This story is told by an unnamed narrator who endlessly tries to convince the reader of his sanity, while describing a murder he committed. The victim was an old man with a filmy "vulture-eye", as the narrator calls it. This eye was the only thing that vexed him to want to kill the man. It haunted the narrator in a way that increased paranoia ensued. The murder is carefully calculated, and the murderer hides the body by dismembering it and hiding it under the floorboards. Ultimately the narrator's guilt manifests itself in the form of the sound—possibly hallucinatory—of the old man's heart still beating under the floorboards. While the police were checking in on a scream that a neighbor had heard, the narrator eventually, after some time with them, became so paranoid that he did give himself up to just try to stop the sounds in his mind.

Anyone who enjoys classic horror with a wealth of symbolism.

The beginning...in which he told about his madness, which technically was paranoia due to withdrawal!

Read the other stories I had not read before.

Intrigued

Edgar Allen Poe

Poe is truly the classic master of horror!

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Created Apr 30, 2025 at 9:21pm • Submit your own review...