The Pursuit of Revenge

"The Pursuit of Revenge" is a supernatural and psychological mystery loosely based on recorded historical events. It begins in the late 19th century with the drowning of a young girl, Claudine, on a pilgrimage to Lourdes in France, accused of witchcraft. There follows a series of unexplained illnesses that spread amongst young girls in numerous places throughout the world, often attributed to a psychological process - mass hysteria. In particular, sixty years later, a town in the USA is plagued by a series of attacks on young girls, in which a mystery gasser seemingly inflicts choking and paralysis on its victims but investigations fail to identify a toxin. Blame becomes focussed on a reclusive woman, a newcomer to the area, who is forced out of town. The attacks cease. However, epidemics of unexplained illnesses in young girls continue throughout the world. A chance finding by a journalist on a train of an emotionally charged goodbye letter from a girl to her boyfriend prompts him to reinvestigate a case he reported some months earlier of a girl, Charlotte, who inexplicably went missing from her London flat. He discovers that she came to London from a small country village in which many schoolgirls were afflicted with unexplained blackouts. The epidemic of symptoms was attributed by experts to mass hysteria. Charlotte suddenly left London and moved to York.The girl, whose real name was Jennie, had been haunted by recurrent visits from a malevolent woman who tried to claim her as her own. Jennie repeatedly moved home and changed identity in an attempt to escape. The woman's appearances become increasingly supernatural until ultimately she explains that she is the mother of the teenage French girl who died on her way to Lourdes and, since then, has been seeking her daughter's spirit and wreaking revenge on young, innocent girls. She threatens more carnage unless Jennie joins her in the spirit world. The journalist arrives at her flat in York to see the girl's dead body being removed and marks of the occult on her body and the window of her flat.