Synopsis

After being hypnotized at a neighborhood party, Chicago utility worker Tom Witzky begins seeing visions of a murdered teenage girl. His young son appears to share the same paranormal sensitivity. As the haunting intensifies, Tom becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth behind the girl's disappearance, threatening his marriage, his sanity, and the safety of his family.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film adapts Richard Matheson's 1958 novel "A Stir of Echoes," though David Koepp substantially reworked the story for the screen.

• Koepp moved the setting from Inglewood, California, to Chicago's South Side. The change drew on his familiarity with the area through his mother's large Irish-American family.

• Principal photography took place in Chicago over 39 days, from October 5 through November 21, 1998. The theater used for the hypnosis sequence was in Joliet, Illinois.

• Brian De Palma, with whom Koepp had collaborated as a screenwriter, reviewed the script and offered suggestions during production. One result was a long take used during an extended dialogue scene.

• The hypnosis sequence was designed to show the experience from Tom's point of view. In the theater vision, the surrounding space is rendered black while the projection screen remains visible.

• The ghost's unusual movement was created partly by filming at six frames per second, giving the apparition a jerky, otherworldly quality when projected at normal speed.

• The disturbing tooth-extraction scene was inspired by a nightmare Koepp had experienced. The effect was achieved with practical makeup and prosthetic work rather than relying entirely on digital effects.

• The film opened in the United States on September 10, 1999, only a few weeks after "The Sixth Sense." Their similar supernatural premises contributed to "Stir of Echoes" being overshadowed at the time.

• Although the movie was made on a modest genre budget, it developed a stronger afterlife through home video, cable broadcasts, and later reappraisal.