Episode 12: The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

Classic Ghost Stories

Tony Walker

Fiction, Drama, Science Fiction

4.9 • 686 Ratings

🗓️ 25 October 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#Edgar Allen Poe#Needs no real introduction. He was in some senses the man who began the horror genre. There had been Gothic fiction before but Poe made it macabre and strange. I see some influences or commonalities between him and the French poet Baudelaire with his Flowers of Evil, or the French novelist J K Huysman’s with his studies of Satanism and Decandence. The insanity in Poe is also matched in the Austrian writer Gustav Meyrink. I must read some Meyrink for you, though I’m not aware of any short stories of his.Tell Tale Heart is a first person story narrated by someone who is at pains to assure us that he is not crazy, though pretty much as soon as he says it, and certainly with a few sentences further said, we know he is.There is a view that it is the story of a perfect crime, but it seems far from that to me. It seems pretty unhinged. He is never going to get away with this crime. He buries the dismembered body under the planks of the floor. That is going to smell, believe me. Not that I know from personal experience.I had a bit of a disaster this week. I had recorded the English writer Robert Aickman with his longish Zombie story: Ringing the Changes, but the flipping computer packed in after 15 minutes. An hour later I found out the story hasn’t recorded except the first fifteen minutes.So I had nothing. I then recorded this one. I know, I think I know, (I sound like the man in the story) that listeners prefer longer stories that are American. This is short, but it is American which is a compromise. If you were helpful enough to do some or any of these following things for me, I would be immensely grateful. I swear down I would.————————Share the Podcast to your friendsRate the Podcast on Apple or elsewhereBuy me a coffee via https://paypal.me/gospatric (Paypal)Sign up as a Patron for $1 a month to keep me going on http://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon) https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the showVisit us here: www.ghostpod.orgBuy me a coffee if you're glad I do this: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalkerIf you really want to help me, become a Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/barcudMusic by The Heartwood Institute: https://bit.ly/somecomeback Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The Edgar Allan Poe, the tell-tale heart.
0:30.7	True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am.
0:37.7	But why will you say that I am mad?
0:41.0	The disease has sharpened my sense is not destroyed, not dulled them.
0:46.0	Above all was the sense of hearing acute.
0:49.2	I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.
0:52.1	I heard many things in hell.
0:55.8	How then am I mad, harken, and observe how healthily, how calmly I can tell you the whole
1:03.8	story.
1:05.6	It is impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived. It haunted me day and night.
1:14.5	Object, there was none. Passion, there was none. I loved the old man. He had never wronged me.
1:22.3	He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. He had the eye
1:32.8	of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold,
1:40.5	and so, by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man and thus
1:47.9	rid myself of the eye forever.
1:51.7	Now, this is the point.
1:54.4	You fancy me mad.
1:56.7	Madman, no nothing, but you should have seen me.
2:00.9	You should have seen how wisely I proceeded with what caution, with what foresight,
2:06.5	with what dissimulation I went to work.
2:09.4	I was never kinder to the old man, then during the whole week before I killed him,
	...

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