The Potomac Psychiatric Hospital is a mental health care facility and sanitarium located in Georgetown. In 1974, thirteen-year-old Vanessa van Helsing was committed here after experiencing a harrowing psychotropic event. She remained there until she was twenty-one at which time she was remanded to the care of Georgetown College professor, Donovan Caine. During Vanessa's last days at the hospital, she began to experience bizarre psychic visions, portents of a great evil that had set its sights on Georgetown.