Something about this story so impressed itself upon my imagination that, as I sat there lost in contemplation, I gradually fell into a kind of waking reverie—or rather, nightmare. I lost track of time. My familiar surroundings—the small, shadowy chamber with its meagre furnishings and black-curtained window—appeared to dissolve. Darkness embraced me. I felt myself enveloped by the suffocating closeness of the grave.

No longer was I merely ruminating upon the agonies of premature burial; I was experiencing them as vividly as if my own still-living body had been laid, all unwittingly, in the tomb. I could feel, hear, and sense every particular of that dread calamity: the unendurable oppression of the lungs—the clinging of the death garments—the rigid embrace of the coffin—the methodical thudding of the gravedigger’s shovel—the unseen but palpable presence of the Conqueror Worm.

A scream of the purest anguish arose in my throat. I opened my terror-parched lips, praying that my cries would save me from the ineffable torments of my predicament.

Before I could summon this agonized yell (an act which would unquestionably have alarmed the entire neighborhood and occasioned me a great deal of embarrassment), a dim awareness of my true situation broke into my overwrought fancy. Suddenly, I realized that the noise I had mistaken for gravedigging was in reality the muffled thud of some unknown caller, pounding on the front door of my residence. Or rather, I should say, of the residence I shared with my beloved Aunt Maria and her angelic daughter, my darling little cousin Virginia.

I pulled out my pocket handkerchief and, with a deep groan of relief, wiped away the moisture that my all-too-vivid fantasy had wrung from my brow. Laying aside Valdemar’s treatise, I cocked an ear towards the front of the house. I could discern the distinctive tread of my sainted “Muddy” (for so, in tribute to her maternal devotion, I fondly referred to my aunt) as she hastened to answer the knocking. Dimly, I could hear her interrogative tone as she greeted the visitor.

An instant later, striding footsteps echoed in the corridor, succeeded by a sharp, determined rapping upon my chamber door.

Shaking off the horror which, even then, retained a lingering hold on my spirit, I bade the caller enter. My door swung in upon its hinges and a tall, broad-shouldered figure stood silhouetted within the frame. He posed there for a moment, critically surveying my quarters before delivering a statement of such stentorian quality that it smote upon my ears like the discharge of a cannon. The content of his remark was no less surprising than its volume.

“Well I’ll be jiggered if it ain’t as glum as a bear-cave in here,” he boomed.