I am stuck. I have killed all the Corrupted Shades in the Kilkreath Temple and the Kilkreath Ruins, but in the Ruins there is a locked door which needs a key. I have searched all the Ghostly Remains, but no key. Help?

I have also been in the UESPWiki, and that doesn't tell anything about a door needing a key, so, no help there..

thier are altars that contain spheres that focus the beam of light from Meridia that need to be activated to unlock the doors.
Avoid getting in the way of the beam!

^This.
Have you been activating the beams as you go?

You're kidding. Are you telling me that a beam of light will unlock a door that says it needs a key? Really? I am stunned. To quote Harry Potter: "Who could have figured that out?" Yes, I have been activating the pedestals to get the beam to continue, but as I said in my original post, I'm stuck. There are no more visible pedestals to activate from where I am in this particular quest, and the locked door seems to be the next step.

Thank you both for responding.

well i have that quest to do still on my new character, so if you want i'll do it and let you know how i go.

Find steps up, its up, better yet use clairvoyance.

IIRC, from that place, you'll need to find another way into the next area.

okay, im in the quest now. is it the room with the locked door upstairs to the right, and an enchanting table and master locked door upstairs to the left? if so, theres a beam to activate on the top of the pillar in the middle of the room. it unlocks the door that requires a 'key' to reveal a second door that goes to kilkreath balcony.

OK - I found it. When you go up to the second level and walk through the caged tunnel, you come to a fire behind a grate. Turn left there, and keep going (which I hadn't, earlier) and it takes you to the next level of the temple and the rest of the quest.

Thanks to all for the responses. I just had to push a little farther to find another hallway, that's all.

Yeah - I found my way through - thanks.

Yep, this was a tricky one. Have fun with the rest of it!

lol

Just an FYI, but many doors in the game which are scripted to be locked for a specific quest or some such will say they "require a key" even when they really don't.

Most of them don't even have a key, for that matter.

The locks say 'Key Required' due to how the lock difficulty level system works, and also because they only have one descriptor for such locks. Any lock set to maximum difficulty (255) cannot be picked, thus requires a key to open; to indicate this, when you examine the lock it shows 'Key Required' where there would normally be a difficulty rating. While they could (and probably should, to be honest) have made individual descriptors for each type of quest-based lock, they're all identical internally (since they're just different names for the script changing the lock's state from 'locked' to 'open') so it made more sense to not bother and just stick with the 'Key Required' label.