Stir of Echoes

Stir of Echoes (1999) was a film starring Mr. Six Degrees himself, Kevin Bacon. It's The Film of the Book of the 1958 Richard Matheson novel, though not a very strict adaptation of it.

At a party Tom Witzky scoffs at his sister-in-law's belief in psychic abilities and the paranormal. She hypnotizes him as a joke, and plants a post-hypnotic suggestion that he be more "open" to everything, which causes his latent psychic powers stop being latent. Even stranger and scarier, his son's psychic abilities, which aren't latent, begin picking up on weird things in and around the house, much to the dismay of Maggie.

Eventually Tom and son realize the presence they sense is a ghost of a girl who was murdered in the house some time ago.

It had a Made for TV Sequel, Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming, which appeared on Syfy, so you know what to expect.


 * Attempted Rape - What leads to the events in the movie that Tom has to relive through psychometry.
 * Chekhov's Gun - Literal. Frank McCarthy makes an offhand remark about owning guns early in the movie. Do you think more than one gun will eventually play a narrative role?
 * Ear Worm - In-universe. Tom hears his son humming a song, and Tom becomes obsessed with figuring out what song it is: Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones, specifically a cover version by Gob.
 * Ghostly Goals -
 * Imaginary Friend - Tom and Maggie mistake who Jake speaks to at first as one of these. It's a ghost.
 * Only Sane Man - Maggie believes she's this, because she didn't develop any psychic sensitivities.
 * Our Ghosts Are Different - The ghost was cleverer post-death than in life, and more direct than a lot of ghosts in other media. She communicated with Tom as clearly as she could, considering his low power psychic ability meant she couldn't literally talk to him as she did with his son. She even convinced his son to talk to her sister to make more connections... which begs the question why she didn't just tell the kid all her woes directly. The only alternative being that she didn't want to involve him too much because of his age.
 * Or he was too young to understand the whole story.
 * Supernatural-Proof Father - An aversion, as in this case, Dad and son get involved with the ghost, but Mom's the one Locked Out of the Loop.
 * Town with a Dark Secret - Neighbourhood, actually, but the effect is pretty much the same.