Dr James Mortimer visits Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson to present a pressing and unusual case involving the recent tragic death of his close friend, Sir Charles Baskerville. To explain the deep-seated dread surrounding the family, Mortimer reads an eighteenth-century manuscript detailing the origin of the curse. According to the document, a brutal and godless ancestor named Hugo Baskerville kidnapped a yeoman's daughter, who escaped across the moor. Enraged, Hugo unleashed his hounds and vowed his soul to the powers of evil to pursue her. His companions later found the maiden dead of terror and Hugo slain by a monstrous, supernatural hound that haunted the moorland ever since.
Mortimer then shares a newspaper account detailing the recent public facts surrounding Sir Charles's death. Sir Charles had returned from South Africa wealthy and generous, intending to restore Baskerville Hall and support local charities. He fell into a routine of walking nightly down the yew alley smoking a cigar. On the night of his death, he failed to return, and his body was eventually found at the far end of the alley. Although the inquest concluded he died of natural causes due to long-standing heart disease exacerbated by nervous tension, rumors and local superstitions persisted because of strange footprints and his severely distorted facial features.
Moving beyond the public record, Dr Mortimer discloses private details he withheld from the coroner to protect the estate's reputation and avoid endorsing superstition. He explains that Sir Charles was genuinely terrorized by the family legend, deeply anxious, and constantly haunted by the fear of a spectral presence. Shortly before his death, Mortimer himself witnessed Sir Charles stare in terror at a dark shape near the drive. Most disturbingly, while examining the death scene and corroborating the coroner's findings, Mortimer discovered fresh, clear footprints a short distance from the body belonging to a gigantic hound.