A gorgeous walking simulator that mixes horror and puzzle-solving elements, with a story that starts out sinister but ends up tragic - The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter is a sweet yet heart-wrenching story that goes places you may not expect.
There's quite a bit to unpack from the story, despite the game only being about an hour or so long depending on your luck with puzzles and how quickly you get around the game world. For those interested in finding out the fate of the titular character on this dark and winding path, here's the story of The Vanishing Of Ethan Carter explained.
Who Are We?
Starting off small, our character is Paul Prospero. He's a Psychic Detective in the '70s who journeys to the small town of Red Creek Valley in Wisconsin after receiving a fan letter from a 12-year-old boy named Ethan Carter. In the letter, the boy mentions being able to see things he probably shouldn’t, so old Paul steps in to help. Upon arriving in the mid-western equivalent of nowhere, Prospero discovers that his apparent number one fan has mysteriously gone missing. From there he sets out to uncover the shady and unsettling paranormal activity that's been occurring around the quiet mountain town.
As the game plays out the events of the story seem to have happened already, but Prospero can use his special abilities to recreate the scene of the crime and learn what happened. There's also no particular order in which you can unlock the memories since it's an open-world game to an extent. However, here's the general gist of the events that happen.
*Vanishing Of Ethan Carter Spoilers Ahead*
The Wholesome Family
Before diving too hard into things, it’s worth getting to know our characters. Ethan Carter himself is a young boy that lives in an isolated mining town with a very creative imagination. Prone to leaving notes describing fantastical stories based around his various family members, though these stories are used as the butt of jokes and taunts directed at Ethan by those same people. His family themselves are a mixed bag of anger issues, unfulfilled potential, accidental murder, and toxicity.
It’s implied through notes that Ethan's grandfather accidentally killed his wife by starting a fire from a cigarette that was left lit whilst he fell asleep. A trend that would run in the family it seems. But the fire also exposed the family's hidden moonshine operation to the authorities and after they got in a lot of financial trouble for that the growing wedge between them all only became bigger.
The family is also shown as not getting along with one another even prior to that event, there's a lot of discontent about a “Vandergriff Fortune” and who it belongs to being a particular tension point. So much so that they wouldn’t stay near each other on the Vandergriff Estate, which primarily features an old and now dilapidated mansion. Unfortunately, a lot of the frustrations experienced by this family would be taken out on Ethan. Although there are signs that through the abuse they still have some feelings of tenderness towards him, or at least provide backhanded care. As is shown by Ethan's mother's note to a story he wrote her that she’s sorry for mocking his story and losing her temper, but that he needs to "pull his head out of the clouds."
What Happens To Ethan?
As the story progresses from Prospero's point of view it seems like Ethan had accidentally released an abhorrent spirit onto the town, an entity known only as The Sleeper. This creature seemingly threatens the lives of the township and has already infected his family's minds, causing them to perform profane acts to appease it whilst under the moniker of the Cult Of The Sleeper.
For example, Ethan's Uncle Chad and his Mother Missy attempt to sacrifice the poor boy to The Sleeper by bricking him up alive inside a Mausoleum. He manages to escape and stabs his uncle in the eye before fleeing into the night. Chad’s then stabbed by Missy and Ethan's Father Dale for being weak. From there, Dale kills Missy in a nearby mine by drowning her in a submerged mine shaft after she refuses to stop trying to murder their son as she continues to yell that the Sleeper must wake before Dale would later take his own life in a confrontation with a seemingly possessed Travis.
Ethan and his Grandfather, after shedding a substantial amount of family members, eventually make it to where this demonic entity dwells within the old Vandergriff Mansion. They try to destroy it, but after Ethan becomes trapped inside by his last remaining family member he seems to panic and light a fire in the entity's room to destroy it. The burning figure of his Grandfather outside apologizes and tells him it’s all for the good of the Sleeper as he crawls into a fetal position whilst he burns alongside his Grandson. It's a bit of a melancholic end to a dramatic and twisting story, but it's not over yet.
The Ending
After exploring around the map, gathering up all the story sequences as Prospero, you finally interact with a strange mural. It's then shown that the entire events of the story and even Prospero himself were all creations of Ethan. The supernatural events happening around the town were a figment of a 12-year-old boy's imagination as he lay in a sanctuary he had created to escape a toxic family that regularly tormented him. His hideaway is a secret room perfectly placed inside the old dilapidated Vandergriff mansion the family was apparently sheltering in.
During dinner one night Ethan shows up late and is taunted by his family for his stories of Paul Prospero Psychic Detective extraordinaire, and during this deluge of negativity, his mother Missy accidentally swings her lantern and sets the place ablaze. Whilst this lovely group of people scatters outside it seems Ethan in a panic ran to the one spot he felt safe, his secret room inside the house. But unfortunately, the structure was now burning down around him, and so he did what any young child in a horribly traumatic moment would do, escaped to a world within his mind. The carbon monoxide from the smoke eventually suffocates him as Prospero comforts Ethan, telling him to let go and that a new story waits for them. His real and still alive family outside, try desperately to put out the fire as Ethan burns.
Is Ethan Dead?
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Ethan Carter is definitively and rather sadly, dead. As the smoke drifts into the sky the camera slowly pans up with it, whether this is implicitly Ethan's “Soul” going off to an afterlife is up for interpretation, but his status within the burning building is pretty much a foregone conclusion by the end screen slate. His death is an interesting ending that's hinted at heavily throughout the game, even right at the beginning where behind Prospero is a long dark tunnel with a bright white light at the end. It's a great take on the Jacobs Ladder-Esque theme or Occurrence At Owl Creek if you want to go further back, and it fits the game nicely as it leaves some parts of it up to your own interpretation.
For example, is the twist in the story happening as the place burns or this is Ethan's Soul personified as Prospero coming to terms with his own passing through an imaginary medium. After all, we're seeing an objectification of Limbo through a small child's eyes, so rationality is what they make it. In this case a spooky adventure in a mountain town featuring a Psychic Detective that came to see his biggest fan. A sugar-coated distraction from an otherwise grim conclusion.
Who Is The Sleeper?
The Sleeper throughout the game is an interesting talking point because on the one hand it's implied to be Ethan, sleeping in his hole as everything burns around him. The continued insistence that it must be awoken possibly refers to how Ethan himself needs to wake up and escape the flames.
Whilst on the other side of the coin the demon could also be a form of Ethan rationalizing how his parents were able to regularly abuse him. The seemingly random acts of torment come out of nowhere as if they were possessed by evil momentarily when in reality it's just a part of the cycle where things spike before returning to normal before the next "incident."