At an isolated stately home in the bleak English countryside, a young governess accepts the job of teaching two beautiful children whose uncle-guardian wants nothing to do with them - and soon she is tormented by visions of ghosts that only she seems able to see: the former governess Miss Jessel and her lover, valet Peter Quint. Even worse, she comes to believe that these ghosts are corrupting the preternaturally angelic souls of little Flora and Miles. The children deny any knowledge of the ghosts, however; and as the tension mounts, the question looms: are the ghosts real, or does the unspoken terror exist only in the governess's mind?