Eva - A Ghost Story opens with a very short prologue: A little girl is playing with a toy and singing The Wheels On The Bus. Her mother comes in and becomes very irate because the child has scratched the floors in their new newspaper offices in Stratford, Conn. She and her husband beat the child severely. The child dies. It was 2006.

Meanwhile, it’s now 2011 and Mary Schultz is a New York City book editor. She's been in the publishing business for the last 10 years and she's had it with the rat race, the slush piles, the poor pay – just about everything associated with her "big city" life. Her husband, Hank, is a successful marketing and advertising VP for a New York City company. But he, too, is fed up with living in the Big Apple and their daily commute from Stamford, Conn.

Mary was once a happy copy editor for a newspaper in Florida, so she decides to return to the newsroom. Together with her well-paid husband, they buy a small biweekly newspaper in Stratford, Conn. She takes on the job as the editor of The Stratford Times, while her husband handles the publisher’s role and the advertising. They had the money to finance the deal since Hank earned a high six-figure income for years. They also move from Stanford, Conn., to Stratford and buy a home near the office.

The office is an old, old building. It’s small and narrow with stairwells, worn furniture and paint. Negotiations go well and Mary and Hank sign the deal.

Mary and Hank move there and report to work for their first day in October. The Times is mainly a one-person editorial operation. Mary does have a lady who comes in and handles obits and “society” news about who’s doing what in town.

There’s also a young part-timer who acts as her sports editor covering the local high school team in all sports. John and Edith Hergraves were the owners. They are in their late 40s and took over the paper seven years ago but now wish to sell it because, they claim, the workload is just too much to handle without Mike Masters, their editor who quit.

Running the editorial side is also way beyond their talents and patience. They used to have a daughter, Eva, but she died mysteriously seven years ago – just after the Hergraves had moved from West Virginia and bought the paper.

Mary's experience in Stratford starts off on an eerie note. On her first day, she comes back from lunch and finds her chair sitting on her desk. No one, however, was in the office. Later that afternoon, she goes out to cover a story and when she gets back, a file folder's contents have been scattered about her work area. Someone, she figures, is playing a practical joke. But who?

Mary hires Sandy Craven who used to work there handling legal ads and classifieds while also acting as the receptionist. Sandy was replaced by Edith Hergraves, but not because of the cost. As the weeks pass, more and more strange things happen. At first, the incidents are playful pranks, but when a file drawer pops out on its own and gives Mary a rather nasty cut, she complains to Hank. She questions him about the place - is it haunted?

He acts as if it's all in her imagination. Mary is worried. She calls the former editor, who is now working as a copywriter at a local ad agency. Mike confides to her that he, too, thought the place was strange, but he doesn't tell her why he quit.

Mary's problems mount. One night she is nearly killed by an X-Acto knife with a mind of its own. But she had actually cut herself. Why? No one can figure that out. Was she possessed? Hank, seeing her injuries, tracks down Masters. He gets the information and then tells Mary why Mike left: The former editor had attempted to dig deeper into the death of the little Hergraves girl but was shot down by the publishers and threatened with being fired. And there were eerie things happening in the office. Deadly things.

Hank and Mary believe the Hergraves know what's going on. They investigate their past history and find out about Eva. Two months after the Hergraves bought the paper, she was reported missing from the Bridgeport Mall. No body was ever found. There were no signs of foul play. But everyone freely admits the Hergraves were stern parents.

Mary gets a psychic to come to Stratford. He is able to help. He tells them there’s an entity living in the newspaper office and that it has a tendency to get mad at times because it’s a little girl with no one to play with. The entity also likes to possess people and force them to do hurtful things to themselves. Soon after he leaves, Mary wakes up one night with a strong urge to go to the office. She finds the ghost of a little girl there who shows her that she had been severely beaten in this room years ago.