Before her death in 1879 from tuberculosis of the bone, reputedly the most excruciatingly painful disease of all, Marie Bernarde Soubirous claims to have seen the Virgin Mary. However, she did not articulate anything about the pain from which she must have been suffering. Most believers say that God intervened and replaced the sense of pain by providing Bernadette of Lourdes, as she is now known, with a sixth sense. In the contemporary United States, where half the children under age sixteen today experience fights between parents who eventually divorce, is there any way to heal their psychological pain? In The Sixth Sense, directed and written by M. Night Shyamalan, who gave up a possible career in medicine to make films, Cole Sear (played by Haley Joel Osment) grows up in just such a family, and he acquires a sixth sense-the ability to see ghosts who do not know (or cannot accept the fact) that they are dead. But his sixth sense does not replace his psychological pain; the ghosts frighten Cole, and his efforts to negotiate school and home life amid unanticipated apparitions results in very unpleasant situations. Meanwhile, Malcolm Crowe (played by Bruce Willis) is a child psychologist in Philadelphia whose specialty is to help children of divorced parents to cope with their fears and frustrations; although the city gave him an award for his work, he felt guilty that he was not successful in one particular case. Without giving away the most important secret of the film, which prompts many to see The Sixth Sense a second time, filmviewers will observe how Malcolm first gains the confidence of Cole, and then liberates him from the terror of frightening ghosts by advising him to communicate with them and then to tell his mother Lynn Sear (played by Toni Collette) so that she can better understand and support him. Thus, the sixth sense serves to replace the psychological pain, and we leave the film believing that perhaps the apparitions will cease as he reestablishes communication with his mother. Malcolm, satisfied with his success in treating Cole, then learns to accept his own fate and achieves peace of mind as well. Although the tagline of the film is “Not every gift is a blessing,” the film should definitely appeal to those who have had difficulty accepting a loss of an important family member, dead or alive. The music and sound effects keep up the tension in what is otherwise a rather slow-moving story that is clearly designed to comfort those of all ages who fear death. MH