Peter Ustinov stars as the eponymous wraith, who returns to Earth to aid his descendant, elderly Elsa Lanchester (Stowecroft). The villains want to kick Lanchester and her friends out of their group home so that they can build a crooked casino. Good guy Steve Walker (Jones) gets caught in the middle of the squabble after evoking Blackbeard's ghost.
An unassuming track coach accidentally invokes the spirit of a notorious pirate long believed dead, and who must now team up to lay the pirate to rest, and save a local hotel from a mobster.