The small coastal town of Seaburgh is bright and colorful and features a prominent church atop a hill. The writer describes Seaburgh from memory, as he used to frequent the town in childhood. He recently met a man who told him a story that takes place in Seaburgh, and the writer recorded the story.
The narrator of the story used to go to Seaburgh regularly to golf with his friend Henry Long. In the narrator’s tale, he and Long meet a young man one day while spending time in the lounge of their usual hotel. The young man—whose name is Paxton—is agitated and says that he just had a disturbing experience. A little while ago, he explains, he went to a nearby town to visit a church. There, an old man told him about a local legend that three holy crowns were buried in the area to fend off invaders. Paxton was intrigued, so he talked to the church rector to learn more. The rector told him that there was only one crown left and that it was buried nearby. The rector also said that there was a family—the Agers—whose duty it was to guard the last crown, but that William Ager, the last heir, had recently died. Paxton was immediately determined to find where the crown was buried. He asked a few local people for pointers on the crown’s exact location, and when he found the spot he secretly dug into the ground and took the crown.
The narrator and Long are impressed, but Paxton is distraught and says he must return the crown, though he doesn’t explain why. The three of them go to Paxton’s room to see the crown. On their way back to the lounge, the sensation of a supernatural presence comes over the narrator and Long. Finally, Paxton discloses that something has been haunting him ever since he began his plan to find the crown. At first, Paxton tells them, he sensed that something was giving him signs not to go near the crown, and when he first touched the crown he felt fingernails scraping at his back. He took the crown anyway, though he now regrets it, and the ghost has been following him ever since. Upon hearing this, the narrator and Long offer to help return the crown. They quickly formulate a plan to sneak out of the hotel that night to replace it. The three men leave the hotel late at night, and throughout their journey to the crown’s original spot, they all have a strong impression that they’re being watched. When they arrive at the location, Paxton buries the crown in a panicked frenzy, and they leave in a rush.
Even after returning the crown, Paxton is still overcome with guilt and anxiety. The three men plan to meet in the afternoon the next day. When the agreed upon time comes, the narrator and Long can’t find Paxton. A hotel servant says she saw him run outside, so the other two take off to find him. They sprint along the sand following Paxton’s footprints, and they see another bony pair of footprints alongside his. It seems that Paxton chased after the ghost thinking it was the narrator or Long, and as they run, the narrator already knows that the ghost will kill Paxton. After a short time, they find Paxton’s body, and his face shows that the ghost violently killed him—it’s unclear what, exactly, happened, though it’s possible that Paxton ran off some sort of ledge. The murder is never officially solved, as the narrator and Long don’t disclose the story to the media. The narrator never returns to Seaburgh again.
