Earl Bassett's celebrity after defeating the Graboid attack against the town of Perfection has proved short-lived, until he's recruited by a Mexican oil company whose workers have found more than they bargained for under the soil.

In 1889, seventeen men die under mysterious circumstances, and spooked by recent events, the miners who populate the town leave in droves until there's nothing left but a shell of a community.

A fateful night in 1959, four people die when the bus they are riding crashes. They continue as ghosts; their souls become eternally entwined to the life of a child born at the moment of their deaths as his guardians. Baby Thomas grows up to be a businessman who has memories of his playmates, but assumes they are products of his youthful imagination. When the ghosts realize they need Thomas' help to move on to the afterlife, they decide to make an appearance once more.

Survivalist Burt Gummer returns home to Perfection, to find that the little town has been shaken up again by morphing, man-eating Graboids.