Mike Enslin (played by John Cusack), best-selling author of "true" ghost stories, decides to spend the night in New York City's most-haunted hotel room, Room 1408 at the Dolphin Hotel. The hotel manager, Gerald Olin (played by Samuel L. Jackson), tries his best to dissuade Enslin from staying in the room, warning him of the death of more than fifty prior guests there over the decades. He relents after being threatened with a lawsuit by Enslin. Enslin, up-to-now a skeptic that supernatural occurrences are real, discovers that not all stories can be debunked.