Just as they say there’s a fine line between love and hate, there’s a fine line between a spiritual skeptic and a vacuous cavern of believe and susceptibility to spirit not at rest. Especially once that door is forced open.

At least, that’s what the 1999 film Stir of Echoes would have you believe.

The movie opens with a cocktail party or more of a beer and snack night in a working class Chicago neighborhood. Kevin Bacon plays a rough around the edges Tom Witzky and Kathryn Erbe of Law & Order: Criminal Intent fame plays his indie-cool wife, Maggie. They also have a son, Jake, who, much like Danny Torrance, has a bit of “The Shining.” In that Jake has the ability to communicate with the side.

Maggie also has a sister named Lisa, who is at the party and is a full believer of the supernatural. Played by independent movie darling Illeana Douglas, she offers to hypnotize someone to prove a point and Tom willing obliges, believing nothing will happen.

Fast forward to Tom coming out of a trance after we follow him down Lisa’s hypnotic rabbit hole — he sees visions and wakes up startled, tears streaming down his face. Lisa points out that Tom is one of the “8%” who truly are susceptible to full hypnosis. He learns he followed her instructions and let her stick a safety pin in his hand, and also revealed a decades old bullying memory which resulted in his tears. Try not to get hypnotized:

But this is only the beginning of Tom’s journey.

Now that the door is unlocked, strange things begin to happen to him. He is visited by the spectre of a young woman who seems to be urging him to do things to help her. Not so much a disbeliever now, Tom, are you?

A babysitter taking care of Jake while his parents are at an event finds out that Jake says he saw her sister, Samantha.

The babysitter becomes panicked and asks him how/when/where he saw her. Turns out, Samantha, who is mentally disabled, disappeared a while ago and her sister becomes suspicious of Jake and his family when Jake mentions he saw her.

With his newfound psychic connections, Tom can sense something is wrong at home. He runs back to check on Jake. The sister has taken Jake to a train station and Maggie and Tom involve a local policeman who intervenes and returns Jake to his parents. They all believe she was taking Jake to a train station to kidnap him, but it is only to bring Jake to her mother, who works at the train station, hoping to find out more about her sister’s disappearance.

The police officer gets to the bottom of the drama after the sister says Jake said he sees and speaks with Samantha all the time. The mother says the police have ignored their requests for help finding her. When the sister shows Tom and Maggie the photo, Maggie says she’s never seen her before. However, Tom, despite his denials at the time realizes its the girl who’s been appearing to him.

Things begin to progress quickly. Tom realizes his psychic abilities become more and more accurate. He dreams of a tragic incident that then immediately comes true. He sees the ghost in his house, always signified by the cold air and being able to see his breath. It’s like its only six degrees of Kevin Bacon in there! (Had to.)

As Samantha continues to appear to him, he revisits Lisa who he asks to undo what she has done. However, this time, Tom’s hypnosis only further opens the door — he envisions Samantha struggling for her life and instead of the word “Sleep” appearing on his hypnotic screen, he gets a message: DIG.

And dig he does.

This does not please his wife, as she is not a fan of having her basement ripped apart. It also does not please his neighbors, for reasons that will soon become known. Samantha’s sister was right to be suspicious of the story that her sister ran away.

Eventually, Tom’s visions and his work unravel the terrifyingly tragic tale of what happened to Samantha, and why she isn’t at rest — to explain it would ruin the end. This nifty little underdog of a ghost story is well-worth your time.

So, are you a skeptic? You might not be after this movie.