The Turn of the Screw

by Henry James

We who read are spared the effects by being allowed to witness the process. We are given the materials for an explanation of the way the beliefs were formed. We come to know in response to what secreted terrors the demons took on their final ominous shape. Yet to recognize the human source of a more than human terror renders our pity and self-doubt not a shade less unsettling and not a layer less inscrutable.