The film Spirited Away begins with Chihiro, a ten-year-old girl, who is traveling to her new home in Tochinoki, Japan, along with her parents. But they get lost in the mid way when her father takes a "short cut" and at last the family comes to a halt outside a large, mysterious building. In spite of the objections of Chihiro, both the mother and father decide to explore. Chihiro however follows them with great reluctance through a tunnel to a strange landscape of grassy hills and old-fashioned buildings. Chihiro's father says it must be an abandoned theme park of several yers back. Witneesing the inner side of the mysterious building the parents become curious a lot and decide to explore. They soon smell food cooking, and follow their noses to a deserted stall full of different kinds of food. Chihiro refuses to eat anything, but her parents help themselves and soon begin gorging on the food. The next scene that comes before the audience is that Chihiro herself wanders off and finds an enormous bathhouse, at the heart of the complex. At the same time she also comes across a boy who warns her to leave before dark. She runs back to the food stall, only to find that her parents have turned into pigs!

This scene initiates the beginning of the next part of the film, Spirited Away. In the night, witnessing the surrounding mysterious atmosphere Chihiro gets afraid, but the boy appears again and promises to help her. The boy, introducing himself as "Haku", helps Chihiro a lot to go stealthily to the bathhouse and also is found to instruct her to go to the boiler room and ask for work. He warns her that the owner of the bathhouse, the witch Yubaba, could kill Chihiro for trespassing. If Chihiro can get a job, she'll be able to stay at the bathhouse safely while she figures out a way to help her parents.

The boiler operator, Kamaji, seems gruff but eventually warms to Chihiro. He instructs a bath attendant named Lin to take Chihiro to upstairs to ask Yubaba for work. With Lin's help, Chihiro navigates the halls and elevators of the bathhouse. Chihiro realizes that the place is a resort for spirits of all kinds, many intolerant of humans. Yubaba, as confirmed by Haku is a giant, bejeweled old hag, who at the beginning sternly refuses to hire Chihiro. She threatens the girl, but Chihiro's persistence pays off. Yubaba finally gives in and offers Chihiro an employment contract, but in exchange Chihiro must give up her own name. Yubaba magically removes most of Chihiro's name, leaving only the characters to indicate the syllable "Sen". Under the new name Sen, Chihiro begins work as a bath attendant with Lin and comes across a number of strange customers, such as a masked spirit called "No Face" and a filthy "stink spirit". The latter proves to be a wealthy but polluted river spirit, who rewards Sen's efforts in cleaning him with the gift of a magic herb cake. In the meantime through several developments and getting matured through different experiences Chihiro advances. In the last phase of the Spirited Away it is seen that Chihiro alias Sen along with Haku arrive at the bathhouse to find the preparation of Yubaba for a final challenge for Sen. She has to identify which of a group of pigs are her parents.. With rapt attention Sen examine the pigs and identifies that none of them are her parents. Being successful in the challenge Yubaba releases her from her employment contract, and Sen regains her true name, Chihiro. Chihiro bids goodbye to Haku and travels with her parnets back to the human world but in a more positive note justifying the experience of the Spirited Away.