Ghost Stories: The Hidden Meaning Behind The Mysterious Hero

Losing his family will have shown Goodman exactly what Callahan’s loved ones would have had to go through and what they would have lost - driving him to the brink and making suicide feel like his only option. Goodman tried to escape his problems with death, but only served to trap himself in an existence where he consistently has to face up to his inadequacies.

This all makes sense, but there is another alternative.The most obvious answer in relation to Goodman’s life, it could simply be that Goodman doesn’t have any family, hasn’t lost anything in particular, and has made the decision to end his life. The casting out of his sister could have scarred him to the point of never allowing himself to be in a relationship for fear of hurting his father and losing his loved ones, resulting in years of unhappiness at his broken relationship with a black sheep sister and lack of partner to love and be loved.

In this way, each chapter represents Goodman trying to deal with his loneliness in varying ways - denial with Tony, lies with Simon, and filling the void with business as Priddle does.

As either a man who has lost everything or a man who never had anything, Goodman’s backstory still remains mysterious. It’s clear that there’s more to the story than what we’re offered, with visual clues peppered throughout the narrative lending themselves to more than just the hospital room. Goodman is a tragic family man, a guilty soul, and unequivocally lost to his own mind - how he got there is up for us to decide.