The Sixth Sense

Child psychologist Malcolm Crowe is shot in his home by a former patient who felt abandoned and failed by him. The following autumn Malcolm begins working with Cole Sear, a withdrawn eight-year-old with a reputation for disturbing behavior. Cole eventually trusts Malcolm enough to tell him his secret: he sees dead people. They are everywhere. They do not know they are dead and they look exactly as they did at the moment of their death — wounded, frightened, trapped in patterns from their lives. Malcolm initially treats this as delusion, but a cassette recording from his own old case files changes his thinking — a former patient described the identical experience. Malcolm guides Cole toward helping the dead rather than hiding from them. Cole approaches the ghost of a recently dead girl who leads him to evidence that her mother poisoned her. Cole's relationship with his mother begins to heal when he tells her something only her deceased mother could have known. Malcolm returns home to his wife, who has been withdrawn and grieving all year. He watches her sleep — and finally understands. She cannot see him. He was killed by the gunshot at the beginning of the film. He says goodbye and is released.