Twelve-year-old Lila has two goals for the summer:

But then Lila's estranged Grandpa Clem dies. Now she'll have to spend the summer in Ohio while her parents decide what to do with Grandpa Clem's creepy Victorian Inn. En route to Ohio, the family gets into a scary car accident. No one's hurt, but the remainder of the trip is ... odd. At every rest stop, Lila sees people no one else can see or hear...

On the day of the funeral, Lila spots an old man sitting in her grandfather's favorite chair. It's Grandpa Clem. And he didn't die of a heart attack: he was murdered. Possibly by someone who wants to control the inn. Because it's not a normal bed & breakfast: it's a portal between the land of the living and the realm of the dead. A hotel for ghosts passing onto the afterlife.

With the help of her skeptical brother, Caleb, and their new ghost-obsessed neighbor, Teddy, Lila must uncover her grandfather's killer AND stop the evil spirits desperate to make their way back into the human world.