I once knew a woman who was convinced that people were out to get her. It was never clear exactly who those people were, but that they existed was for her never in serious doubt. She believed they would come into her house, turn on various lights, and move around various objects (but never steal anything). She believed people stood outside her house, surveilling her while smoking cigarettes they discarded in her trash can. She believed they had gotten into her attic and installed a listening device to monitor her behavior.

None of her acquaintances — I’m not sure she had any real friends — were brave enough to ask her why someone would take so much interest in her. She was introverted, antisocial, and conspiratorial. She was neither wealthy nor physically attractive. Nevertheless, she was convinced that there were people out there obsessed with her.

My acquaintance is not alone in her fears. The pandemic — in which medical authorities warned that even young, healthy Americans were in immediate danger of death — dramatically increased paranoia. Americans are also suffering from rising mental health problems. Worldwide, there has been an approximate 25 percent increase in anxiety and depression. (READ MORE: The Media Is Dedicated to Provoking the Worst Qualities of Humanity)

The great American novelist Henry James knew a thing or two about paranoia. One of his most memorable fictional characters is Olive Chancellor of The Bostonians, a post–Civil War feminist driven by a progressively more maniacal passion to control her friend and fellow feminist Verena Tarrant, whom Chancellor is paranoid will be seduced by one of Tarrant’s many suitors. But perhaps the paramount exemplar of James’s ability to describe the deadly danger posed by psychosis is found in his 1898 horror novella The Turn of the Screw. At its 125th birthday, the story is quite relevant for our own “anxious age.”

The Turn of the Screw is the story of an English governess responsible for a young girl, Flora, and boy, Miles, whose parents have both died. The governess (and narrator) cares for the children at a rural estate in Essex and befriends the housekeeper, Mrs. Grose. Not long after arriving at the manor, the governess begins seeing the figures of a man and woman who are invisible to other remembers of the household. The governess learns from Mrs. Grose that the governess’s predecessor, Miss Jessel, and another employee, Peter Quint, had a close relationship, not only with each other but with Flora and Miles. The governess, in turn, becomes convinced that the children can see the ghosts of Jessel and Quint.

There has been much scholarly debate over The Turn of the Screw: is it a ghost story, the hallucinations of a sexually repressed woman, or perhaps even a story promoting Marxist or feminist motifs? Most of this scholarly commentary seems to say more about the commentators than it does about the story and its author. “I see ghosts everywhere,” James wrote in an 1895 letter. At face value, the story seems to presume that the ghosts of Jessel and Quint are real.

Nevertheless, regardless of how one interprets The Turn of the Screw, the governess’ behavior is patently bizarre and paranoid. At one point, Mrs. Grose asks the governess if she’s afraid of seeing the ghost of Miss Jessel again. “Oh no,” responds the governess. “That’s nothing — now! … It’s of not seeing her.” In other words, at least in seeing the ghosts the governess maintains some level of control over the situation. But if she didn’t, that could mean they are somewhere, threatening harm to her and the children under her care.

The governess describes how her fears that the children could indeed see these ghosts fascinated her, even if she was terrified by them:

I used to wonder how my little charges could help guessing that I thought strange things about them; and the circumstance that these things only made them more interesting was not by itself a direct aid to keeping them in the dark. I trembled lest they should see that they were so immensely more interesting.

Regardless of James’ authorial intention, this smells like a classic case of paranoia. The governess is fearful, but also indulgent of those fears, in that they engender further fascination. What if there really are ghosts haunting the grounds?

So engrossed is the governess in her ghost-ridden experiences that her world begins to narrow. One night, when she perceives a ghost on the stairs, she explains: “The moment was so prolonged that it would have taken but little more to make me doubt if even I were in life.” In effect, the longer she stares at the monster, the less any reality outside the monster matters.

The governess believes it is “the work of demons” that plagues the Essex manor. She speaks of the “strange steps of my obsessions” and of imagining screaming at Flora and Miles, the “little wretches” who deny the presence of any ghosts. When the governess claims to see the ghosts of Jessel and Quint, the bewildered Mrs. Grose queries: “Where on earth do you see anything?” The governess presses Flora to admit to seeing Jessel, the little girl retorts: “I don’t know what you mean. I see nobody. I see nothing. I never have. I think you’re cruel. I don’t like you!”

What to make of all of this? Sometimes it certainly seems like the governess is seeing ghosts, and the children are hiding something. But other evidence — including, most notably, the fact that no one else confirms the governess’s observations — suggest that possibly it’s all a figment of an unstable woman’s imagination. Hence the psychoanalytic or Freudian interpretations.

But in another sense, does it matter? Whether or not the ghosts are there, the result for the governess is the same: a deepening descent into paranoia and madness. That may be Henry James’ most relevant commentary on our own contemporary influx of mental illness. Sure, we might die from some hitherto unknown global virus. We might suffer ridicule or censure on social media for our opinions or behavior. And we might be witnessing the slow decline of our culture. So what? Has worrying about such things ever done the anxious good?

Regardless of the actual reality of the ghosts that plague us — be they the spirits of the dead, lethal illnesses, social ostracization, or civilizational decline — the more we obsess over them, the more control they wield over our thoughts and lives. We find ourselves incapable of looking away from our endlessly hysterical news cycle and our social media feeds. In most cases, there’s absolutely nothing we can do about the events that instill in us overwhelming fear and stress. That’s why often the best response to our anxiety is encapsulated in that Paul Anka song from The Simpsons: “Just don’t look.” Otherwise, like the poor neurotic governess (or my tormented acquaintance), it will be also for us, “only another turn of the screw” into insanity.

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