Johnny Boo, whose muscles have become droopy and weak because he eats too much ice cream, runs into the Ice Cream Monster, who shows Johnny and Squiggles that eating apples makes one strong and happy.

Photographer Horace Carpetine is commissioned to do a portrait for society matron Mrs. Frederick Von Macht; however, the photos evoke both the image and the ghost of the Von Macht's dead daughter, Eleanora, who has returned to seek vengence on those who killed her.

When fourteen-year-old Viola is sent from her beloved Brooklyn to boarding school in Indiana for ninth grade, she overcomes her initial reservations as she makes friends with her roommates, goes on a real date, and uses the unsettling ghost she keeps seeing as the subject of a short film--her first.