13-year-old October Schwartz is new in town, short on friends and the child of a clinically depressed science teacher. She spends most of her time in the Sticksville Cemetery, which borders her back garden, and just happens to be the home of five dead teenagers, each from a different era of the past. Soon October befriends the five kids and together, using October's smarts and the dead kids' ability to walk through walls, they form The Dead Kid Detective Agency, committed to solving Sticksville's most baffling mysteries.