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Shadow, A Fable by Edgar Allan Poe: Plague, the Dead & Gothic Terror
Seven men hide from a devastating plague when an impossible shadow enters their sealed chamber and speaks in the voices of the dead.
Edgar Allan Poe sets this brief Gothic nightmare in the ancient city of Ptolemais during a year of pestilence, when the heavens themselves seem to promise disaster. Inside a room draped in black, the survivors drink deep wine beside the shrouded corpse of their companion Zoilus. Bronze doors bar the world outside, candles burn around an ebony table, and the men try to forget the deaths waiting beyond the walls.
Then a shapeless darkness appears on the curtains. It belongs to no person in the room and no familiar form of the living or dead. When the narrator Oinos demands its name, the shadow answers from near the catacombs—and its voice contains the mingled voices of countless departed friends.
Often published as “Shadow—A Parable,” this Edgar Allan Poe story compresses plague horror, isolation, grief, and supernatural dread into a haunting meditation on mortality. The tale’s epidemic setting feels disturbingly modern, but its deepest fear is timeless: locking the door may keep sickness outside, yet memory and death have already entered the room. Story by Edgar Allan Poe.
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🎥 Produced by: Daniel Wilder
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One of my favorite memories of scaring myself as a
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child was getting a compilation book of Edgar Allan Poe's
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stories from my elementary school library. It brought me so
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much fear and so much excitement. I remember running home
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from school with that book in my backpack as the
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sky was dark and a storm was coming. I was
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in my childhood living room, but I wasn't alone. I
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had a pizza and the books of Poe. Every so
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often I'll bring you a tale of Poe, and I
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hope it gives you that scary fun sense, just the
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same as it does for me. When the clock strikes midnight,
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the story will begin shadow a fable by Edgar Allan Poe.
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Ye who read are still among the living, But I
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who write, shall have long since gone my way into
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the region of shadows. For indeed, strange things shall happen,
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and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away.
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Ere these memorials be seen of men, And when seen
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there will be some to disbelieve, and some to doubt,
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and yet a few who will find much to ponder
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upon in the characters here graven with a stylus of iron.
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The year had been a year of terror and of
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feelings more intense than terror, for which there is no
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name upon the earth. For many prodigies and signs had
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taken place, and far and wide over sea and land.
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The black wings of the pestilence were spread abroad to
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those nevertheless cunning in the stars, it was not unknown
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that the heavens wore an aspect of ill, and to
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me the Greek Oinos, among others, it was evident that
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now had arrived the alternation of that seven hundred and
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ninety fourth year, when at the entrance of Aries, the
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planet Jupiter is conjoined with the red ring of the
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terrible Saturnus. The peculiar spirit of the sky, if I
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mistake not greatly, made itself manifest not only in the
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physical orb of the Earth, but in the souls, imaginations,
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and meditations of mankind. Over some flasks of the red
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Chian wine. Within the walls of a noble hall in
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a dim city by the melancholy sea, we sat at
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night a company of seven, and to our chamber there
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was no entrance save by a lofty door of brass.
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And the door was fashioned by the artisan coronos, and
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being of rare workmanship, was fastened from within black draperies.
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Likewise in the gloomy room, shut out from our view
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the moon, the lurid stars, and the peopleless streets, but
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the boding and the memory of evil, they would not
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be so excluded. There were things around us, and about
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of which I can render no distinct account, things material
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and spiritual, heaviness in the atmosphere, a sense of suffocation, anxiety,
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and above all that terrible state of existence which the
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nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake.
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And meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. A dead
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weight hung upon us. It hung upon our limbs, upon
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the household furniture, upon the goblets from which we drank,
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and all things were depressed and borne down thereby, all
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things save only the flames of the seven iron lamps,
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which illuminated our revel uprearing themselves in tall, slender lines
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of light. They thus remained burning, all pallid and motionless.
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And in the mirror which their luster formed upon the
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round table of ebony at which we sat, each of
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us there assembled beheld the pallor of his own countenance,
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and the unquiet glare in the downcast eyes of his companions.
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Yet we laughed and were merry in our proper way,
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which was hysterical, and sang the songs of anacreon which
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are madness, and drank deeply, although the purple wine reminded
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us of blood, For there was yet another tenant of
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our chamber, in the person of young Zoilus, dead, and
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at full length he lay enshrouded the genius and the
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demon of the scene. Alas he bore no portion in
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our mirth, save that his countenance distorted with the plague,
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and his eyes in which death had but half extinguished.
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The fire of the pestilence seemed to take such interest
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in our merriment as the dead may take in the
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merriment of those who are to die. But although I
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Oinos felt that the eyes of the departed were upon me,
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still I forced myself not to perceive the bitterness of
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their expression, and, gazing down steadily into the depths of
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the ebony mirror, sang with a loud and sonorous voice
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the songs of the Sun of Taos. But gradually my
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songs they ceased, and their echoes rolling afar off among
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the sable draperies of the chamber. Became weak and indistinguishable,
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and so fainted away, and lo from a among those
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sable draperies were the sounds of the song departed. There
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came forth a dark and undefinable shadow, a shadow such
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as the moon when low in heaven, might fashion from
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the figure of a man. But it was the shadow
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neither of man, nor of God, nor of any familiar thing.
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And quivering a while among the draperies of the room,
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it at length rested in full view upon the surface
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of the door of brass. But the shadow was vague
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and formless and indefinitive, and was the shadow neither of
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man nor God, neither God of Greece, nor God of Chaldea,
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nor any Egyptian god. And the shadow rested upon the
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brazen doorway and under the arch of the entablature of
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the door, and moved not nor spoke any word. But
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there became stationary and remained. And the door whereupon the
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shadow rested, was, if I remember, aright over against the
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feet of the young Zoilus, enshrouded. But we the seven
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there assembled, having seen the shadow as it came out
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from among the draperies, dared not steadily behold it, but
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cast down our eyes and gazed continually into the depths
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of the mirror of Ebony. And at length, I Oinos,
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speaking some low words, demanded of the Shadow its dwelling
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and its appellation. And the Shadow answered, I am Shadow,
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and my dwelling is near the catacombs of Telomes, and
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hard by those dim plains of Hallucin which border upon
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the foul Charonian Canal. And then did we the Seven
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start from our seats in horror, and stand trembling and
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shuddering and aghast. For the tones in the voice of
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the Shadow were not the tones of any one being,
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but of a multitude of beings, and varying in their
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cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears
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in the well remembered and familiar accents of many thousand
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departed friends.
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