In the dark shadows of the Rue Morgue, to the rhythm of the stolen telltale heart, as the black cat swings on the pendulum, and the cast offers its sherry deep and dry.

As you know, get our chain back over, we open and assure you in.

Our sleepless tales for you in store, and the terror shall be lifted. Never more.

Raise yourself for the no-sleep podcast.

Welcome to the no-sleep podcast. I'm your host David Cummings.

Horror has many tropes which have filled creepy tales over the millennia. Ghosts? Yes, innumerable ghosts. Dark spirits haunting our homes or bodies. Yes, many tales about them.

Nightmares which become a reality? Of course. Why do you think we work so hard to banish you from sleep? If you can't sleep, you can't have nightmares, you see? You're welcome.

But there's one horror trope near and dear to my heart. In fact, often when discussing horror stories, I use one particular setting as an example. I usually begin it like this.

It was a dark night and I was walking home from work when it started to rain. I decided to get home faster by taking a shortcut through the cemetery.

Yes, is there a setting any more closely tied to horror than a cemetery? Or as I like to refer to it, a graveyard? A big open space full of graves. Dead bodies moldering under our feet. Maybe some of those bodies have been buried alive. Maybe some are returning to life under there. And maybe those who wander through the graveyard will find themselves lured into a grave from which they cannot escape.

Delightfully horrific, no? Well, in this episode we will engage in this insert obligatory pun. Grave undertaking and share tale set in those places of burial. And it will come as no surprise that our muse for this season Edgar Allen Poe wrote often about not just death, but the act of burial and the grave.

In fact, Poe wrote a number of tales and poems which centered around young beautiful women who die young. It shouldn't be surprising. Throughout his life, virtually every woman Poe loved and who loved him died young.

You can imagine how this heartbroken melancholic man would express his grief with his pen and to such impactful effect.

Let's begin this episode with one of his poems. It's a poem he felt was superior to his most famous work, The Raven. In it he describes a cemetery at midnight in the month of June.

He observes the moon and notes the flowers that grow about the graves. And he introduces the beautiful woman who has died and whose grave is being prepared for her internment.

We'll have Graham Rowett perform this for us. And so, if you rest, may it be in peace, it's the kindest wish for the sleeper.

At midnight in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon, an opiate vapor, dewy, dim, exhales from out her golden rim, and softly dripping, drop by drop.

Upon the quiet mountain top, steels drowsily and musically into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave, bellilli lulls upon the wave, and the

red light of the night. The rosemary nods upon the grave, bellilli lulls upon the wave, rapping the fog about its breast, the

ruin, molders into rest. Looking like leave, see, the lake, a conscious slumber seems to take and would not fall into the

world awake. All beauty sleeps. And the sun rises and the sun rises, and the sun rises and the

sun rises, and the sun rises, and the sun rises and the moon rises, and the red light of the night.

...