Tragedy based on a folktale of the Great Smoky Mountains.
John, a witch boy, becomes human for love of Barbara Allen. The change is wrought by the Conjur Woman on condition that Barbara remain true to him for one year. After John and Barbara are married, John grows restless under the yoke of human responsibility and begins to walk the mountainside by night.
Some months later, Barbara has a child born with witchlike deformities. Because of this, the baby is destroyed by the midwife. Now rumours that John is a witch race through the town. In despair, Barbara's mother drags her to church, where, swayed by the hypnotic mass confessional, she submits to a man, thus breaking her marriage vow. Repentant, she later seeks John on the mountaintop.
But at the moon's rise he tells her that she has been doomed by a witch's pact, and she dies in his arms. Once again a witch, John looks without recognition at the body of the girl he once loved