‘The “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous.’
Edgar Allan Poe’s spooky stories may never have been as relevant as they are this Halloween. In “The Masque of the Red Death”, we see a plague rage against a land and its people. Naturally, a rich prince decides to host a massive party regardless of the circumstances outside of the castle’s walls. What has changed?
The great thing about classic gothic stories is that they are just as relatable to our own lives as they were when they were written. People don’t change, not really. Our deepest fears stay the same, isolation, guilt, the unknown.
“The Tell Tale Heart”, details a man’s painful descent into madness. Guilt consumes him until it is too much to bear. The thing about Poe’s stories is that they focus on the deep psychological fears we try to push to the darkest corners of our minds.
“It’s true! Yes, I have been ill, very ill. But why do you say that I am mad? Can you not see I have full control of my mind? Is it not clear that I am not mad?”
The power of our minds is far more frightening than a traditional jump scare, a bump in the night. Poe’s stories stay with you for far longer than Hollywood’s latest paranormal blockbuster. The tales could take place in any country, at any given time, “in the October of another year.” We realise the buildings that Poe describes in immaculate detail almost immediately because they already existed within our own minds.
We are brought to our own unique hell; a place we were trying to forget. A horrible monster or a ghost can be rationalised. We can blame a hoax, exhaustion, a trick of the light. It’s far more difficult to escape “a sense of insufferable gloom”.
It can be easy to bypass classic stories in favour of more accessible reads but that would be a mistake. The language is simple and the character’s struggles could just as easily be taking place in 2020. Alfred Hitchcock credits his career to Poe’s tales of psychological horror. “It’s because I liked Edgar Allan Poe’s stories so much that I began to make suspense films.”
Poe is hailed as being the inventor of modern detective fiction. Arthur Conan Doyle drew inspiration from the short stories and poems.
Without “The Fall of the House of Usher”, we would never have had the Halloween classic that is “The Shining”. Both tales are largely similar in the fact that they follow a male suffering from an incurable strange disease of the mind. There is no end to their suffering as they “now existed in a world of which I held no key.” Mediums have claimed to be able to channel Poe’s spirit and write more stories (the man doesn’t get a break).
The easiest way to get a feel for the land that existed within the gothic genius’ mind is to listen to Christopher Lee’s narration of “The Fall of the House of Usher”. An accompanying YouTube video with a real Tim Burton feel and will transport you to a Halloween night in whatever century you choose. The eerie cartoon paired with a deep voice will leave the viewer with Goosebumps and a taste for gothic fiction.