Ghost Stories

In 1979, Phillip Goodman’s strict Jewish father threw his sister out of the family for dating an Asian man. As an adult, Goodman is lonely and single; he is also a well-known professor who specializes in debunking fraudulent psychics on his TV show, and regards it as his life’s work to stop people’s lives being ruined by superstition the way his family’s were. He receives an invitation to visit a famed 1970s paranormal investigator, Charles Cameron, who inspired him as a boy, but who has been missing for decades and is now living, sick and in poverty, in a caravan. The old man asks him to investigate three incidents of supposedly real supernatural ghost sightings.

The first case is a night watchman, Tony Matthews, whose wife has died of cancer and who feels guilty that he stopped visiting his daughter, who suffers from locked-in syndrome. He was haunted by the spirit of a young girl while working in a disused asylum for women. The second is a teenager, Simon Rifkind, who is obsessed with the occult and has a poor relationship with his parents. His car breaks down after running over the Devil in the woods. Goodman, although unsettled by the second case, believes that each of them has an obvious rational explanation: the supposed victims imagined them, based on their own neuroses. The third case is a City financier, Mike Priddle, who was plagued by a poltergeistwhile awaiting the birth of his child. His wife’s ghost appeared to him as she died giving birth to an (it is implied) inhuman child. The financier commits suicide with a shotgun while talking to Goodman.

Goodman returns to the 1970s investigator, who tears a latex mask off of his face, revealing himself to be Priddle. Goodman now believes that he is the victim of an elaborate hoax, but at this point reality breaks down altogether. Priddle leads Goodman back in time to the scene of a childhood incident where he watched two bullies entice a mentally handicapped boy into a drain, where he died of an asthma attack. Goodman has felt guilty all his life about his failure to rescue the victim. The decaying corpse of the bullied boy appears, tormenting Goodman and eventually leading him to a hospital bed, where he forces him to lie down, lies on top of him and forces his finger into his mouth. Goodman has been begging “no, not again”, implying this is a recurring event.

In the real world, Goodman is comatose in a hospital with tubes in his mouth, suffering from locked-in syndrome after a failed suicide attempt in his car. All the characters and events Goodman has experienced were inspired by the staff and objects in the hospital room. The doctors believe, wrongly, that he has little awareness of his surroundings, and predict that he is “here for the duration”, with little chance of recovery. As the senior doctor leaves the room, he says to his junior colleague “I hope his dreams are sweet”.