from Emily Greenquist: Whispers at the Altar of the Dead

I was a preteen the first time I attempted Henry James. That summer, my “Books I’ve Read!” library sheet almost exclusively listed teen horror novels by Christopher Pike—Chain Letter, Fall into Darkness, Remember Me, Whisper of Death—all templates for my analysis of James’s “The Altar of the Dead.” To my memory, over many years, a man builds an elaborate altar, lighting more and more candles, one for each of the beloved friends he murders. Early in his killing spree, the man meets a young woman, a protégée who, to his disappointment, only has the stomach to kill one. Well, in the end, two, but I hate to spoil it.

“The Altar of the Dead” by Henry James is available at gutenberg.org. 

Illustration from Albert A. Hopkins’s 

Magic: Stage Illusions and Scientific Diversions, including Trick Photography (1897)

Details available at Public Domain Image Archive.