While Maggie and Jake attend her grandmother's wake at a relative's house, Tom inadvertently knocks down a shoddy brick wall in the basement and discovers Samantha's decomposed remains. Tom complies and digs holes in the backyard and eventually tears up the house in a desperate attempt to appease Samantha. He goes back to Lisa and demands she undo what she did, but when she hypnotizes him, Samantha tells him to dig.

As predicted, Samantha begins plaguing Tom, eventually leading to his insomnia. Maggie withholds her conversation with Neil from Tom and goes to the meeting herself, and Neil tells her the spirit that contacted Tom has asked for something and will grow upset if it does not get done. During an afternoon walk, Jake and Maggie encounter a funeral where Chicago policemen are saluting in a ceremony here a policeman named Neil immediately recognizes Jake's unique talent and invites Tom to a private gathering of like-minded people to learn more about what is happening to his son. This attracts the attention of his landlord Harry Damon, Tom's friend, Frank McCarthy and their respective sons Kurt Damon and Adam McCarthy, who all dismiss Samantha as a runaway teen. Tom becomes obsessed with Samantha and begins probing members of the community about her disappearance. Tom denies knowing her to Debbie but admits to Maggie that she is the girl in his visions. When Tom and Maggie confront her, Debbie angrily questions them about her sister Samantha, explaining that she had an intellectual disability: having the mental capacity of an 8-year-old and thus a child's tendency to trust strangers. Tom then sees strange flashes of red light that eventually leads him to the 'L' station where Debbie is speaking with her mother about Jake. Meanwhile, Tom senses Jake is in danger and rushes home but finds him gone. Debbie gets upset and snatches Jake, running off with him in the night. While Tom and Maggie attend a high school football game, Jake is overheard by his babysitter, Debbie Kozac, as he speaks with Samantha. Tom then begins experiencing visions of a violent scuffle involving a girl who he later learns is Samantha Kozac, a 17-year-old that disappeared from the neighborhood six months prior. After putting him under, Lisa plants a post-hypnotic suggestion in Tom urging him to 'be more open-minded'. At a party one evening, Tom challenges Maggie's sister Lisa, a believer in paranormal activity, to hypnotize him. Tom Witzky is a phone lineman living in a working-class neighborhood in Chicago with his pregnant wife Maggie and his son Jake, who possesses the ability to commune with the dead.

Movie stir of echoes