Her final words while fully alive are spoken, plaintively, to Barnabas: "Help me!" And, 196 years later, she repeats these words, and the gesture of falling backward, in apparitions at Collinwood to the newly arrived Victoria Winters, who is Josette's modern counterpart or reincarnation. The film eventually reveals, in flashbacks, that, in fact, Victoria (whose birth name was Maggie Evans) has been in contact with Josette's spirit since childhood, and that this contact resulted in Maggie's confinement for a period of years to the mental hospital Windclyffe. Flashbacks further show that it was Josette's apparition which pointed out to Vicky the help-wanted ad for a governess that led to her employment at Collinwood and her fateful encounter there with Barnabas.