Ivy Templeton (Susan Swift) is a ten-year-old girl, living with her parents, Janice and Bill Templeton (Marsha Mason and John Beck (actor)), in New York City. Her parents notice a stranger stalking them over the course of a few weeks, and discover, over dinner with him, that his name is Elliot Hoover (Anthony Hopkins). Hoover is convinced that Ivy is a reincarnation of his daughter Audrey Rose, who died in a fiery car accident, along with his wife, two minutes before Ivy was born. Hoover had come to believe this through information given to him by two clairvoyant psychics. Bill asks a friend of his, an attorney, to hide in their apartment to hear Hoover's full story to build a case against him, but when Hoover speaks Audrey's name out loud, Ivy hears him from her room and enters an altered state where she cannot be calmed down without the assistance of Hoover. In this state, she bangs her hands on a window and becomes burned, which Hoover says is a result of his daughter's experience of being burned alive in the car.