Showing results for "Facts" in Classics

When Billy Bowen and Ellen McDonald's engagement is broken off, nobody quite knows the full story. Slowly the facts are pieced together to reveal a hilarious catalogue of mishaps and misunderstandings which result in a most catastrophic Christmas list. Ring Lardner's comic genius at his most masterful!

The narrator presents the facts of the extraordinary case of his friend Ernest Valdemar, which have incited public discussion. He is interested in mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of animal magnetism, a process that later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person.

A classic tale of terror from beyond the shroud of death, Poe's tale of mesmerism gives us a glimpse into the pallid mind of madness. A dying man enlists the aid of a hypnotist to have himself put into a trance before dying in order to ease his suffering. After passing gently away, his corpse stiff and cold, the man shocks all by speaking. Worse, the trance is holding him in a terrible living-dead trance from which he seeks release - but could the release be even more horrible?

A short story by Edgar Allen Poe about a mesmerist who puts a man, M. Valdemar, in a hypnotic state at the moment of death. M. Valdimar remains in the state for seven months. When the mesmerist removes M. Valdemar from this state, it resembles opening the door of a freezer that has been unplugged for months, the turkey inside.

A doctor desires to attempt something that has never been done before, to hypnotize someone as they die. He does. And, frightful consequences ensue.

The narrator is interested in mesmerism, a pseudoscience involving bringing a patient into a hypnagogic state by the influence of magnetism, a process that later developed into hypnotism. He points out that, as far as he knows, no one has ever been mesmerized at the point of death, and he is curious to see what effects mesmerism would have on a dying person. He considers experimenting on his friend Ernest Valdemar, an author whom he had previously mesmerized and who has recently been diagnosed with phthisis (tuberculosis).

On the brink of death, the friend of a notable mesmerist commits to an experiment of hypnosis prior to imminent death. As the tale progresses, the mesmerist describes keeping his friend in a fully mesmerized state without a pulse or breath. When Valdemar asks from his trancelike state to either be awakened or let go, the narrator tries to wake him from the grips of death - with dire consequences.

The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar tells the tale of a mesmerist who puts a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death to see if he can communicate with him after he is dead. While a tale of suspense and horror, it was also, at the time of its publication, a bit of a hoax since it was published without claiming to be fictional, and many took it to be a factual. Poe toyed with this for a while before admitting it was a work of pure fiction.

This is a story from the Fall of the House of Usher collection. The horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, with its dungeon of death, and the overhanging gloom on the House of Usher demonstrate unforgettably the unique imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Unerringly, he touches upon some of our greatest nightmares: Premature burial, ghostly transformation, words from beyond the grave. Written in the 1840s, they have retained their power to shock and frighten even now.

"Facts concerning the Late Arthur Jermyn and His Family" is a horror short story written by H.P. Lovecraft. As Lovecraft's both parents died in a mental hospital, it is believed that Lovecraft handled some of his own family issues in this very story.

In this unabridged recording of one of Mark Twain's lesser-known short stories, the "campaign of crime" referred to was a rash of robberies, arson, racketeering, and murders in Connecticut, where the author was living at that time. Alternatively funny, disturbing, and self-revelatory, an abridged performance of this piece has been part of Richard Henzel's Jefferson Award nominated stage show Mark Twain In Person since 1979.

Many would have disliked to live if possessed of the peculiar features of Arthur Jermyn, but he had been a poet and scholar and had not minded, until a peculiar box object arrived from Africa and after seeing it, he went out on the moor and set himself on fire. Discover what it was about the object that explained his peculiar personal appearance, and made him end his life.

Edgar Allan Poe is considered the greatest of all writers of macabre stories, was born in Boston, Massachesetts, in 1809. His father, an Irish-American actor, died the following year, and his mother, an English actress, the year after, in Richmond, Virginia. John Allan, a wealthy Richmond merchant, adopted him. When he was 7, the Allans moved to England, sending him to school at Stoke Newington, at age 12 they moved back to Richmond.