Hold Your Breath ending explained: Who was really haunting Margaret and her family?

It's been quite some time, but Emmy Award-winning actress Sarah Paulson has finally made her way back to the horror world. She stars in the new psychological horror film Hold Your Breath, and it's now available to stream on Hulu.

Set in 1930s Oklahoma, Hold Your Breath sees Paulson play a young mother by the name of Margaret Bellum. With the relentless dust storms sweeping through the city, Margaret will do anything to keep herself and her two daughters (Rose and Ollie) out of harm's way. And for a good period of time, she had done a good job of doing so. That's until she becomes convinced there's a sinister presence lurking in the dust storms threatening her family.

But was there really an evil supernatural force haunting the Bellum family, or was it all in Margaret's head? Here's a breakdown of what happens at the end of Hold Your Breath.

Spoilers ahead from Hold Your Breath on Hulu!

How does Hold Your Breath end?

Before I get into how this horror flick ends, I want to first answer the question above. No, there wasn't an evil force inhabiting dust storms and haunting Margaret and her family. Margaret was mentally ill and imagined that there was a sinister presence haunting them when really she was the person haunting her own family.

After Margaret's youngest daughter, Ada, passed away from Scarlet fever, Margaret's mental state began to deteriorate significantly. She started sleepwalking and had to take medicine to help her go to sleep. She didn't want to lose any more of her kids and became really overprotective. But her obsession with keeping them safe ultimately drove her mad.

After hearing about an incident involving a drifter breaking into a house and killing a mother and her kids, Margaret became even more protective of Rose and Ollie. One day, she finds a mysterious man in her barn who introduces himself as Wallace. He tells Margaret that he knows her husband, Henry, and that he had given him his jacket. He also claims he is a pastor who can heal someone with just a touch of his hand.

Margaret doesn't trust him, though. She thinks he's the drifter or The Grey Man. The Grey Man is a fictional story that Rose would read to Ollie. It told the story of a man made of ashes who could enter one’s house through tiny cracks. If a person were to breathe him in, he'd make them do terrible things.

Suddenly, Rose's nose starts bleeding, and Wallace manages to stop the bleeding after touching her with his hands. Since he helped her daughter, Margaret lets Wallace stay in the barn even though she doesn't fully trust him. The following day, it rains for the first time in a long time. Thinking that the rain had something to do with Wallace's arrival, Margaret starts to trust him more. At this point, she doesn't think he's the drifter or The Grey Man.

However, that trust is broken when Margaret finally receives a letter from Henry telling her that Wallace is not who he claims to be. According to Henry's letter, Wallace is a conman who robbed him of his things, including his jacket. Just as Margaret grabs her shotgun to aim it at Wallace, he grabs Ollie as a hostage. Margaret yells at him to let her go, but he asks for the letter in exchange. He wants the letter because he knows he'll get in trouble if Margaret takes it to the authorities. They'll know of his true identity as a conman.

Margaret refuses to hand over the letter and decides to shoot in Wallace's direction so that Ollie can escape from his arms. However, Wallace is able to grab the letter out of Rose's hands in the process. He sets the letter on fire as Margaret yells at him to leave. But before he walks out the door, he threatens her by saying that nothing is going to stop him or The Grey Man from coming back and causing her and her family harm.

This leaves Margaret unsettled. Now, she believes that Wallace is The Grey Man. Yes, the same Grey Man from the fictional story. Margaret has become so mentally unstable that she thinks a fictional character is, in fact, real. We find out later that Rose had let Wallace borrow The Grey Man book one day. Since Wallace knew Margaret gets paranoid easily, he purposely mentioned that The Grey Man would be coming back to harm her family to keep her on her toes. The Grey Man isn't actually real, though.

Margaret stops taking her medication because she doesn't want to be caught off guard when Wallace returns. But without her medication, she just becomes more and more paranoid. She starts hallucinating and hearing weird noises around the house, believing it to be Wallace messing with her. Strange occurrences also begin happening around the home, such as doors being mysteriously locked and then unlocked. There's also an incident where Rose and Ollie's bed catches on fire seemingly out of nowhere. Margaret stops leaving the house and doesn't allow her kids to leave either in fear of Wallace attacking them through the dust storms.

It's not until Esther, her sister-in-law, shows up at her doorstep and convinces her to attend a dance that Margaret decides to leave the house. She doesn't want anyone to think that she and her family aren't okay, so that's why she chooses to go to the dance. She also knows that if people think she isn't well, then her kids will be taken away from her. Obviously, this isn't something she wants to happen.

As Margaret, Rose, and Ollie prepare for the dance, Margaret hears Rose struggling to breathe and rushes to save her. She starts ripping the back of Rose's dress, but Rose yells for her to stop. Rose turns around to look at Margaret and asks her what's wrong with her. Margaret tells Rose she was trying to help her breathe by ripping her dress, but Rose explains that she wasn't choking but was laughing instead.

At this point, Rose knows something is wrong with her mom. She becomes even more convinced that her mom is mentally unstable when she catches Margaret cutting herself and then using her blood as a blush for her cheeks. At the dance, things become worse when Esther walks into the church with the reverend, and Margaret mistakes him for Wallace. Margaret tells everyone in the room that a man named Wallace has been threatening her family. Rose tries to back up her claims, but then Margaret starts comparing Wallace to a supernatural being, and no one believes her.

Margaret, Rose, and Ollie return to their home and Rose notices that Margaret's mental state has only worsened. She realizes this when Margaret ends up sewing her hand without realizing it. Later that night, Rose sees her mom knocking her head and scratching her bloody nails against the wall while calling out for Ada. Rose then calls out her name, and Margaret suddenly stops and leaves the room to go outside. Rose follows Margaret outside to see her standing with a shotgun. She calls out her name again, but when Margaret turns around, she sees Wallace instead of Rose. Margaret is hallucinating again.

Thinking Rose is Wallace, Margaret aims her gun at Rose. Rose repeatedly pleads for her not to shoot, but it takes a while for Margaret to snap out of her trance. Once she does, Rose confronts her instantly. Rose tells her that Wallace isn't The Grey Man, nor is he haunting them. She tells Margaret that she's the person that's been haunting them all along. Since she hasn't been taking her meds, Margaret has been sleepwalking again. The doors in the house locking and then unlocking was all Margaret. She was also responsible for Rose and Ollie's bed catching on fire.

Margaret refuses to listen to Rose, though. In her mentally unstable state, she believes that everything she's done so far has only been to protect her family. Rose runs back into the house to get Ollie so that they can escape, but Ollie refuses to leave with her. They tussle for a bit, and Ollie pushes Rose to the ground. But instead of landing on the ground, she falls on a dead body. It's Esther! It appears that Margaret killed her when she was in one of her trances.

Rose turns around to see Margaret hugging Ollie. Margaret heads back into the house with Ollie, and Rose chases after her, accusing her of killing Esther. Suddenly, a loud knock is heard at the front door, and Rose tries to scream for help as Margaret covers her mouth. Rose signals Ollie to open the door, and Ollie listens to her. It's the sheriff! Ollie takes the sheriff to where Margaret and Rose are in the house, and Rose tells him that Margaret is unwell. The sheriff then tells Margaret that he's going to take the kids away for their safety just until Henry gets back.

However, Margaret refuses to let this happen and stabs the sheriff in the abdomen area a couple of times. Rose and Ollie witness this all happen. Meanwhile, a raging dust storm is happening right outside their front door. Rose tells Ollie to stay by the front door while she goes to handle something. She picks up the knife that Margaret used to stab the sheriff and then heads into the bedroom to find her. She plans to kill Margaret, but then she notices Ollie standing by the door watching her and stops.

Margaret tells Rose that the only way they can be together as a complete family, including Ada, is if they overdose by taking her sleeping pills. Rose agrees to go through with taking the pills but asks if they can be crushed in peaches. She has another plan up her sleeve. As Margaret happily mixes the crushed pills in peaches, Rose yells out that Ollie ran outside into the dust storm. Margaret quickly ties a rope to the front door and carries the other end with her as she runs outside. That way, she can easily make her way back to the house after she finds Ollie.

But Ollie isn't actually outside. Rose tricked Margaret into thinking she ran away so that she would go out into the powerful dust storm. She cuts the rope that Margaret attached to the front door, leaving her stranded in the dust storm. Shortly after realizing what Rose has done, Margaret starts choking on all the dust she's breathing in. She falls to the ground and passes away. But right before she dies, she has a final dream of reuniting with Rose, Ollie, and Ada. The last scene of the film shows Rose and Ollie traveling by train to reunite with their father.

Did you enjoy Hold Your Breath? What did you think about the ending?

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