been believed to be the domain of underground demons.

And the outcome for both parties, separated by one-hundred-and-sixty years, is just as gripping and terrifying.