The story begins in London where two boys are astonished to see fresh muddy footprints appearing on a staircase without any visible person making them. They follow these footprints until they fade away. The footprints belong to Griffin, a brilliant but eccentric scientist who has discovered a formula to make the human body completely transparent and invisible by consuming rare drugs.
Griffin is a lawless individual. After a dispute with his landlord, who tried to evict him, Griffin sets fire to the house in revenge. To escape undetected, he is forced to remove all his clothes, becoming a homeless, naked wanderer in the freezing mid-winter of London. To survive the cold, he slips into a large London department store, where he dresses himself in warm clothes, eats food, and sleeps on a pile of quilts. The next morning, he is chased by the store assistants and must strip naked again to escape into the freezing air. He then robs a theatrical shop in Drury Lane, disguising himself with bandages, a false nose, and spectacles, before fleeing the city.
Griffin takes a train to the quiet village of Iping and rents rooms at a local inn run by Mrs. Hall. He demands complete solitude, claiming his bandaged face is due to an accident. When his stolen money runs out, mysterious incidents begin. A local clergyman's study is burglarized in the early morning; money is stolen from a desk, yet no one is visible in the room. Shortly after, Mrs. Hall and her husband investigate Griffin's empty bedroom, only to be attacked by flying furniture, including a chair that seemingly comes alive and pushes them out of the room.
Suspicion falls heavily on Griffin when he suddenly produces cash to pay his rent. Mrs. Hall confronts him about the strange occurrences. In a fit of rage, Griffin strips off his bandages, spectacles, and false nose, revealing a headless torso to the terrified onlookers. The village constable, Mr. Jaffers, arrives with a warrant to arrest him. A chaotic struggle ensues as Griffin sheds his clothes piece by piece, becoming completely invisible. He assaults the constable and the bystanders, knocking Jaffers unconscious, and successfully escapes into the night.
The central theme of the story is the danger of scientific discovery when divorced from morality and social responsibility. Griffin's brilliant intellect becomes a tool of terror and self-destruction because he lacks empathy and respect for the law.
While invisibility grants Griffin temporary power to escape consequences and steal, it ultimately isolates him, rendering him a homeless, cold, and hunted outcast who must remain naked in the winter to maintain his advantage.