A young English boy decides to establish a sanctuary for an assortment of ghosts when the homes they have haunted are replaced by highways and other modern "improvements.".
When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with his great-great-uncle who is dying of diptheria.
After a freak accident kills Ernie and cuts short his Top Secret Plan, his friend Jeff is haunted by Ernie's ghost and pushed toward carrying out the plan.