This post contains spoilers for the Amazon miniseries Picnic at Hanging Rock.

In all its iterations, Picnic at Hanging Rock's ending is left purposefully ambiguous. Like the Blair Witch Project of its time, the lasting legacy of its mystery even lead people to speculate whether the fateful events depicted actually happened (and no, there's no historical evidence).

Set in 1900, Picnic at Hanging Rock tells the story of three Australian boarding school girls who inexplicably vanish on a field trip to a remote and historic landmark, the Hanging Rock. While the surface level plot is about figuring out what happened, the answers always remain inscrutable — inviting only more questions. Is the culprit supernatural, allegorical, or an ugly reality?

Maybe it's a little of all three.

Both the original 1967 novel by Joan Lindsay and the 1975 film adaptation by Peter Weil end ambiguously. And the stunning recently released Amazon miniseries might win the award for most mystifying finale of all.

But the starring actors (like former Game of Thrones and Hunger Games star Natalie Dormer) and showrunner (Larysa Kondracki) still have several of their own personal, illuminating interpretations.

It's important to remember, though, Lindsay's famously opened her book with the disclaimer that, "Whether Picnic at Hanging Rock is fact or fiction, my readers must decide for themselves," and, really, since the girls would long-since be dead now anyway, "it hardly seems important."

"That’s a beautifully succinct way of saying: This a story, let it affect you however you want," said Kondracki, who's credited with directing three out of six episodes. "Because it’s going to affect everyone differently."

Each member of the cast echoed this caveat to their analysis. Both Natalie Dormer (the tragic and lethal governess of College Appleyard) and Lily Sullivan (the mesmerizingly enigmatic leader of the missing girls) see the story as speaking to the human folly of even needing definitive answers. Picnic at Hanging Rock is a cautionary tale about societies so afraid of uncertainty that they demand conformity to social norms.

To be free, this story says, we must embrace the unknowability and complexity of human existence.

As a reimagining of the book, Kondracki emphasized that the Amazon miniseries is "not so much about what happened to the girls — but who were they? Why did they want to run away in the first place?"

Natalie Dormer delivers a stunning portrayal of Mrs. Hester Appleyard in "Picnic at Hanging Rock" Image: amazon

Though Kondracki also admits their show "offers hints" to support a variety of the most popular theories on what Picnic at Hanging Rock means. Maybe the girls just jumped, or maybe it's more complicated.

"I want people to argue about it," said Kondracki. So here's an incomplete list of a few interpretations to get you thinking on what you think this mystery amounts to.

According to the book

In the first draft of the book, Lindsay included a final chapter with an explicit explanation of what happened. Her editor astutely suggested removing it.

The speculative aboriginal legend that “nobody stayed there after dark because it’s where spirits roamed.”

So it initially published with only a brief epilogue: a newspaper clipping set thirteen years after the main events. It explained that records of the disappearances were all mysteriously burned in a bush fire. Regardless, the search for the girls continued — though only a piece of a dress was ever found.

Unfortunately after Lindsay's death, the deleted final chapter of the book was eventually released in a short followup book, The Secret of Hanging Rock. In it, we get our "answer." And sure enough, it detracts much more than it adds.

The TL;DR is that the girls fall into a trance before entering a "hole in space." As if this sci-fi twist wasn't odd enough in itself, two of the girls transform into crabs (yes, literal crustaceans) after going through this fateful crack in the rocks, while chasing their school teacher (Miss McCraw) who went MIA prior to the events of the novel. Irma, however, gets prevented from following when a boulder blocks the path, leading her to eventually return to reality.

The beautiful mysteries at the core of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" Image: hbo

The Secret of Hanging Rock also includes essays by academics and critics offering an interpretive meaning to this "official" ending. Lindsay likely intended it as representative of Australia's historical tensions, with British colonizers whitewashed aboriginal peoples and culture to near extinction. The real-life Hanging Rock located outside of Melbourne is believed to have originally been a meeting place for three different bordering tribes, and a site of ceremonial importance.

As an Australian herself, Lily Sullivan was hyper-aware of this layer to the story and her own country's past. She sees this explanation as illustrating “the lack of respect for this sacred ground, the Rock,” playing into the speculative aboriginal legend that “nobody stayed there after dark because it’s where spirits roamed.”

It was all in Mrs. Appleyard's head

One of the more fascinating interpretations evidenced throughout the Amazon miniseries is that the entire story is happening inside Mrs. Appleyard's head. It's Kondracki's personal favorite, since she sees the schoolgirls as different aspects of her traumatized psyche.

"They're all the opportunities that were robbed from Hester," Kondracki posited. Each character represents an archetype of who Mrs. Appleyard could've been, had her circumstances been different. "It’s like The Breakfast Club, right? There’s the brains, the beauty, the nerd, the funny one, the young, eager kid."

Hester Appleyard running from her traumatized past Image: amazon

Hints at this interpretation are embedded into the way the final episode is shot. When Mrs. Appleyard is chasing the young Sara through the college at night, there's a ghosting or mirroring effect between the two's movements. "They basically become one person," said Kondracki.

Hester eventually kills her, though others assume Sara's death is also a suicide.

Inventions of her mind that die with her.

Similarly, in the very last shots where Mrs. Appleyard is about to jump off the peak of the Hanging Rock, the camera swivels away from the three missing girls and back at Mrs. Appleyard. When she leaps, they disappear — implying that they too were inventions of her mind that die with her.

Sullivan sees how interpretations of her character, Miranda, also supports this. Many view her as less of a traditional character, and more of a metaphor. “She’s seen through people’s memories the whole way through the series. I’m playing different people’s interpretations of this girl who is an ideal of ‘freedom,’ whatever that means."

Why Mrs. Appleyard commits suicide

One commonality between all three versions of the story is Mrs. Appleyard's suicide. But even, there's room for speculation.

Hester's backstory implies that she was sold into sex slavery as a child, eventually escaping by killing her "husband" (or pimp). For those who believe the events of Picnic at Hanging Rock are Hester's fantasy of reinventing herself as a respectable governess, her suicide is the culmination of that delusion.

But Dormer takes her character's tragedy at face value. Though, she admitted, "bless her: Hester needed therapy." Ultimately, Mrs. Appleyard "is profoundly traumatized and lacks any ability to process it. And it results in so many deaths around her that she cannot reconcile herself with."

Miranda is an ideal of freedom to everyone in the story Image: amazon

So to Dormer, her suicide is an attempt to escape what she's had to do to survive.

"When you’ve suffered profound trauma in your life, there’s a fork in the road. You can choose to either break the cycle or perpetuate it," she said. Mrs. Appleyard unfortunately chose the wrong path.

"But she realizes that at the end, and that is why she makes her choice." But even as Hester faces the mistakes she's made by abusing the girls, "there is a desire to be free — liberated from the pain. And I think we can all identify."

Aliens took them?!

There are even subtle clues in the Amazon miniseries to support some of the most wacky ideas that gained traction in the 1970s. It was aliens, naturally.

As documented in Roger Ebert's review of the Weir film, a "cottage industry grew up in Australia about the novel and the movie," leading to yet another book of speculation, The Murders at Hanging Rock, where this theory took shape.

The secrets beneath the perfect appearances of "Picnic at Hanging Rock" Image: amazon

Among more reality-based theories — like the girls simply falling to their deaths in some unreachable crevice, or being raped and killed by two boys seen near the picnic area that day — one points to UFO abduction. Because when you can't explain, it's probably aliens.

In the final shots of the Amazon adaptation, the clouds around the Hanging Rock swirl oddly, tinging everything in a blinding red hue. As the music reaches a fever pitch, you can even hear the faint sound of a large mechanical machine, like a spaceship.

What happened to the girls in Picnic at Hanging Rock? The point is we cannot know. But everyone necessarily projects what they need to believe happened on them.

That's why this mystery is as much about us as it is about the characters.