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The second symptom Parish describes is "mental or physical exhaustion" (Cranfill and Clark 37-38). Examples of the governess' exhaustion abound in the text. From her first night at Bly she does not sleep, but paces the halls and wanders the grounds. (Notice that her restlessness is evident before she sees the first "ghost" or begins to think anything is peculiar about the children.) She writes often of her lack of sleep, either from worry or from staying up all night speaking with Mrs. Grose or reading.

Symptom number three that Parish discusses is "vivid expectation" (Cranfill and Clark 38). Nearly all of the "visitations" the governess encounters occur while she is thinking about, or even expecting to see, a ghost. The first sighting occurs as the governess is walking in the garden, dreaming of meeting the master there. Then suddenly, in "what seems a dream made real" she encounters a figure on the tower (James 344). Perhaps her own explanation is right, after all, and it is all a dream. After this first sighting, there are many instances where the governess has decided she will see a ghost just before she does. "I had an absolute certainty that I should see again what I had already seen . . . that by offering myself bravely as the sole subject of such experiences, by accepting, by inviting, by surmounting it all, I should . . . guard the tranquility of the rest of the household" (Cranfill and Clark 59). Notice her choice of word, inviting. She really is inviting the spectre to visit her, and in so doing, she creates it for herself. During the third sighting, (Miss Jessel at the lake) the governess "rejects the possibility" that it could be a living person "without even looking." Her senses have "little effect" on her "practical certitude." (Cranfill and Clark 60) She is obviously prepared to meet the ghost and will not be dissuaded from her expectation.

Symptom four, the "hypnotic tendency of prolonged reading," (Cranfill and Clark 39) is probably the most definitive of the examples in the story. Most of the sightings occur immediately after she has been reading for inordinately long periods of time. The "sighting" of Quint on the stairs occurs as the governess is returning to her room in the early dawn, having sat up all night long with a book. The governess' obsession for reading raises another interesting question. Having been deprived of books her entire life, she is suddenly exposed to a huge amount of literature. This sudden stimulus to her imagination could easily cause her mind to "friek out" (Mirin), to become irrational and hallucinatory.

The Flying Porqupine