“Another turn of the screw”

“Another turn of the screw” names the escalation Douglas proposes: if a ghost appearing to one child intensifies a tale, then a haunting involving two children promises a further degree of terror. The phrase turns a question about how many children are involved into the story’s organizing measure of horror, while leaving the nature of the haunting unresolved.

Origin at the Christmas Eve Gathering

The phrase arises after a story told around the fire has left the company breathless. Its subject is an apparition in an old house: a little boy wakes his mother in terror, and she encounters the same sight before she can soothe him. Someone remarks that this is the only case they know in which a visitation has fallen on a child. Douglas later responds to that observation, setting the account of two children against the example already under discussion.

The Escalation

Douglas agrees that the apparition’s first appearance to a boy of tender age gives the earlier case a particular force. He then says that it is not the first occurrence of this kind to involve a child, and asks the company to consider two children instead. Another listener answers that they give two turns and says they want to hear the story. In this exchange, the phrase works both as a compact measure of intensification and as an invitation to listen.

Narrative Function

Douglas presents the forthcoming account as something no one else has heard and describes it as exceptionally horrible. The phrase therefore serves as a threshold between the gathering’s familiar ghost-story talk and the private, supposedly unprecedented story he is preparing to tell. Its arithmetic is suggestive rather than explanatory: it establishes that two children raise the stakes, but does not itself disclose what the children witness or whether the visitation is supernatural.