The

The Welcome back to 1001 classic short stories and tales.

In keeping with our spooktober theme, we have chosen a great story by the first

master of horror, Edgar Allan Poe. This story is often overlooked, but was one of Poe's favorites.

William Wilson was based on an incident that occurred to Poe while in school in England,

an incident that involved a doppelganger, or double.

There is a long-held theory, call it an old wives' tale, if you will, that each of us has

a double or doppelganger somewhere out there. Psychiatrist will likely tell you that the double

is all in your mind, the part of your mind that you least

enjoy visiting. It seems as though William Wilson has finally met himself, and he doesn't like what

he sees. And now, our story. Let me call myself for the present, William Wilson.

The fair page now lying before me need not be sullied with my real appellation.

This has been already too much an object for the scorn, for the horror, for the detestation of my race.

To the uttermost regions of the globe, have not the indignant winds brooded its unparalleled infamy?

O, outcast of all outcasts, most abandoned!

To the earth, art thou not forever dead?

To its honors, to its flowers, to its golden aspirations.

And a cloud, dense, dismal, and limitless,

does it not hang eternally between thy hopes and heaven?

I would not, if I could, here or today, embody a record of my later years of unspeakable misery and unpardonable crime. These later years took unto themselves a sudden elevation

interpitude, whose origin alone it is my present purpose to assign.

Men usually grow base by degrees.

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