Edgar Allan Poe

The Premature Burrial Edgar Allan Poe

"The Premature Burial" is a horror short story on the theme of being buried alive, written by Edgar Allan Poe, and published in 1844. Fear of being buried alive was common in this period and Poe was taking advantage of the public interest. In "The Premature Burial", the first-person unnamed narrator describes his struggle with things such as "attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalepsy", a condition where he randomly falls into a death-like trance. This leads to his fear of being buried alive ("The true wretchedness", he says, is "to be buried while alive".). He emphasizes his fear by mentioning several people who have been buried alive. In the first case, the tragic accident was only discovered much later, when the victim's crypt was reopened. In others, victims revived and were able to draw attention to themselves in time to be freed from their ghastly prisons. The story has been adapted to a film.