The Two Whites Are for Witchcraft by Helen Oyeyemi and The Turn of the Screw by Henry James are gothic tales that share certain traits in common with supernatural superstitions that remain popular today: ghosts, legends and, of course, haunted houses. Rather than highlighting the genre's more common instruments of evil, like knife-wielding men and anonymous poisoners, both Oyeyemi and James use the houses in which their books are set to control the story. Each author thus orchestrates a particular interpretation of horror. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get the original essay The story of Henry James, featuring the psychological creepiness of a governess and her two young daughters , is set in the sprawling English country manor of Bly. The estate seems pleasant enough at first, remembering it as a "wide, open frontage, its windows open and its cool curtains and a pair of maids looking out... the lawn and the brightly colored flowers and the crunch of my wheels on the gravel and the tops of the grouped trees”. above which the towers turned and croaked in the golden sky” (James 7). However, Bly is further from happy than he seems. The old residence, in its medieval splendor, dominates its small inhabitants both with its imposing walls and its heavy air. The narrator describes: “This tower was one of a pair of square, incongruous, crenellated structures that stood out, for some reason, although I could see little difference, like the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed to some extent by the fact that they were not totally disengaged nor overly pretentious in height, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity , of a romantic revival which was already a respectable past. I admired them, I had ideas about them, because we could all benefit to some extent, especially when they appeared at dusk, from the grandeur of their real niches…. (James 15). In fact, Bly is nothing less than an example of Gothic architecture. Built so long ago that the newer of its two towers seems as old as the older, Bly is a monument to the distance created by time and the curse of unused stone. At first, its “gingerbread antiquity” distracts the observer from its subtle iniquity. And Sigmund Freud would certainly notice a particular aspect of this evil, this aspect which prompts the governess, a newly hired young woman, to think at length about the erection and sustainability of these massive towers. Younger than Bly, though no less ominous, the house at 29 Barton Road in White is for witches. Barton Road's status as a character in this book is much more open than Bly's; in fact, it tells part of the neo-Gothic epic. A character describes Barton Road in geometric and anthropomorphic terms: Our new house had two large brown window grilles with a row of bricks between each grille. No windows for the attic. From the outside the windows didn't look like they opened, they didn't look like they were there to let in air or light, they were funny square eyes , friendly, tired. (Oyeyemi 17). Just as the housekeeper's first impression of Bly is favorable, this first presentation of the house at 29 Barton Road belies the building's tragic legacy and evil capacity. Although its description.