Ten-year-old Mike Hascal loves all things horror. His family owns a horror-themed shop that his sister, Julie, inherited from their father who died when Mike was only two. Before his death, two teenage boys went into some nearby woods to capture an image of a ghost for a contest being held by the shop. One of the boys, Shawn Mackey, never made it out of the woods, causing Shawn's father, a teacher at Mike's school, to force the Hascal family to close the shop to the public and sell only to adult collectors.
When Mike learns this, he and his friends, along with a new friend, Freddy Nickerman, spend the summer planning to search for Shawn's body in the woods. He does this not only to keep the shop from going out of business but also to earn his place as the future owner after Julie announces that she is having a baby. After Freddy's grandmother threatens to report the shop for letting her grandson hang out there, Julie bans Mike and his friends for the summer, making him even more determined to set things right. Once in the woods, Mike discovers a cave that leads to the answers he has been looking for, but will he and his friends make it out to tell their tale, or will the ghost of Shawn Mackey keep them from leaving too?
