In what Henry James called a 'trap for the unwary',
The Turn of the Screw
tells of a nameless young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans, Miles and Flora. Unsettled by a dark foreboding of menace within the house, she soon comes to believe that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. But is the threat to her young charges really a malign and ghostly presence or something else entirely?
is James's great masterpiece of haunting atmosphere and unbearable tension and has influenced subsequent ghost stories and films.