Adam and Barbara Maitland are killed very shortly after this movie begins, and return as ghosts. They are restricted to their old house, which has been sold to a rather strange family (the Deitz's). The Maitland's do not understand their Handbook for the Recently Deceased and their attempts at scaring the Deitz's are useless. They get almost no help from Juno, their case worker in the afterlife, but she does warn they not to call on Betelgeuse (Beetlejuice) for help. He has been sending them advertisements for his services. But soon they become so desperate that they do call on Beetlejuice anyway. He turns out to be everything Juno warned them he was and things really start to get wild. There are several more twists and turns to the plot that are to complicated to describe in a short summary, but finally everything is worked out so that the Maitland's and the Deitz's learn to co-exist with each other.