Dabbled in Blood, the Masked Figure

Tuesday’s Short Story, January 25, 2022

The Masque of the Red Death  by Edgar Allan Poe (1842)

 

 

This month of January is the anniversary of  Edgar Allan Poe (birth January 19, 1809). What better time to mark our appreciation of this great writer than to read one of his stories?

The Masque of the Red Death is fast 20-minute read for readers who love supernatural and mystery. I think this story has a timeliness during this Covid pandemic when we are all wearing masks and where many of us wish we could run away to our private abbeys to stay safe.

“The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.”

Prince Prospero summons his dominions to his castle, an abbey in the far hills. Here the ‘gay society’ is safe to enjoy themselves in the seven rooms of different colors—which have its own mystery. We are at a masked ball with music and dancing, but who arrives? An uninvited mysterious figure. In the seventh room that is draped in black velvet with blood red window panes, our tale goes deep with supernatural, psychological, and horrific elements in grand Poe style. This is soooooo Gothic!

Read the short story at Gutenberg.org

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1064/1064-h/1064-h.htm

 

Listen to the audio read by Sir Christopher Lee:

 

Watch the film created at the University of Technology, Sydney for Media Arts and Production (15 minutes). Sweeping, baroque, and spooky.

 

 

Poe wrote in many genres. He was the first to include deep psychological and intuitive horror in his stories. His tales often reflect that the true monster of evil is within each person and what happens when that evil is acted upon. His most famous work is The Raven.

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX OF AUTHORS’ TALES above of more free reading at Reading Fiction Blog. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories (some with audio), by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, suspense, supernatural, ghost stories, crime, sci-fi, romance, ‘quiet horror,’ and mainstream fiction.

 

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 Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

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Discover Author of the Week posted on Mondays!

Peculiar Spirit of the Skies

The Shadow: A Parable   by Edgar Allan Poe (1835)

 Tuesday’s Tale of Terror    September 12, 2017

 

In the city of Ptolemais, seven men meet at night in a closed chamber.  They are drinking purple wine. An unquiet glare of the seven lamps penetrates. Inside the chamber is a shrouded body.

Olinos is our narrator:  “YE who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows.”

 

This is a 12-minute read with a thrilling edge. It has been called a “rhapsody of gloom” and is one of Poe’s early stories. Great prose!

 

 

Read the short story here at Xroads Virginia Eduction web site.

Listen to the audio (8 minutes) on You Tube.com.

More stories at  eapoe.org  

 

 

 

Poe is credited for defining the short story form.  He created the first recorded literary detective, Dupin,  in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe was known to be obsessed with cats,  and often wrote with a cat on his shoulder.  His cat Catterina died the same day as Poe. In 1848 the author attempted  suicide. Some time later he posed for this daguerreotype.

 

 

 

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free reading. This is a compendium of over 200 short stories by more than 100 famous storytellers of mystery, supernatural, ghost stories,  suspense, crime, sci-fi, and ‘quiet horror.’ Follow or sign up to join me in reading two short stories every month. Comments are welcome.

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Kirkus Mystery & Thrillers Reviews

Books & Such    Bibliophilica   NewYorkerFictionOnline

 Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

HorrorNews.net   Fangoria.com   

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine   Chuck Windig’s Terrible Minds

HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian      HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

EZindiepublishing

Poe’s “Some Words With a Mummy”

Some Words With a Mummy  by Edgar Allan Poe  (1850)

 Tuesday’s Tale of Terror    October 25, 2016

 

Mummies are not all that scary are they? These days we tend to poke fun at them  with corny jokes (What did Pharaoh say when he saw the pyramid? “Mummy’s home.”).  Poe may have been one of the first to create amusement at such dead things  in this wackiest of his short stories.

The story begins with our narrator describing his dull evening at home, when a “furious ringing at the street-door bell, and then an impatient thumping at the knocker, which awakened me at once.”

This is the invitation he receives from Dr. Ponnonner:

“Come to me, by all means, my dear good friend, as soon as you receive this. Come and help us to rejoice. At last, by long persevering diplomacy, I have gained the assent of the Directors of the City Museum, to my examination of the Mummy — you know the one I mean. I have permission to unswathe it and open it, if desirable. A few friends only will be present — you, of course. The Mummy is now at my house, and we shall begin to unroll it at eleven to-night.”

Come to this “unwrapping party” and meet the mummy Count Allamistakeo. Even his name is cute! This mummy is not only revived but he can articulate. And the rest is history … Egyptian history that is. American vanity vs. Egyptology vs. science in full Poe style. This is one Poe story you might have missed.

No doubt Poe became inspired to write this adventure from when he observed a mummy on display in the Virginia State Capitol—at the age of 14, he was certainly impressed creatively.

 

 

 

If you really want a vintage literary experience, listen to the storytelling on audio:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDH4RJNWXMg

Read the short story at Virginia.Edu:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~hyper/poe/mummy.html

 

 

 

 

Want more Poe literature? Visit these sites:

Edgar Allan Poe Museum website.

Edgar Allan Poe Stories website.

The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe (Smithsonian).

The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.

Halloween’s coming soon … and more ghostly literature for next week!

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror. This is a compendium of over 180 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery,  supernatural, horror, and ghost stories. Join me in reading one short story every other week! Comments are welcome.

 

 Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine

Books & Such   Bibliophilica    Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

 HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian     HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

EZindiepublishing

 

Locked-Room Mysteries, Good and Grisly

The Murders of Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)

 Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   September 6, 2016

 

 

Who isn’t a fan of locked door mysteries? The clues or lack of clues in these stories make us think deeply and feel entertained at the same time in a mind-bending sort of way. I’ve been reading locked door mysteries this month and having a great time. Gaston Leroux’s Mystery of the Yellow Room, John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins, and The Adventure Of The Sealed Room by Adrian Conan Doyle & John Dickson Carr to name a few. The Golden Age of crime fiction gave us a long list of these murder mysteries with authors who know how to baffle was well as trick your perceptions.

The #1 in our literary history is Poe’s The Murders of the Rue Morgue. A young woman’s corpse jammed up a chimney. An elderly woman brutally murdered by decapitation. Locked doors. Nailed down windows. Not a single footprint. And the famous C. Auguste Dupin to bring you along on this adventure. If you’ve never read this one during the ol’ school days, read it now. The audio is quite entertaining and a great escape for an hour. Don’t let the dry opening deter you (checkers vs. chess) that focuses on the process of exact thinking (analysis vs. intelligence vs. intuition). Poe is clearly leading our mental prowess to follow his path: truth is what remains, once we determine what is impossible. Are you up for a bit of creative insight?

I listened to the audio of this story while following the text in an old Poe edition. Sitting by an open window on a gray sunless day, I could see the wind shaking the green leaves of trees. A glass of brandy, feet up, snuggled in … perfect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read the short story The Murders of the Rue Morgue at Ebooks.Adelaide.edu

Listen to Librivox Murders of Rue Morgue on YouTube.com

For more about locked door mysteries stop by Mysteryfile.com 

Also, try Otto Penzler’s famous anthology of the best locked-room mysteries available on Amazon.

 

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror. This is a compendium of over 170 short stories by over 100 master storytellers of mystery,  supernatural, horror, and ghost stories. Join me in reading one short story every other week! Comments are welcome.

  

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Slattery’s Art of Horror Magazine

Books & Such   Bibliophilica    Lovecraft Ezine   Parlor of Horror

 HorrorAddicts.net     Horror Novel Reviews    HorrorSociety.com     

Monster Librarian     HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com 

 Rob Around Books      The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

EZindiepublishing

Romantic Horror: Poe’s Lady Ligeia

Ligeia  by Edgar Allan Poe  (1839)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  October 27, 2015

 

 

Who doesn’t love a romance with twists of horror? Especially during the Halloween reading season. The opening epigraph of this short story is a reference to the will of death vs. the will to live. In this tale, one of Poe’s less popular ones, our narrator lives in a decaying city near the Rhine. He lives there with the love of his life, Ligeia. She is of the highest beauty and with a gentle soul … “She came and departed as a shadow …sweet voiced …. with the radiance of an opium dream, airy and spirit-lifting.”

 

Ligeia grows ill and death becomes her. Feeling utterly abandoned, our narrator remarries Lady Rowena and they live in an old abbey … until Rowena grows ill.

“The greater part of the fearful night had worn away, and she who had been dead, once again stirred …”

 

Poe, a master of prose, writes this story with its own beauty and suspense. At the literal level, there’s a blending of the supernatural with the psychological. For me, I fell I love with the phantasmagoric elements of the story because it arouses an intense horror. Who can resist the fetters of death? You decide, is this a love story or a horror story?

Read Ligeia at Online-Literature.com

http://www.online-literature.com/poe/2126/

Listen to the audio, narrated by Vincent Price on YouTube.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSHhETITtiw

And no Halloween is complete without Poe’s The Raven. Listen to James Earl Jones narrate it here with music and a portfolio of images:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NykmXl24qcc

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Images from Wiki Commons and The Illustrated Poe.

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Books & Such

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com        Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian   Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books     Sillyverse    The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.

Poe Stories Read by Vincent Price

Greetings,

I couldn’t resist sharing this link with you. If you love to listen to supernatural stories, this collection from Open Culture.com (via Spotify, free)  has five hours of Edgar Allan Poe stories read by Vincent Price.  The Raven, The Haunted Palace, the City in the Sea, and much more.  Enjoy this bonus from yours truly for August.

 

http://www.openculture.com/2015/08/5-hours-of-edgar-allan-poe-stories-read-by-vincent-price-basil-rathbone.html

 

 

 

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine     HorrorAddicts.net  

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com        Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian   Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

HorrorNews.net     HorrorTalk.com

 Rob Around Books     Sillyverse    The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic authors.

Darkness of Solitude on Halloween: Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe’s Necromantic Literature

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   October 28, 2014

Halloween is this week. What if you didn’t go trick-or-treating or didn’t answer your doorbell to the playful ghosts and witches? What if you stayed locked in your home, alone, and entertained the darkness on this oh-so-hallowed night. What consciousness of the dead would conspire to make your acquaintance? How brave are you?

Edgar Allan Poe knew the power of being alone. He knew the power of the imagination. He knew the power of death. His characters were masters at conjuring up palpable and mysterious presences. A Tale of the Ragged Mountains is a less popular short story from the Poe collection that I’m betting many here haven’t read. This story is about Augustus Bedloe who travels alone a mountain in Charlottesville in a thick and peculiar mist.

“Busied in this, I walked on for several hours, during which the mist deepened around me to so great an extent that at length I was reduced to an absolute groping of the way. And now an indescribable uneasiness possessed me–a species of nervous hesitation and tremor. I feared to tread, lest I should be precipitated into some abyss. I remembered, too, strange stories told about these Ragged Hills, and of the uncouth and fierce races of men who tenanted their groves and caverns. A thousand vague fancies oppressed and disconcerted me–fancies the more distressing because vague. Very suddenly my attention was arrested by the loud beating of a drum.”

What happens to Bedloe alone on this mountain? This is a story of mesmerism, disembodiment and reembodiment, bizarre encounters, and death. Perfect for a Halloween read because there is no Halloween without the macabre adventures of Poe.

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains by Edgar Allan Poe (1844)

Read this short story at Classic Literature About.com

In keeping with this theme of solitude, Poe also wrote the following poem Alone, which I’ve posted here. Quite revealing, this poem expresses what it is to love alone and what it might bring.

Alone

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

[Above art credit:  Ashwini Shrivastava]

 

Lastly, I want to give you Poe’s final story, just before his sudden death. Poe began a manuscript titled The Light-House. Unfinished and unpublished, this is the story of a man with a passion for solitude, who goes to live at the edge of the sea in a lighthouse. Poe wrote only four paragraphs.

“My spirits are beginning to revive already, at the mere thought of being — for once in my life at least — thoroughly alone …”

Read The Light-House at E.A. Poe.org.

 

 

Poe’s biographies tell of his great misery and tragedies as well as loneliness. We think of solitude and loneliness as walls that shut out the world. For Poe, the aloneness may have acted as a bridge to his necromantic literature. A master of dark fiction, Poe died, October 7, 1849 at Washington Hospital. His last words, “Lord, help my poor soul.”

 

 

 

 

Other Reading Web Sites to Visit

Bibliophilica       Lovecraft Ezine

Horror Novel Reviews    Hell Horror    HorrorPalace

HorrorSociety.com       Sirens Call Publications

 Monster Librarian  Tales to Terrify       Spooky Reads

 Rob Around Books    The Story Reading Ape Blog

For Authors/Writers:  The Writer Unboxed

Don’t forget to view the INDEX above of more free Tales of Terror classic Authors.

Adventures in Death: Poe’s Maelström

A Descent Into the Maelström  by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror  May 28,2013

If you like sea adventures, this one is an absolute must read … Picture yourself high upon a cliff on the mountain of Helseggen the Cloudy above a raging sea on the Norwegian coastline.

Some say death comes in installments offering us choices. When Edgar Allan Poe wrote A Descent into the Maelström, he presents a unique question. Is it worth it to succumb to death, hang on desperately to your life, or defy it and figure your way out? In this story, Poe takes us a step further. He tempts us into the darkness of death and opens us up to the wild beauty of nature.

We had now reached the summit of the loftiest crag.

This opening line is from an old man with shocking white hair, but not old because of age. This man is weakened, unstrung, and shaky because of “six hours of deadly terror.”

Three brothers are on a fishing trip on a schooner-rigged smack. A maelström, you probably know, is a violent whirlwind, a frenzied convulsive vortex of water. The depth of the maelstrom’s violent water might go to forty fathoms. If you were trapped inside this gyrating vortex, would you wait for death and spiral down into the abyss?

Or keep your eyes open in search of a rainbow?

Read it at Classic Literature:

http://classiclit.about.com/library/bl-etexts/eapoe/bl-eapoe-descent.htm

If you prefer a narration, you might enjoy this two-part story (30 minutes total) on YOUTUBE:

Part I:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pNDxi7YQfo

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UFH3hHY3XM

http://www.hellhorror.com/links/

Horror In Abasteron House

Abasteron House  (author to be revealed)

Tuesday’s Tale of Terror   March 26, 2013

Abasteron House is a dark tale. We begin with the shy light of a girl under a beachy summer sun. We end in the purple of the bedchamber, a women in her dream, darkness filled and winged.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. Most recognize this line from Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “A Dream Within a Dream.” Literary experts debate the poem’s full intent, but many can agree Poe is saying all is an illusion—all we see here and all we seem to be. Really?

Illusion versus reality. What a haunting dilemma.

Imagine you are Davida Kip Livingston, a young artist, just an ordinary girl, living with your grandfather in Abasteron House by the sea. Grandfather is a dear sweet man who loves poetry and mythology and prefers to sit for long hours locked inside his attic study. But what he sees versus what he seems to be is no dream within a dream.

Listen outside Grandfather’s attic door and hear the maniacal scratching; imagine a bitter claw ripping into your flesh. Is there a growling now? Is that the flap of a winged beast? Davida wants to know what’s living inside Grandfather’s attic. Do you?

Abasteron House is published at Every Day Fiction in the March issue. The story is flash fiction (1000 words). The author is not a dead author like the other 19th- and 20th-century horror writers featured on this blog site. The author is me, Paula Cappa, and Abasteron House is the prequel to my novel Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural, where Davida Kip Livingston lives through the horror in Abasteron House.

Read the short story here:  http://www.everydayfiction.com/abasteron-house-by-paula-cappa/

Night Sea Journey, A Tale of the Supernatural on Amazon.com

I love to hear comments from my readers, so please dash off a word or two if you enjoyed Abasteron House.

Stop back next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror. Follow me here, on Twitter or Facebook.

HellHorror.com 

Obsessions: Love, Art, Death. Poe’s The Oval Portrait

The Oval Portrait   by  Edgar Allen Poe (1842)

Tuesday’s Tales of Terror, January 22, 2013

The setting: deep midnight at an abandoned château in the snowy Apennines Mountains.

The narrator: a wounded soldier takes refuge in this château, stays the night in one of the turret bedrooms “decorations rich, yet tattered and antique.” His room is filled with flickering light from “tongues of a tall candelabrum.” The soldier’s vision is captured by a great number of “very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque on the walls.”

Can you see this? Very inviting, I think. This week being the anniversary of Poe’s birth date, I chose The Oval Portrait because it represents Poe, not for his grisly writings, but for the romance, passion, and the hypnotic effect of obsessions.

On the soldier’s pillow lay a small volume, handwritten in “quaint words.”  And a stunning portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood hangs in the niche of his room. The flashing of the candlelight plays on her face and shoulders for hours … until the soldier can sleep no more. There is a secret in this portrait, one that the soldier feels compelled discover.

The soldier takes up the little volume and begins to read. The volume is written by the artist. He describes how he painted the portrait of his beauty on the wall. The artist did “not see that the tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of her.”

What does this mean? Ah-haa. Herein tells the destiny of fatal beauty and the obsession of art. Art and romance! I think it was Emerson who said art is a jealous mistress.

Read it here:  http://poestories.com/read/ovalportrait

Another of Poe’s romantic stories is Ligeia about a love object, written in the Germanic romantic tradition. The setting here is gray and decaying— even the sun and moon fall with a “ghastly luster.” This woman, Ligeia, is an exquisite beauty with dark curly hair and brilliant black eyes. But Ligeia is possessed with “a strangeness” the narrator describes … “She came and departed as a shadow.”  When Ligeia dies … the story takes a wicked turn into an obsession with death.

Read it here:   http://www.online-literature.com/poe/2126/

And stop by next Tuesday for another Tale of Terror.