Some of Bellairs favorite things were tales of haunted houses, ghosts, secret rituals performed by the light of the waning moon, and other enchanted objects. Jack Sullivan writes that the characters in James's stories share a similar fascination with these types of objects and situations:

"The characters are antiquaries, not merely because the past enthralls them, but because the present is a near vacuum. They surround themselves with rarefied paraphernalia from the past-engravings, rare books, altars, tombs, coins , and even such things as doll's houses and ancient whistles-seemingly because they cannot connect with anything in the present. The endless process of collecting and arranging gives the characters an illusory sense of order and stability, illusory because it is precisely this process which evokes the demon or the vampire….their adventures represent a sophisticate version of the old warning that idleness is the devil's workshop." [Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, page 75]

"He never went out of his way to shock, merely unnerve. His spirits had to be evil in intent, but never would he break the spell by describing them in detail. Only a few hints are necessary, and the reader's imagination does the rest. James used three basic rules. First and foremost was that the spirits had to be malevolent. There was no point in having a pitiful ghost since he believed the purpose of a ghost story was to frighten. Amiable ghosts were for legends, he maintained. His second rule was that the events had to be convincing, and this could be achieved not just by the writing but also by the setting: the more commonplace the surroundings the better. Finally the story had to be easily understood and not overloaded with occult jargon as if it were a thesis rather than fiction." [Shadows of the Master, c. 1979]

Sullivan also notes another stylistic point that James uses, that of humor, citing that "humor and horror...are often to sides of the same coin. The humor does not defuse horror so much as intensify it by making it manageable and accessible." These two extremes run rampart through Bellairs' The Face in the Frost, where scenes can change from laugh-aloud funny to nail-biting terrifying over the course of a few sentences. While these are both balanced in Bellairs' output, most notable The House with a Clock in Its Walls and The Figure in the Shadows, some of his later novels are not on the same level.

Sullivan finally notes that James gave the ghost story a new theme, where his ghosts materialize not so much from inner darkness or outer conspiracies as from a kind of antiquarian malaise.

"Remaining modestly within the confines of popular entertainment, his fiction nevertheless shows how nostalgia has a habit of turning into horror….In James, the antiquaries are stolidly normal, and their ghosts are real. Above all, James's collectors clearly enjoy what they are doing: those who survive these stories would not dream of giving up their arcane pursuits simply because they were almost swallowed up by unearthly presences." [Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood, page 90]

Brad Strickland continued the homage to James’ work in the novels he wrote after Bellairs’ death, going as far to reference the author by name on occasion [The Tower at the End of the World, 80; The Whistle, the Grave, and the Ghost, 30].

     In a private chapel - no matter where - he had seen three figures, each occupying a whole light in a window, and evidently the work of one artist. They represented - will you be surprised to hear it? - Job Patriarcha, Johannes Evangelista, Zacharias Propheta, and each held of them held a book or scroll, inscribed with a sentence from his writings.

Another phrase comes from the story Mr. Humphrey's and His Inheritance:

     The maze is gone, and Lady Wardrop has forgiven Humphreys; in fact, I believe he married her niece. She was right, too, in her conjecture that the stones in the temple were numbered. There had been a numeral painted on the bottom of each. Some few of these had rubbed off, but enough remained to enable Humphreys to reconstruct the inscription. It ran thus: PENETRANS AD INTERIORA MORTIS.

Both Mr. Humphrey's and His Inheritance and the Bellairs/Strickland adventure The Vengeance of the Witch-Finder (1993) feature a mysterious hedge maze containing hidden tombs at their center, both of which have curious domed tops:

     They turned left and plunged into a series of twists and turns. Before long, Lewis had no idea where they were or which way led back out of the maze. On either side, leafy green wall hemmed them in. Originally gravel had covered the paths between the walls. Grass and weeds had sprouted through the gravel. Now the brushy growth was knee high in places, and walking through it was like wading through water. (p. 26)
     The "building" that Bertie had mentioned was a small brick structure. It came up to Lewis' chest - about three and a half feet, he estimated. The brick was pale rd and crumbling. The top of the structure was concrete, with rounded edges so that rain would run off. In the very center of the top was a dome. It was about the size of Mrs. Zimmermann's largest mxing bowl, if the bowl were inverted to rest on its rim. This dome was made of concrete too, like the rest of the lid. (p. 44)

     It was a yew maze, of circular form, and the hedges, long untrimmed, had grown out and upwards to a most unorthodox breadth and height. The walks, too, were next door to impassable. Only by entirely disregarding scratches, nettle-stings, and wet, could Humphreys force his way along them; but at any rate this condition of things, he reflected, would make it easier for him to find his way out again, for he left a very visible track. So far as he could remember, he had never been in a maze before, nor did it seem to him now that he had missed much. The dankness and darkness, and smell of crushed goosegrass and nettles were anything but cheerful. Still, it did not seem to be a very intricate specimen of its kind. Here he was (by the way, was that Cooper arrived at last? No!) very nearly at the heart of it, without having taken much thought as to what path he was following. Ah! there at last was the centre, easily gained. And there was something to reward him. His first impression was that the central ornament was a sundial; but when he had switched away some portion of the thick growth of brambles and bindweed that had formed over it, he saw that it was a less ordinary decoration. A stone column about four feet high, and on the top of it a metal globe -- copper, to judge by the green patina -- engraved, and finely engraved too, with figures in outline, and letters.

     One side of the page was thickly printed with a Latin text in Gothic lettering. The other side was taken up by a steel engraving, a scene rendered in densely cross-hatched lines of ink. On the right, a king sat on an ornate throne, a stern expression on his bearded face. His outstretched hand held a scepter. On the left side of the picture stood four soldiers. Between them cowered a mysterious figure in a hood and cape. You couldn't tell whether it was a man or a woman. (p. 27-8)

     In the lower right corner of the illustration, the throne of King Solomon cast a deep black shadow. Only as he stared at it, Lewis realized it wasn't a shadow at all, but some kind of creature. It hunkered beside the throne, its spidery limbs hugging itself. Its body seemed to be covered with matted, shaggy black hair. Just visible at its left shoulder was its right hand, nearly skeletal. Like Solomon, it was pointing its finger toward the cowled figure as if in accusation. But worst of all were the eyes, round saucers that seemed to glow at the viewer with an inner hatred. (p. 28)

     On the right was a king on his throne, the throne elevated on twelve steps, a canopy overhead, lions on either side-evidently King Solomon. He was bending forward with outstretched scepter, in attitude of command: his face expressed horror and disgust, yet there was in it also the mark of imperious will and confident power. The left half of the picture was the strangest, however. The interest plainly centred there. On the pavement before the throne were grouped four soldiers surrounding a crouching figure which must be described in a moment. A fifth soldier lay dead on the pavement, his neck distorted and his eyeballs starting from his head. The four surrounding guards were looking at the king. In their faces the sentiment of horror was intensified: they seemed, in fact, only restrained from flight by their implicit trust in their master. All this terror was plainly excited by the being that crouched in their midst.

     At first, you saw only a mass of coarse matted black hair: presently it was seen that this covered a body of fearful thinness-almost a skeleton, but with muscles standing out like wires. The hands were of a dusk pallor, covered like the body with long coarse hairs, and hideously taloned. The eyes, touched in with a burning yellow, had intensely black pupils, and were fixed upon the throned king with a look of beast-like hate.

     It wriggled disgustingly in Lewis's hand. With a cry of alarm, Lewis flung it away. The parchment streaked for an open window, hit the screen, and fluttered wildly, like a moth beating it wings frantically, trying to escape. Mrs. Zimmermann sprung up at once. "Don't let it get away!" she yelled.
     Jonathan lunged to the window. The parchment had found the edge of the screen and was trying to worm its way through the tiny gap between the screen and the windowsill. With a loud slap, Jonathan clapped his hand over it. He pulled it away from the window. For a moment it writhed visibly in his grip. Lewis had the strange impression that it was furious, that it was filled with hatred for all of them. (p. 64)

     In it were the quires of small-sized scribbling paper which he used for his transcripts: and from one of these, as he took it up, there slipped and fluttered out into the room with uncanny quickness, a strip of thin light paper. The window was open, but Harrington slammed it to, just in time to intercept the paper, which he caught.

We tend to agree.

Bellairs was extremely well read in the works of James and pays tribute to that author by including small literary devices in his novels. Some of these (from both Bellairs and Strickland’s novels) include:

• Barnavelt, Lewis
• Childermass Clock
• Flimsies
• Herman, Mr.
• Izard Family (Awakening)
• Lamia
• Nightwood, Willis
• Prospero's House (basement)
• Staunton Harold
• Windrow Familiar
• Windrow, Zebulon
• More examples below....

• A View from a Hill
• An Episode of Cathedral History
• Casting the Runes
• Canon Alberic's Scrap-book
• Count Magnus
• The Haunted Dolls' House
• Mr Humphreys and His Inheritance
• Lost Hearts
• "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad"
• The Tractate Middoth
• The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
• The Uncommon Prayer-book
• Wailing Well