Sometimes They Come Back, on CBS
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Caution: spoilers.

This 1991 TV movie is based on a 1974 short story by Stephen King, which I haven't read. I'm think I watched it when it first aired, but by the time I watched it again in 2025, nothing about it was familiar to me. I found it reasonably scary, and surprisingly intense, for a TV movie. There are some things about it that don't make sense to me, but overall I think it's a good story.

At the start of the movie, Jim Norman, his wife Sally, and their son Scott, move from Chicago to Jim's hometown of Liberty, Missouri. He gets a job as a high school teacher there, after apparently having lost a job in Chicago because of anger issues, or something. There's a jock in his class named Chip, who gives him some trouble because he wants Jim to just pass all the jocks without having to do any classwork. There are a couple other students who are more friendly toward him, Kate and Billy.

Jim starts having visions of a tragedy that happened when he was nine, and his older brother Wayne was killed. They had been walking through a train tunnel on their way to the library, when they were stopped by four delinquents in a car, who harassed them. One of the guys threatened to stab Wayne, though I'm not sure he was actually going to do it. But there was a struggle, and Wayne got stabbed anyway, whether it was an accident or not. Then a train showed up at the other end of the tunnel, and Wayne told Jim to run. Three of the guys who had been harassing them got back into the car, but couldn't start it because they'd lost the keys. The train killed them as well as Wayne.

Back in the present, one day, Billy was riding his bike, when the car of the guys responsible for Wayne's death started chasing him. But Billy and Jim were the only ones who could see the car. It runs Billy off the road, over a bridge, and he falls to his death. The next day, Richard Lawson, one of the guys who had killed Wayne, shows up in Jim's class, though Jim couldn't be sure it was really him. We eventually learn that one of them can return to the world of the living whenever one life is taken. Lawson came back to take Billy's spot in class. I don't really understand how they managed to kill Billy before coming back, but I'll overlook that. They subsequently kill Kate, allowing another one of them to become a student in Jim's class. (Aside from Lawson, the other two dead guys were Vinnie Vincent and David North, but I've already forgotten which one came back after Kate's death.) Jim tries to convince people that Billy and Kate had both been murdered, but no one believes him. However, the police begin to take an interest in Jim's connection to both deaths.

Later, Chip shows up at Jim's house to warn him about the new guys in class, who he'd hung out with and learned that they really hated Jim. Because he'd talked to Jim about them, they kill Chip, which allows the third one to come back. (Chip was flailing around on the hood of their car for awhile, which makes no sense to me if other people aren't supposed to be able to see the car. Like, would they have just seen Chip seemingly flying- backwards- or what?) And... other stuff happens, but I don't really remember the order of everything. At one point, the guys try to run Scott over with their car, but he gets away. At another point, Jim goes to find Carl Mueller (William Sanderson), the fourth guy who had harassed Jim and Wayne, who had escaped from the train accident 27 years ago. At first he thinks Jim is crazy, but eventually he decides to help Jim. And... the three dead guys threaten Sally and Scott. They also want to reenact the whole scene from 27 years ago, in the train tunnel. Somehow, they didn't expect a train to come through this time, which seems odd to me considering their car came back from the dead with them, so why wouldn't a ghost train show up, am I right? Anyway... during the reenactment, Wayne is able to temporarily return from the dead, for a reason I won't spoil. And, well, the scene plays out, which somehow allows Wayne to move on to the afterlife, after having spent the last 27 years in limbo. And apparently the dead guys will stay dead this time, but I don't really understand why. Oh yeah, I forgot to say that at one point, Jim visited a former cop in a nursing home, who had been around, briefly, immediately after Wayne's death. His inclusion in the story seems completely pointless, except for him to drop the line "Sometimes they come back".

I guess I don't really know what else to tell you. I've probably said way too much, anyway. But there is a happy ending. ...The more I think about it, the more none of this makes sense to me, but I still liked the movie.

Followed by two direct-to-video sequels, "Sometimes They Come Back... Again" and "Sometimes They Come Back... for More". I have no idea if I ever saw either of those, but if I did, it would have been on TV. (And I have no idea if they ever aired on TV.)