It can't be 'all in Miss Giddens' head'... If it were...

Flora does not scream at the sight of Miss Jessel, she screams from Miss Giddens badgering her. When Miles runs away from her at the end he trip and falls hard, it looked like he hit his head on the pavement. An accident like that can cause death a short time later.

I didn't think she was crazy. She seemed like a genuinely kind person who wanted what was best for the children. I think the malevolent spirits were also very clever. They knew how to make people turn against Miss Giddens and exactly what to do to make her look crazy. Just as evil as Quint was in life, he also was in death and was very manipulative. I know lots of people disagree, but I think there really were supernatural forces at work here.

Death lives in the Vault of Horror!

Miles didn't die, he just went into a shock (his eyes are closed when she picks him up but opened in between when she looks down at him. His dying don't make sense...children fall down all the time, they don't die of it and seldom will a young child die of heart attack etc (unless he had some existing heart condition which is never mentioned), they are more common as one grows older.

And that girl has to be a retard, singing the same song all the time, looking down her bedroom window in the dead of night and smiling as if someone was there (when there was no one right!!)....if yes pretending she couldn't see the ghost across the river later on..

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wat are you lookin' at...

I think there was considerable ambiguity in the interpretation of what really happened. There was no doubt, however, that Miss Giddens - who had come from a religious family (daughter of a parson) in a strict Victorian society - was sexually repressed, high-strung, and mentally unstable even at the time she took up the appointment. She was hypersensitive to noise and appeared to hear voices that might or might not have been there. She always had a suspicious look and saw sinister implications in almost everything - like, for example, Flora putting a flower on Miss Jessel's grave. When Flora and Miles were talking and laughing, to Mrs. Grose it was just children's talk, but Giddens found it irritating and said they were possessed and so "talked like adults".

That Miss Giddens was mentally unstable, however, does not rule out the presence of the supernatural. One might ask: if there are ghosts, why don't people see them? One possible answer might be that ghosts and people live in different worlds - we are on different "wavelengths", so to speak. We don't see ghosts, just as ghosts might not be able to see living persons (as in the film The Others). In some cultures, there is the belief that if you see (or think you see) people that were supposed to be long dead, then you yourself do not have long to live: as one approaches death, one's "wavelength" comes closer to that of the dead. It is just possible that with her religious background and fragile mental condition, Miss Giddens might be able to see the supernatural while nobody else in the film did.

In the film, there was the question of whether the images of Quint and Miss Jessel that the viewers see were supposed to be real, or they were just from Miss Giddens' POV. If it was the former, then the ghosts were undoubtedly real. If it was the latter, it could be argued that they were just "in her head" or her hallucinations - given her mental state. It might even be suggested that the sexually repressed Miss Giddens, having heard the story from Mrs. Grose, indulged in fantasizing the pair possessing the children as the only possible means of continuing their physical/love relationship.

In the film, Miss Giddens as an adult not only bludgeoned her way on the children to make them admit that they "saw" people that were long dead - which undoubtedly would have been traumatic on Miles and Flora who had close relationship with the deceased - she did the same thing to Mrs. Grose who was not her equal in terms of schooling (she was illiterate) and status, not to mention that Giddens was given complete and absolute authority by the uncle - and completely dominated her. In the lake scene, she repeatedly forced Flora to admit that she "saw" Miss Jessel on the other side. Was it of any wonder that the child broke down and fell ill? It was remarkable that Mrs. Grose saw nothing either and later Giddens accused her for lying. In reply, Mrs. Grose said she didn't have to lie - she had seen nothing. Later, when Mrs. Grose was sent away with Flora she asked what she should tell the uncle. Miss Giddens said "the truth" and the poor woman looked genuinely puzzled! Then at the end she actually violently shook Miles and repeatedly forced him to admit that he saw Quint. I think it is legitimate to ask why Giddens sent everyone away and wanted to be alone with the boy - instead of the obvious choice of sending him away from the house for safety. One might surmise that she just wanted to force her own belief on the boy without possible intervention from anyone.

In brief, if the images of Quint and Miss Jessel seen in the film could be treated as just Miss Gidden's imaginations, there was nothing in the film that convincingly contradicted the "it's all in her head" theory.