In 1965, Guy and Rosemary Woodhouse move into the Bramford apartment building in New York City. While touring the apartment for the first time, they notice that a large cabinet is moved in front of a door in the hallway. They move the cabinet and open the door, only to find a plain closet. Their friend Hutch tries to dissuade them from taking the apartment, informing them of the Bramford's association with cannibalism and murder.
Rosemary meets a young woman, Terry Gionoffrio, a recovering drug addict whom Minnie and Roman Castevet, the Woodhouses' elderly new neighbors, took in from the street. As Rosemary admires a pendant necklace the Castevets gave to Terry, she notices its strange smell. Returning home one night, Guy and Rosemary find that Terry apparently threw herself to her death from the window of the Castevets' seventh-floor apartment.