Hi
everyone!!
As
HALLOWEEN is coming… in today’s post we’ll tell you about a very famous ghost
story;
The tell-tale heart is one of the most well-known
stories written by Edgar Allan Poe:
An unnamed narrator opens the story by
addressing the reader and claiming that he is nervous but not mad. He says that
he is going to tell a story in which he will defend his sanity yet confess to
having killed an old man. His motivation was neither passion nor desire for
money, but rather a fear of the man’s pale blue eye. Again, he insists that he
is not crazy because his cool and measured actions, though criminal, are not
those of a madman. Every night, he went to the old man’s apartment and secretly
observed the man sleeping. In the morning, he would behave as if everything
were normal. After a week of this activity, the narrator decides, somewhat
randomly, that the time is right actually to kill the old man.
When the narrator arrives late on the eighth
night, though, the old man wakes up and cries out. The narrator remains still,
stalking the old man as he sits awake and frightened. The narrator understands
how frightened the old man is, having also experienced the lonely terrors of
the night. Soon, the narrator hears a dull pounding that he interprets as the
old man’s terrified heartbeat. Worried that a neighbor might hear the loud
thumping, he attacks and kills the old man. He then dismembers the body and
hides the pieces below the floorboards in the bedroom. He is careful not to
leave even a drop of blood on the floor. As he finishes his job, a clock
strikes the hour of four. At the same time, the narrator hears a knock at the
street door. The police have arrived, having been called by a neighbor who
heard the old man shriek. The narrator is careful to be chatty and to appear
normal. He leads the officers all over the house without acting suspiciously.
At the height of his bravado, he even brings them into the old man’s bedroom to
sit down and talk at the scene of the crime. The policemen do not suspect a
thing. The narrator is comfortable until he starts to hear a low thumping
sound. He recognizes the low sound as the heart of the old man, pounding away
beneath the floorboards. He panics, believing that the policemen must also hear
the sound and know his guilt. Driven mad by the idea that they are mocking his
agony with their pleasant chatter, he confesses to the crime and shrieks at the
men to rip up the floorboards.
Due to the
length of the real one, we can only publish a summary of the story but we encourage you to read
the complete work because it will really scare you!
Do you know
any other ghost story or legend? Have you ever had a supernatural experience?
Have you seen a ghost? We invite you to tell us about your experience or about
a scary story you know.
