Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment)’s Timeline and Summary
- Cole seems like a sweet kid, but there's some weird stuff going on around him. He's in a permanent state of fear and anxiety.
- Weird stuff happens to Cole at home. His mom knows that something is up with him, but she can't get Cole to talk to her about it.
- Cole gets picked on by his classmates, who sense he's a weird kid.
- Cole continues to be terrified by his constant ghost sightings; he sees them as they appeared at death—sliced, bloody, bruised.
- Cole meets Malcolm. At first, Cole is reluctant to talk to his new "therapist," but eventually he opens up and shares his big secret: he sees dead people.
- Malcolm doesn't believe him at first, but eventually he comes around and, even better, realizes that he has some advice to help Cole cope: find out what the ghosts want and try to help them out.
- Once he's redefined his relationships with the ghosts surrounding him, Cole's finally able to live and function a bit more normally.
- With the help of a dead girl's ghost, he saves the life of her sister by showing that their mother was responsible for poisoning and killing ghost girl.
- Cole sees the ghost of a woman killed in a car wreck and admits it to his mother.
- Cole's finally able to tell his mother the truth about what's been going on with him, and they finally have honest communication for the first time in the movie.
- He helps his mother with some reassuring words from her deceased mother, one of Cole's regular visitors.
- He helps Malcolm move on by suggesting he talk to his wife while she's sleeping.
- He gets the lead in a school play and pulls the sword from the stone like the hero he is.