Show Notes:
Today is part two of two where we are talking to Alexia Onyx about her novels. After today you will have heard about starting by writing poetry and short stories, and evolving to partial novels that never become fully fledged, making sure you love your story, learning as you go and improving, figuring out social media marketing, building your author path around what you love to avoid burnout, and hiring out for the things you need help with.
Alexia’s Beacons – Alexia’s Instagram – Alexia’s TikTok
Alexia Onyx is a dark romance author who writes stories about people finding love despite their darkness. In her books, you’ll find your favorite romance tropes, plus size main characters who can’t resist their creepy-hot love interests, and horror elements that speak to your darkest desires.
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Transcript:
Speaker A: Welcome to Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.
Speaker A: Each week we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.
Speaker A: At the end of each episode, we will finish off with a fairy tale or short story read as close to the original author’s version as possible.
Speaker A: I am your host, Freya Victoria.
Speaker A: I’m an audiobook narrator that loves reading fairy tales novels and bringing stories to life through narration.
Speaker A: I am also fascinated by talking to authors and learning about their why and how for creating their stories.
Speaker A: We’ve included all of the links for today’s author and our show in the show notes.
Speaker B: Be sure to check out our website.
Speaker A: And sign up for our newsletter for the latest on the podcast.
Speaker A: Today is part two of two where we are talking to Alexia Onyx about her novels.
Speaker A: After today, you will have heard about starting by writing poetry in short stories and evolving to partial novels that never become fully fledged, making sure you love your story, learning as you go and improving figuring out social media marketing, building your author path around what you love to avoid burnout and hiring out for the things you need help with.
Speaker A: Come out, come out.
Speaker A: She’s creeping slowly toward death.
Speaker A: He’s determined to keep her alive.
Speaker A: Aiden my little Wraith torments herself in a desperate attempt to escape from the pain that runs deep in her veins.
Speaker A: I could be that escape if she’d only let me.
Speaker A: I will own her pain, her suffering, and her pleasure.
Speaker A: I just need her to see me.
Speaker A: Skye Every day is a burden that pushes me closer and closer to my end.
Speaker A: I always found the notion of death romantic.
Speaker A: I never could have predicted how right I would be.
Speaker A: Come out, come out is a spicy, paranormal dark romance with a plus sized main character depression representation, bi and pan main characters for readers who loved Tate and Violet and wanted to be Casper and Kat.
Speaker A: Please note this book contains heavy themes including depression, suicidal ideation, grief, and loss.
Speaker A: A complete list of content warnings is provided by the author.
Speaker B: I feel like you said about you’re constantly changing things with how you promote.
Speaker B: I feel like algorithms on social media make us have to do that all the time anyways.
Speaker C: Yeah, there’s a lot of pivoting.
Speaker A: Yes.
Speaker C: It’s interesting though.
Speaker C: I find it fun to kind of play with different ideas or different way of marketing, but it’s also hard to keep up or predict what is going to do well and what isn’t right.
Speaker B: I kind of just take the.
Speaker B: It’s basically going to be like a vlog approach, and if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.
Speaker C: Yeah, fair.
Speaker B: That’s usually my response to everybody.
Speaker B: I get negative stuff on my other podcast is kind of like audiobook classic novel style thing and so on that one, I’ll get people complaining about my narrating style, and I’m like, my comments are always like, isn’t it great that you can go find someone who is a narrator that you like and leave me alone?
Speaker C: Yeah, I feel like people feel like since they can have an opinion on something, they should have an opinion on everything.
Speaker C: With social media, unfortunately, I’m a big advocate.
Speaker C: If it’s not hurting anything and it’s not for you, just scroll by.
Speaker C: I’m a big scroller.
Speaker C: I use the not interested button like it’s my day job.
Speaker B: I don’t know that I do that.
Speaker B: The only buttons that I usually will use, if there’s something that is just like, I never want to see any of this ever again, I’ll block them.
Speaker C: Yeah, fair.
Speaker B: I don’t think I use the not interested button.
Speaker B: Occasionally I’ll get the weird little pop ups that’s like, is this safe?
Speaker B: Or.
Speaker B: So I don’t even know what the pop ups say.
Speaker A: I just click them away.
Speaker B: I don’t answer the question.
Speaker B: I’m like, I don’t know what it’s for or if it would hurt someone if I was like, I don’t want to watch that.
Speaker B: So I’m like, click it away.
Speaker B: Go away.
Speaker B: How long ago did your first book come out?
Speaker B: You said about two years for TikTok.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So my first solo book came out last July, but I was in an anthology Last March, so 2021.
Speaker C: Wait, what year is it?
Speaker C: Sorry, 23.
Speaker C: A year and a half.
Speaker C: About writing or, like, publishing.
Speaker B: Okay.
Speaker B: And so I totally forgot my question of why I asked you that when, that it’s somewhere over there.
Speaker B: I don’t know.
Speaker B: It’ll come back, maybe.
Speaker B: So has it been easier building up this second pen name because you started this one?
Speaker B: A couple.
Speaker B: I know.
Speaker B: I followed you a couple of months ago.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think I started this one in August.
Speaker B: Oh, just exactly a couple of months ago.
Speaker C: Yeah, I think.
Speaker C: I’m pretty sure.
Speaker C: So it’s just so different because with the other pen name, it started out like I just changed my name.
Speaker C: I was a book talk account originally, so I had built up a couple of thousand followers before I even started talking about my books.
Speaker C: So it’s hard to.
Speaker C: I honestly have been thinking about this a lot lately because I’m trying to gauge how well I’m doing also planning and stuff.
Speaker C: It’s hard not to compare when you have two, so I feel like it’s going pretty decently well.
Speaker C: I would love to be doing better, everyone, but my main goal was hitting 1000 followers so I could put my preorder links up and by the time I had it on sale, I would be able to share the link because that was the hardest part for the first month, was not being able to.
Speaker C: I’d have to go to my Instagram.
Speaker C: It’s just annoying when you have to go from one platform to another.
Speaker C: I know as a user, so I couldn’t have my beacons link in there, but now that I’ve hit 1000, I’m kind of like, whatever happens, happens.
Speaker C: I’m going to keep posting continuously.
Speaker C: I’m going to try and be engaging and talking to other people, but that was my main goal and just getting this set up and then we’ll see how it goes.
Speaker C: I would love to grow this bigger than my other account, but it takes time.
Speaker C: And like I said, I’m not a TikTok expert by any means.
Speaker C: I’ve never had that viral success.
Speaker C: So I don’t really know how this is going to go, but I do feel a lot more comfortable with this genre.
Speaker C: I feel like this is my main genre of reading, so I feel like I’m much more familiar with the readership and the genre conventions and stuff.
Speaker C: So I feel like it’s definitely a lot easier for me to market here because my other books are kind of in between genres, frankly.
Speaker C: So that’s always been a hard thing to overcome.
Speaker C: So, yeah, I don’t know if I answered that question.
Speaker C: I just kind of rambled for a minute there.
Speaker B: Yeah, mine actually.
Speaker B: It’s so weird with the link thing.
Speaker B: So when I started on TikTok, because I have like an ungodly amount of accounts on TikTok because of all the podcasts and pseudonyms.
Speaker B: But when I started the first podcast, you could put links on any profile like it didn’t matter your followers.
Speaker B: And then when this podcast started is like right after they changed it to, you need 1000 followers.
Speaker B: So this one has never had a link on it.
Speaker B: But then when I started the author account, words just left me.
Speaker B: When I started the author account, they’ve made it now where if you tie it to an LLC, like a business, you can have a link in it.
Speaker B: And so I was able to tie it to my LLC for publishing so that I could have the link for the author thing because like you said, I didn’t want them to have to either go to my narrator profile, which does have more than 1000 followers on it, or have to go somewhere to some other platform to click the links to order the things.
Speaker B: It used to just be, if you just made your account a business account, you could do it.
Speaker B: You didn’t have to put in an Ein and all that fun stuff.
Speaker C: That’s what I thought.
Speaker C: Because when I first started booktalk, we were able to add wish lists really quickly and I was trying to remember what that, but now you just reminded me that that was a thing.
Speaker C: I was like, am I misremembering?
Speaker C: I feel like this was not a thing.
Speaker B: No.
Speaker B: Yeah, you just had to make your account.
Speaker B: It couldn’t be just a normal account, it couldn’t be a personal one.
Speaker B: It had to be like there’s two different ones, business or creator.
Speaker B: I think creator is the other account.
Speaker B: There was like other account types and you just had to be one of the others to have a link.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker B: And then they took that away.
Speaker C: Love that.
Speaker B: So fun.
Speaker C: When the typical, they take away so many useful features and add the most.
Speaker B: Random, I think just typical social media.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: True for mean.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Instagram does that all the time, so that’s fair.
Speaker B: So what is the best piece of advice that you’ve ever gotten and the worst piece of advice you’ve ever gotten?
Speaker C: That’s tough.
Speaker C: Let’s see.
Speaker C: I would say the best piece of advice is probably to build your career path around your own interests.
Speaker C: Because otherwise I feel like it’s like what people say about doing a job that you love, which really is almost impossible in today’s economy.
Speaker C: But with writing as an author, I feel like it’s really applicable because if you’re writing things that are of interest to you and you’re engaging with parts of the community that are interesting to you, it’s less likely to burn you out.
Speaker C: And even when it does, you’re still getting some level of enjoyment of it, even if you’re just passively kind of engaging and learning at the time.
Speaker C: So I think that’s been really helpful for me because I have hit pretty bad periods of burnout or like, I don’t know if I can do this long term.
Speaker C: It’s so hard.
Speaker C: And really considering my own personality and what I enjoy and what I’m interested in and letting that drive the decisions I’ve made past that point have really helped me see this as a long term thing and be more hopeful about longevity.
Speaker C: Worst advice, I don’t even know.
Speaker C: I think people who just give really rigid advice and are very much of a single mindedness where you have to do things a certain way and that you have to write a certain way.
Speaker C: That I think is the worst advice universally because there’s no way with such a diverse community and writers coming from all different backgrounds and all of that, that I just don’t think that type of advice is ever really useful.
Speaker C: I think it’s very harmful, actually, for new writers because it really just makes things seem impossible.
Speaker C: And if it doesn’t work for you, and especially as a neurodivergent person, I found so much advice is just so not considered of people whose brains work differently or have different abilities.
Speaker C: And that’s always been something I’ve been very frustrated with.
Speaker C: And I will definitely only push back on those kind of ideas because I find them very limiting and just they really kill people’s hope.
Speaker C: I feel like that they’re going to succeed.
Speaker B: Well, there’s all kinds of books out there about writing and the craft of writing and all of that, but if everybody really followed the same exact three act, nine chapter structure, if every single book followed that exact same trajectory throughout the book, none of us would want to read because it would be so boring.
Speaker B: It’s like, I will say this all day long, and I am so sorry to people that love this type of books, but Amish books, books about the Amish.
Speaker B: And they tend to be in more like Christian fiction genre, but they are all almost the exact same storyline.
Speaker B: Just pluck out the character names, put new character names, add a new climax thing, but they’re like, almost exactly all the same book.
Speaker B: You read so many of those and you’re like.
Speaker B: Because for a long time, that’s all I would get for Christmas, would be these Amish books.
Speaker B: And I’m like, I’ve read this already, haven’t I?
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: Well, I find that can be true for a lot of different things, like formulaic writing, where there’s not a lot of variety in that.
Speaker C: In some cases, I’ve seen where I’m like, I feel like it’s so easy to predict certain books because of how strictly some people follow these formulas.
Speaker C: In some genres, that’s what people want, like romantic comedies, people want the formula, people will want the predictability.
Speaker C: It’s a comfort thing.
Speaker C: But for other genres, say thrillers, I don’t think it works.
Speaker B: No, I definitely notice that weirdness.
Speaker B: Yeah, well, that’s too, like, look at the books that people talk about more.
Speaker B: It’s not the ones that are just like everything else.
Speaker B: It’s the ones that, oh, my gosh, they broke the norms with this book, and that’s what people talk about.
Speaker B: For example, fourth wing coming out at a time where there wasn’t a ton of dragon books.
Speaker B: Had that book come out at the same time that Aragon series was coming out, that would have been a different thing because that was already dragons.
Speaker B: But at least I don’t know of any other majorly done Dragon books since then.
Speaker B: I mean, maybe there is, and I just.
Speaker C: Yeah, I’m not a huge fantasy reader, so I’m not super in the know, but I hadn’t heard of any.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: So it’s something that following, following the trends is great and writing to market is great, but how long does it take you to write a book?
Speaker B: Will that still be written to the market in however long it takes you to write that book?
Speaker B: Yeah, but things do eventually come back around while you’re sitting here promoting your book that you spent all this time writing that you hopefully love so that you want to promote it.
Speaker B: Hopefully, eventually it’ll come back around and you’ll be in a good place because your book’s already out there.
Speaker C: Yeah, that’s definitely something I struggled with a lot when I first started on TikTok as an author was like this.
Speaker C: Want to write to market and capture these moments like a lot of people are able to do.
Speaker C: But I’ve just come to the realization I’m not a fast enough writer to be personally, for me to feel like it’s a worthwhile investment of my time to be able to really capture those moments, because I feel like things come and go so quickly, and if you’re not quick to the jump, in my opinion, it’s usually not going to be the one that really stands out and does super well.
Speaker C: Obviously, there are a lot of them do this, but for me, I just don’t think it’s in my skill set as of right now as an author to be able to really capture those big pop culture moments or those trending things.
Speaker C: So I had tried to write a couple of those, and by the time I was getting through the process, I was like, this is not going to be done in the matter of time you need to.
Speaker C: And I was like, so I’ve really shifted away from that right now at least.
Speaker C: I definitely think I will never say I won’t ever do it, because, one, I know I’ve gotten way faster as a writer in the last yeaR, and two, you just never know what might spark creativity, but for me, I wanted to be one of those authors so badly because I just loved seeing it explode.
Speaker C: But I just realized I don’t have that skill set, so it’s okay.
Speaker C: So I really had to kind of let that go.
Speaker B: Yeah.
Speaker B: I think of all the authors that I’ve talked to on here, I’ve only had very few that were like, yeah, I wrote my book in, like, three weeks for the most part.
Speaker B: It’s been months of writing and editing and all of that, and not that three week person put out their first draft into the world, because that was not the case.
Speaker C: Well, it’s also too, it’s hard to coordinate with other professionals, like your editors and stuff.
Speaker C: It’s really, honestly, I feel like the timing just has to be right with these things.
Speaker C: And for me, I have the worst luck with timing.
Speaker C: There’s always so much going on.
Speaker C: There’s emergencies on my end, there’s emergencies on other people’s end.
Speaker C: So everything I’ve written has been pushed back, pushed back, pushed back for many reasons.
Speaker C: So I just could not handle that kind of pressure.
Speaker C: And unless I was so adamant about publishing something, I wouldn’t want to be able to put that kind of pressure on the people I work with, because I know that’s just not, like, how our lives really are set up right now.
Speaker C: I think it’s really a timing thing, and the relationships you have with people and their availability.
Speaker C: So that’s a huge factor into it, too.
Speaker B: I know you said you hired someone to do your cover for this one that’s coming out.
Speaker B: Did you have people to do all the parts, or did you do any of the formatting or any of it yourself, or have you.
Speaker B: I’m a firm believer for myself that I will attempt to do things myself, and then if it looks like garbage, I will then pay someone who knows what they’re doing.
Speaker C: That’s fair.
Speaker B: Did you do any parts of the process, or did you hire professionals?
Speaker C: So I actually hire out for everything.
Speaker C: I do want to learn how to format in the future.
Speaker C: Right now, I just don’t have the mental capacity to do it.
Speaker C: Honestly.
Speaker C: I have a hard time learning new skills because my day job is constant, harsh learning curves, like almost every single day.
Speaker C: So when I’m in my personal time, either I have to choose to be creative and write, or I have to choose to learn to do something.
Speaker C: And right now, creativity is the thing that gets me through the day, like having my writing time.
Speaker C: So to try and also learn a skill is just not something I can do right now I have a very intense job, so I would love to learn to format because I love the formatting process.
Speaker C: I’m very heavily involved because I like the chapter backgrounds.
Speaker C: I like all these little details throughout the whole book and I wanted to tell a story.
Speaker C: I am very intense about that creatively, so I work really closely with my formatters, but I cannot put it together myself because I don’t have the skills yet.
Speaker C: But I would love to learn.
Speaker C: I just don’t think that’s going to be likely until I want to try and learn how to use the basic functions with some of the shorter books.
Speaker C: I’m going to put out a couple of novellas in the next year, so I want to try and do those myself.
Speaker C: And I probably won’t do decorative formatting for those.
Speaker C: But like my novels, I still want to have this idea that I always have an idea going, so I want to have that executed by someone who knows what they’re doing.
Speaker C: So for now, I don’t do my own formatting, but it’s something I do hope to learn just so I can do it for things.
Speaker C: I want to get out quickly.
Speaker C: Whether I could ever do the kind of thing that I actually would want to be able to do is a different question.
Speaker C: Like I said, I’m not the greatest at technology and honestly, I really struggle with alignment and sizing and stuff.
Speaker C: Just my brain, the way it works.
Speaker C: I’ve always had a really hard time with measuring.
Speaker C: So for graphic design, aka Interior formatting, that’s decorative.
Speaker C: That is very important.
Speaker A: A little bit.
Speaker C: I don’t know if I could ever get to the point where I could do decorative interior formatting, but I do want to learn.
Speaker C: Basic editing is just an absolute no for me.
Speaker C: I have a really hard time with tHat.
Speaker C: I do the bare minimum editing.
Speaker C: I really do hire out.
Speaker C: I hire all the different types of editing to go through it.
Speaker C: And then I also do typo hunts because it’s always been a struggle for me.
Speaker C: I’m really bad at proofreading.
Speaker C: I’m really bad at punctuation.
Speaker C: Just as a neurodivergent person, it doesn’t work that my brain cannot do those things.
Speaker C: I don’t even know how to use question marks.
Speaker C: I do know how to use them, but because of the way I speak, my inflection and stuff, I don’t register things as a question or an exclamation like the way other people would.
Speaker C: It’s periods, periods, periods, commas, commas, semicolon.
Speaker C: So it’s just very out of control punctuation on all of those different levels.
Speaker C: I really need a good team that I trust.
Speaker C: So, yeah, I will never be doing my own editing.
Speaker C: There’s just no way, even though I would love to be able to do it better.
Speaker C: But my brain does not catch those things.
Speaker C: It puts together everything where it looks perfect.
Speaker C: I’m like, oh, good, it looks great.
Speaker C: And then my editor will send me back, like, tons of revisions.
Speaker C: I’m like, yes, that makes sense.
Speaker B: I don’t think anyone should do their own line editing at all because there are so many things, like, for me.
Speaker B: So I just got my line edits back.
Speaker B: Well, just today, I just finished doing the line edits, and there’s so many things in there that’s like, I don’t know.
Speaker B: I mean, she would leave me, like.
Speaker A: Notes in the margin for, like, oh.
Speaker B: This is supposed to be italicized, or, oh, this is supposed to be whatever.
Speaker B: And I’m looking at them and I’m going, and I’m, like, messaging her, and I’m like, there is no way I will remember all of these things for the next book.
Speaker B: There are some that I will remember because it probably made me laugh, the comment that she made about whatever it was.
Speaker B: But for the most part, I’m like, there’s no way.
Speaker B: One, I don’t want to go to school for editing at all.
Speaker B: I have no desire to go and learn all of that.
Speaker B: That’s why I paid someone to do that for me.
Speaker B: So I’m like, there’s no way that I’m going to be able to fit all of that in my head.
Speaker B: I would rather spend my time doing the writing and then have someone else come in after multiple other people have looked through it and helped clean it up.
Speaker B: Now, things that I did do, I did purchase pro writing Aid at the beginning, so I had that to do a lot of the cleaning up.
Speaker B: So it got thrown through pro writing aid after every session of edits that I did.
Speaker B: So I wrote it.
Speaker B: I threw it through pro writing aid, sent it to my alpha, edited again, pro writing Aid, sent it to the Betas, edited pro writing Aid again.
Speaker B: And then it went to the editor.
Speaker B: So my editor got, like, my third or fourth draft, so there’s not a ton of drafts going on.
Speaker B: I just did massive revisions in every draft of the process.
Speaker B: And then it went to the editor who did the final cleaning up of everything.
Speaker C: Yeah, honestly, real big shout out to my editors because I am such a messy writer.
Speaker C: I literally could not ever do this without a professional editing team.
Speaker C: They are my saving grace, because it’s something that’s just so hard for me, and I could never, ever do it.
Speaker B: And it’s a good thing that we all have heard the horror stories about the self published author that put out the way unedited version of their book.
Speaker B: And so Kudos to knowing, hey, this is a shortcoming that I have, and we need someone to help make it what it needs to be so that it doesn’t look like hot garbage.
Speaker C: Yeah, it would be scaring me if I put it out as my first, 2nd, 3rd draft.
Speaker C: Like, there’s no way.
Speaker B: I know there are some authors that they do their own editing, and I have read some, and they did a really good job on their editing.
Speaker B: I’m just like, mine would not look like that.
Speaker C: Yeah, I have a lot of friends who are really good at editing their own work or just, they’re really clean drafters and props to them.
Speaker C: I’m so impressed.
Speaker C: But just, like, the way, it’s not in my skill set, so I’ve let that go and I’ve had to be okay with it.
Speaker C: And I just am so grateful to anyone who reads that non finished draft because there’s a lot going on as far as punctuation.
Speaker C: It’s mostly punctuation for me.
Speaker C: And the way that.
Speaker C: What is it called?
Speaker C: The way I speak a lot of the time is very different.
Speaker C: It’s the way I write.
Speaker C: So seeing that in writing can be a little bit harder for some people.
Speaker C: So it’s really helpful for me to have people who aren’t hearing me speak to be like, hey, this sounds kind of funky, because for me, I’m like, that sounds amazing in my own head because it’s the way my speech pattern is.
Speaker C: But for other people, it’s like, this could probably make more sense.
Speaker B: All right, so as we close this out, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your book?
Speaker C: Sure.
Speaker C: Yeah.
Speaker C: So the book is called Come out, come out.
Speaker C: It is a paranormal, dark romance.
Speaker C: Heavy on the dark romance.
Speaker C: A little bit on the paranormal side, because the love interest is a ghost, which was really fun for me to play with, but, yeah.
Speaker C: So it’s a dark romance about a ghost and a depressed girl who is living in this house where he died.
Speaker C: And they are kind of both just in these very lonely states, kind of isolated in their own ways.
Speaker C: And they are kind of circling around each other in this house.
Speaker C: And throughout the story, they get to know each other, and it turns into a romance.
Speaker C: It is pretty spicy.
Speaker C: So hopefully, if you’re thinking about picking it up.
Speaker C: You like that?
Speaker C: We definitely get a touch of the possessive MMC.
Speaker C: So, yes, I would say if you like American Horror Story, you will enjoy this.
Speaker C: If you like dark romance as a whole, I would not say it’s like the movie ghost at all.
Speaker C: So if that’s what you’re picturing.
Speaker C: I’m so sorry, this will disappoint you.
Speaker C: But yeah, it’s very character driven, too.
Speaker C: So I think it’s a very emotional, character driven read, if those are what you like.
Speaker C: But, yeah, I’m excited to see how people respond to it.
Speaker C: It comes out November 13, so, yeah, I think that pretty much sums it up.
Speaker C: The vibes, at least.
Speaker C: I’m very much like a vibes describer.
Speaker C: I’m so bad at doing the plot pitch because I feel like with character driven stories, it’s very hard to be like, this is the plot without giving away everything that happens.
Speaker B: Right?
Speaker C: Yeah, if you like those vibes, I would say pick it up.
Speaker B: Thank you for coming on and enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Speaker C: Thank you, too.
Speaker B: Bye bye.
Speaker A: Alexia liked the girl with the green ribbon as she got older.
Speaker A: Today we’ll be reading the premature burial by Edgar Allan Poe.
Speaker A: Don’t forget we’re reading Les Morte de Arther, the story of King Arthur and of his noble Knights of the Roundtable on our Patreon.
Speaker A: You can find the link in the show notes.
Speaker A: First, let me say that while the girl with the Green ribbon is not public domain, Edgar Allan Poe has some pretty disturbing stories that could also have made some more pretty disturbing children’s stories, and here is quite a few of them.
Speaker A: The premature burial.
Speaker A: There are certain themes of which the interest is all absorbing, which are too entirely horrible for the purpose of legitimate fiction.
Speaker A: These the mere romanticist must askew if he does not wish to offend or to disgust.
Speaker A: They are with propriety, handled only when the severity and majesty of truth sanctify and sustain them.
Speaker A: We thrill, for example, with the most intense of pleasurable pain over the accounts of the passage of the Bursina, of the earthquake at Lisbon, of the plague at London, of the Massacre at St.
Speaker A: Bartholomew, or of the stifling of the 123 prisoners in the black Hole at Calcutta.
Speaker A: But in these accounts it is the fact, it is the reality, it is the history which excites as inventions.
Speaker A: We should regard them with simple abhorrence.
Speaker A: I have mentioned some few of the more prominent and August calamities on record, but in these it is the extent, not less, than the character of the calamity.
Speaker A: Which so vividly impresses the fancy.
Speaker A: I need not remind the reader that from the long and weird catalog of human miseries, I might have selected many individual instances more replete with essential suffering than any of these vast generalities of disaster.
Speaker A: The true wretchedness, indeed the ultimate woe, is particular, not diffuse.
Speaker A: At the ghastly extremes of agony are endured by man the unit, and never by man the Mass.
Speaker A: For this, let us think, a merciful God to be buried while alive, is beyond question the most terrific of these extremes which has ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality, and it has frequently, very frequently so fallen, will scarcely be denied by those who think the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.
Speaker A: Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins?
Speaker A: We know that there are diseases in which occur total cessations of the apparent functions of vitality, and yet in which these cessations are merely suspensions, properly so called, they are only temporary pauses in the incomprehensible mechanism.
Speaker A: A certain period elapses, and some unseen, mysterious principle again sets in motion the magic pinions and the wizard wheels.
Speaker A: The silver cord was not forever loosed, nor the golden bowl irreparably broken.
Speaker A: But where, meantime, was the soul apart, however, from the inevitable conclusion, a priory, that such causes must produce such effects, that the well known occurrence of such cases of suspended animation must naturally give rise now and then to premature internments.
Speaker A: Apart from this consideration, we have the direct testimony of medical and ordinary experience to prove that a vast number of such internments have actually taken place.
Speaker A: I might refer at once, if necessary, to a hundred well authenticated instances, one of very remarkable character, and of which the circumstances may be fresh in the memory of some of my readers, occurred not very long ago in the neighboring city of Baltimore, where it occasioned a painful, intense, and widely extended excitement.
Speaker A: The wife of one of the most respectable citizens, a lawyer of eminence and a member of Congress, was seized with a sudden and unaccountable illness, which completely baffled the skill of her physicians.
Speaker A: After much suffering, she died, or was supposed to die.
Speaker A: No one suspected, indeed, or had reason to suspect, that she was not actually dead.
Speaker A: She presented all the ordinary appearances of death.
Speaker A: The face assumed the usual pinched and sunken outline the lips were of the usual marble pallor the eyes were lustreless there was no warmth.
Speaker A: Pulsation had ceased for three days.
Speaker A: The body was preserved unburied, during which it had acquired a stony rigidity.
Speaker A: The funeral, in short, was hastened on account of the rapid advance of what was supposed to be decomposition.
Speaker A: The lady was deposited in her family vault, which for three subsequent years was undisturbed.
Speaker A: At the expiration of this term, it was opened for the reception of a sarcophagus.
Speaker A: But alas, how fearful a shock awaited the husband, who personally threw open the door.
Speaker A: As its portal swung outwardly back, some white appareled object fell, rattling within his arms.
Speaker A: It was the skeleton of his wife in her yet unmolded shroud.
Speaker A: A careful investigation rendered it evident that she had revived within two days after her entombment, and her struggles within the coffin had caused it to fall from a ledge or shelf to the floor, where it was so broken as to permit her escape.
Speaker A: A lamp which had been accidentally left full of oil within the tomb was found empty.
Speaker A: It might have been exhausted, however, by evaporation.
Speaker A: On the uttermost of the steps which led down into the dread chamber, was a large fragment of the coffin, with which it seemed that she had endeavored to arrest attention by striking the iron door.
Speaker A: While thus occupied, she probably swooned, or possibly died through sheer terror, and in failing, her shroud became entangled in some ironwork which projected interiorly.
Speaker A: Thus she remained, and thus she rotted, erect.
Speaker A: In the year 1810, a case of living inhumation happened in France, attended with circumstances which go far to warrant the assertion that truth is indeed stranger than fiction.
Speaker A: The heroine of the story was a Mademoiselle Victorine La Forcade, a young girl of illustrious family, of wealth, and of great personal beauty.
Speaker A: Among her numerous suitors was Julian Bossette, a poor literature or journalist of Paris.
Speaker A: His talents and general amiability had recommended him to the notice of the heiress, by whom he seems to have been truly beloved.
Speaker A: But her pride of birth decided her finally to reject him and to wed a Monsieur Renelle, a banker and a diplomatist of some eminence.
Speaker A: After marriage, however, this gentleman neglected and perhaps even more positively ill treated her.
Speaker A: Having passed with him some wretched years, she died.
Speaker A: At least her condition so closely resembled death as to receive everyone who saw her.
Speaker A: She was buried not in a vault, but in an ordinary grave in the village of her nativity.
Speaker A: Filled with despair and still inflamed by the memory of a profound attachment, the lover journeys from the capital to the remote province in which the village lies, with the romantic purpose of disinterring the corpse and possessing himself of its luxuriant tresses, he reaches the grave at midnight.
Speaker A: He unearths the coffin, opens it, and is inactive, detaching the hair.
Speaker A: When he’s arrested by the unclosing of the beloved eyes.
Speaker A: In fact, the lady had been buried alive.
Speaker A: Vitality had not altogether departed, and she was aroused by the caresses of her lover from the lethargy which had been mistaken for death.
Speaker A: He bore her frantically to his lodgings in the village.
Speaker A: He employed certain powerful restoratives, suggested by no little medical learning.
Speaker A: In fine, she revived.
Speaker A: She recognized her preserver.
Speaker A: She remained with him until, by slow degrees, she fully recovered her original health.
Speaker A: Her woman’s heart was not adamant, and this last lesson of love sufficed to soften it, she bestowed it upon besuit.
Speaker A: She returned no more to her husband, but, concealing from him her resurrection, fled with her lover to America.
Speaker A: 20 years afterward, the two returned to France in the persuasion that time had so greatly altered the lady’s appearance that her friends would be unable to recognize her.
Speaker A: They were mistaken, however, for at the first meeting Monsieur Renell did actually recognize and make claim to his wife.
Speaker A: This claim she resisted, and a judicial tribunal sustained her in her resistance, deciding that the peculiar circumstances, with the long lapse of years, had extinguished not only equitably but legally the authority of the husband.
Speaker A: The Trijical Journal of Leipzig, a periodical of high authority and merit, which some American bookseller would do well to translate and republish records in a late number.
Speaker A: A very distressing event of the character in question.
Speaker A: An officer of artillery, a man of gigantic stature and of robust health, being thrown from an unmanageable horse, received a very severe contusion upon the head, which rendered him insensible.
Speaker A: At once the skull was slightly fractured, but no immediate danger was apprehended.
Speaker A: Trapanning was accomplished successfully.
Speaker A: He was bled, and many other of the ordinary means of relief were adopted.
Speaker A: Gradually, however, he fell into a more and more hopeless state of stupor, and finally it was thought that he died.
Speaker A: The weather was warm, and he was buried with indecent haste in one of the public cemeteries.
Speaker A: His funeral took place on Thursday.
Speaker A: On the Sunday following, the grounds of the cemetery were, as usual, much thronged with visitors, and about noon an intense excitement was created by the declaration of a peasant, that while sitting upon the grave of the officer, he had distinctly felt a commotion of the earth, as if occasioned by someone struggling beneath.
Speaker A: At first little attention was paid to the man’s observation, that is, evident terror, and the dogged obstinacy with which he persisted in his story had at length their natural effect upon the crowd.
Speaker A: Spades were hurriedly procured, and the grave, which was shamefully shallow, was in a few minutes so far thrown open that the head of its occupant appeared.
Speaker A: He was then seemingly dead, but he sat nearly erect within his coffin, the lid of which, in his furious struggles, he had partially uplifted.
Speaker A: He was forthwith conveyed to the nearest hospital, and there pronounced to be still living, although in a sphidic condition.
Speaker A: After some hours he revived recognized individuals of his acquaintance, and in broken sentences spoke of his agonies in the grave.
Speaker A: From what he related, it was clear that he must have been conscious of life for more than an hour while inhumed, before lapsing into insensibility.
Speaker A: The grave was carelessly and loosely filled with an exceedingly porous soil, and thus some air was necessarily admitted.
Speaker A: He heard the footsteps of the crowd overhead, and endeavored to make himself heard in turn.
Speaker A: It was the tumult within the grounds of the cemetery, he said, which appeared to awaken him from a deep sleep.
Speaker A: But no sooner was he awake than he became fully aware of the awful horrors of his position.
Speaker A: This patient, it is recorded, was doing well, and seemed to be in a fair way of ultimate recovery, but fell victim to the quackeries of medical experiment.
Speaker A: The galvanic battery was applied, and he suddenly expired in one of those ecstatic paroxysms which occasionally it super induces.
Speaker A: The mention of the galvanic battery nevertheless recalls to my memory a well known and very extraordinary case in point where its action proved the means of restoring the animation.
Speaker A: A young attorney of London, who had been interred for two days.
Speaker A: This occurred in 1831, and created at the time a very profound sensation, wherever it was made the subject of converse.
Speaker A: The patient, Mr.
Speaker A: Edward Stapleton, had died, apparently of typhus fever, accompanied with some anomalous symptoms which had excited the curiosity of his medical attendants.
Speaker A: Upon his seeming decease, his friends were requested to sanction a postmortem examination, but declined to permit it.
Speaker A: As often happens, when such refusals are made, the practitioners resolve to disinter the body and dissect it at leisure.
Speaker A: In private arrangements were easily affected with some of the numerous corpse of body snatchers with which London abounds, and upon the third night after the funeral, the supposed corpse was unearthed from a grave 8ft deep, and deposited in the opening chamber of one of the private hospitals.
Speaker A: An incision of some extent had been actually made in the abdomen.
Speaker A: When the fresh and undecayed appearance of the subject suggested an application of the battery, one experiment succeeded another, and the customary effects supervened with nothing to characterize them in any respect, except upon one or two occasions.
Speaker A: A more than ordinary degree of lifelikeness in the convulsive action.
Speaker A: It grew late.
Speaker A: The day was about to dawn, and it was thought expedient at length to proceed at once to the dissection.
Speaker A: A student, however, was especially desirous of testing a theory of his own, and insisted upon applying the battery to one of his pectoral muscles.
Speaker A: A rough gash was made, and a wire hastily brought in contact.
Speaker A: When the patient, with a hurried but quite unconvulsive movement, arose from the table, stepped into the middle of the floor, gazed about him uneasily for a few seconds, and then spoke.
Speaker A: What he said was unintelligible, but the words were uttered.
Speaker A: The salabification was distinct.
Speaker A: Having spoken, he fell heavily to the floor.
Speaker A: For some moments all were paralyzed with awe, but the urgency of the case soon restored them from their presence of mind.
Speaker A: It was seen that Mr.
Speaker A: Stapleton was alive, although in a swoon upon exhibition of ether, he revived and was rapidly restored to health and to the society of his friends, from whom, however, all knowledge of his resuscitation was withheld until a relapse was no longer to be apprehended.
Speaker A: Their wonder, their rapturous astonishment, may be conceived.
Speaker A: The most thrilling peculiarity of this incident, nevertheless, is involved in what Mr.
Speaker A: S.
Speaker A: Himself asserts.
Speaker A: He declares that at no period was he altogether insensible, that dully and confusedly he was aware of everything which happened to him from the moment in which he was pronounced dead by his physicians to that in which he fell swooning to the floor of the hospital.
Speaker A: I am alive.
Speaker A: Were the uncomprehended words which, upon recognizing the locality of the dissecting room, he had endeavored in his extremity to utter.
Speaker A: It were an easy matter to multiply such histories as these.
Speaker A: But I forbear.
Speaker A: For, indeed we have no need of such to establish the fact that premature interments occur when we reflect how very rarely from the nature of the case, we have it in our power to detect them.
Speaker A: We must admit that they may frequently occur without our cognizance.
Speaker A: Scarcely in truth, is a graveyard ever encroached upon for any purpose.
Speaker A: To any great extent.
Speaker A: That skeletons are not found in postures which suggest the most fearful of suspicions.
Speaker A: Fearful indeed, the suspicion, but more fearful the doom.
Speaker A: It may be asserted without hesitation that no event is so terribly well adapted to inspire the supremeness of bodily and of mental distress as is burial before death.
Speaker A: The unendurable oppression of the lungs, the stifling fumes from the damp earth, the clinging to the death garments, the rigid embrace of the narrow house, the blackness of the absolute night, the silence like a sea that overwhelms the unseen but palpable presence of the conqueror worm these things with the thoughts of the air and grass above with memory of dear friends who would fly to save us if, but informed of our fate, and with consciousness that of this fate they can never be informed that our hopeless portion is that of the really dead.
Speaker A: These considerations, I say, carry into the heart, which still palpitates a degree of appalling and intolerable horror from which the most daring imagination must recoil.
Speaker A: We know nothing so agonizing upon earth we can dream of nothing half so hideous in the realms of the nethermost h***.
Speaker A: And thus all narratives upon this topic have an interest, profound, an interest nevertheless, which, through the sacred awe of the topic itself, very properly and very peculiarly depends upon our conviction of the truth of the matter narrated.
Speaker A: What I have now to tell is of my own actual knowledge, of my own positive and personal experience.
Speaker A: For several years I had been subject to attacks of the singular disorder which physicians have agreed to term catalyst, in default of a more definitive title.
Speaker A: Although both the immediate and the predisposing causes and even the actual diagnosis of this disease are still mysterious, its obvious and apparent character is sufficiently well understood.
Speaker A: Its variations seem to be chiefly of degree.
Speaker A: Sometimes the patient lies for a day only, or even for a shorter period.
Speaker A: In a species of exaggerated lethargy.
Speaker A: He is senseless and externally motionless, but the pulsation of the heart is still faintly perceptible.
Speaker A: Some traces of warmth remain.
Speaker A: A slight color lingers within the center of the cheek, and upon application of a mirror to the lips, we can detect a torpid, unequal, and vacillating action of the lungs.
Speaker A: Then again, the duration of the trace is for weeks, even for months, while the closest scrutiny and the most rigorous medical tests fail to establish any material distinction between the state of the sufferer and what we conceive of absolute death.
Speaker A: Very usually he is saved from premature internment solely by the knowledge of his friends that he’s been previously subject to catilepsy, by the consequent suspicion excited, and above all by the non appearance of decay.
Speaker A: The advances of the malady are luckily gradual.
Speaker A: The first manifestations, although marked, are unequivocal.
Speaker A: The fits grow successfully more and more distinctive and endure, each for a longer term than the preceding.
Speaker A: In this lies the principal security from inhumation.
Speaker A: The unfortunate, whose first attack should be the extreme character which is occasionally seen, would almost inevitably be consigned alive to the tomb.
Speaker A: My own case differed in no important particular from those mentioned in medical books.
Speaker A: Sometimes without any apparent cause, I sank little by little into a condition of semisyncopy, or half swoon.
Speaker A: And in this condition, without pain, without ability to stir, or, strictly speaking, to think, but with a dull, lethargic consciousness of life and of the presence of those who surrounded my bed, I remained until the crisis of the disease restored me suddenly to perfect sensation.
Speaker A: At other times I was quickly and impetuously smitten.
Speaker A: I grew sick and numb and chilly and dizzy, and so fell prostrate at once.
Speaker A: Then for weeks all was void and black and silent, and nothing became the universe.
Speaker A: Total annihilation could be no more.
Speaker A: From these latter attacks.
Speaker A: I awoke, however, with a gradation, slow in proportion to the suddenness of the seizure, just as the day dawns to the friendless and houseless beggar who roams the streets throughout the long, desolate winter night, just so tardily, just so wearily, just so cheerily, came back the light of the soul to me.
Speaker A: Apart from the tendency to trance, however, my general health appeared to be good.
Speaker A: Nor could I perceive that it was at all affected by the one prevalent malady, unless, indeed an idiosyncrasy in my ordinary sleep may be looked upon as super induced.
Speaker A: Upon awaking from slumber, I could never gain at once thorough possession of my senses, and always remained for many minutes in much bewilderment and perplexity, the mental faculties in general, but the memory in a special being, in condition of absolute obeyance.
Speaker A: In all that I endured, there was no physical suffering, but of moral distress and infinitude.
Speaker A: My fancy grew sharnal.
Speaker A: I talked of worms, of tombs and epitaphs.
Speaker A: I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain.
Speaker A: The ghastly danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night.
Speaker A: In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive, in the latter, supreme.
Speaker A: When the grim darkness overspread the earth, then with every horror of thought I shook, shook, as the quivering plumes upon the hearse.
Speaker A: When nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep, for I shuddered to reflect that upon waking I might find myself the tenant of a grave.
Speaker A: And when finally I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast sable overshadowing wing hovered predominant.
Speaker A: The one sepulchral idea from the innumerable images of gloom which thus oppressed me in dreams I select for record, but a solitary vision.
Speaker A: Me thought I was immersed in a catalyptic trance.
Speaker A: Of more than usual duration and profundity.
Speaker A: Suddenly there came an icy hand upon my forehead.
Speaker A: And an impatient, gibbering voice whispered the word arise within my ear.
Speaker A: I sat erect.
Speaker A: The darkness was total.
Speaker A: I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me.
Speaker A: I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the trance.
Speaker A: Nor the locality in which I then lay.
Speaker A: While I remained motionless and busied in endeavors to collect my thought.
Speaker A: The cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly.
Speaker A: While the gibbering voice said again, arise.
Speaker A: Did I not bid thee arise?
Speaker A: And who, I demanded, art thou?
Speaker A: I have no name in the regions which I inhabit, replied the voice mournfully.
Speaker A: I was mortal but impiend.
Speaker A: I was merciless but impitiful.
Speaker A: Thou dost feel that I shudder.
Speaker A: My teeth chatter as I speak.
Speaker A: Yet it is not with the chilliness of the night, of the night without end.
Speaker A: But this hideousness is insufferable.
Speaker A: How canst thou tranquilly sleep?
Speaker A: I cannot rest for the cry of these great agonies.
Speaker A: These sights are more than I can bear.
Speaker A: Get thee up.
Speaker A: Come with me into the outer night.
Speaker A: And let me unfold to thee the graves.
Speaker A: It’s not this.
Speaker A: A spectacle of woe.
Speaker A: Behold, I looked.
Speaker A: And the unseen figure which still grasped me by the wrist.
Speaker A: Had caused to be thrown open the graves of all mankind.
Speaker A: And from each issued the faint phosphoric radiance of decay.
Speaker A: So that I could see into the innermost recesses.
Speaker A: And there viewed the shrouded bodies.
Speaker A: In their sad and solemn slumbers with the worm.
Speaker A: But, alas, the real sleepers were fewer by many millions than those who slumbered.
Speaker A: Not at all.
Speaker A: And there was a feeble struggling.
Speaker A: And there was a general sad unrest.
Speaker A: And from out the depths of the countless pits there came a melancholy rustling.
Speaker A: From the garments of the buried.
Speaker A: And those who seemed tranquilly to repose.
Speaker A: I saw that a vast number had changed in a greater or less degree.
Speaker A: The rigid and uneasy position in which they had originally been entombed.
Speaker A: And the voice again said to me as I gazed, is it not.
Speaker A: Oh, is it not a pitiful sight?
Speaker A: But before I could find Words to reply, the figure had ceased to grasp my wrist.
Speaker A: The phosphoric lights expired.
Speaker A: And the graves were closed with a sudden violence.
Speaker A: From out them arose a tumult of despairing cries.
Speaker A: Saying again, is it not, O God?
Speaker A: Is it not, a very pitiful sight.
Speaker A: Fantasies such as these, presenting themselves at night.
Speaker A: Extended their terrific influence far into my waking hours.
Speaker A: My nerves became thoroughly unstrung, and I fell apray to perpetual horror.
Speaker A: I hesitated to rise or to walk.
Speaker A: Or to indulge in any exercise that would carry me from home.
Speaker A: In fact, I no longer dared trust myself.
Speaker A: Out of the immediate presence of those who were aware of my proneness to catilepsy.
Speaker A: Must.
Speaker A: Falling into one of my usual fits.
Speaker A: I should be buried before my real condition could be ascertained.
Speaker A: I doubted the care, the fidelity of my dearest friends.
Speaker A: I dreaded that in some trance of more than customary duration.
Speaker A: They might be prevailed upon to regard me as irrecoverable.
Speaker A: I even went so far as to fear that as I occasioned much trouble.
Speaker A: They might be glad to consider any very protracted attack a sufficient excuse for getting rid of me altogether.
Speaker A: It was in vain.
Speaker A: They endeavored to reassure me.
Speaker A: By the most solemn promises.
Speaker A: I exacted the most sacred oaths.
Speaker A: That under no circumstances they would bury me.
Speaker A: Until decomposition had so materially advanced.
Speaker A: As to render further preservation impossible.
Speaker A: And even then my mortal terrors would listen to no reason, would accept no consolation.
Speaker A: I entered into a series of elaborate precautions.
Speaker A: Among other things, I had the family vault so remodeled.
Speaker A: As to admit of being readily opened from within.
Speaker A: The slightest pressure upon a long lever that extended far into the tomb.
Speaker A: Would cause the iron portal to fly back.
Speaker A: There were arrangements also for the free admission of air and light.
Speaker A: And convenient receptacles for food and water.
Speaker A: Within immediate reach of the coffin intended for my reception.
Speaker A: This coffin was warmly and softly padded.
Speaker A: And was provided with a lid.
Speaker A: Fashioned upon the principle of the vault door.
Speaker A: With the addition of spring so contrived that the feeblest movement of the body.
Speaker A: Would be sufficient to set it at liberty.
Speaker A: Besides all this, there was suspended from the roof of the tomb a large bell.
Speaker A: The rope of which it was designed.
Speaker A: Should extend through a hole in the coffin.
Speaker A: And so be fastened to one of the hands of the corpse.
Speaker A: But, alas, what avails the vigilance against the destiny of man?
Speaker A: Not even these well contrived securities.
Speaker A: Suffice.
Speaker A: To save from the uttermost agonies of living inhumation.
Speaker A: A wretched to these agonies for doomed, there arrived an Epic.
Speaker A: As often before there had arrived.
Speaker A: In which I found myself Emerging from total unconsCiousness.
Speaker A: Into the first feeble and indefinite sense of Existence.
Speaker A: Slowly, with a tortoise gradation.
Speaker A: Approached the faint gray dawn of the cycle day.
Speaker A: A torpid uneasiness, an apathetic endurance of dull pain.
Speaker A: No care, no hope, no effort.
Speaker A: Then, after a long interval of ringing in the ears.
Speaker A: Then, after a lapse still longer, a prickling or tingling sensation in the extremities.
Speaker A: Then a seemingly eternal period of pleasurable quiescence, during which the awakening feelings are struggling into thought.
Speaker A: Then a brief resyncing into nonentity.
Speaker A: Then a sudden recovery.
Speaker A: At length, the slight quivering of an eyelid.
Speaker A: And immediately thereupon an electric shock of a Terror, deadly and indefinite, which sends the blood into Torrents from the temples to the heart.
Speaker A: And now the first positive effort to think.
Speaker A: And now the first endeavor to remember.
Speaker A: And now a partial and evanescent success.
Speaker A: And now the memory has so far regained its dominion that in some measure I am cognizant of my state.
Speaker A: I feel that I’m not awaking from ordinary sleep.
Speaker A: I recollect that I’ve been subject to catalypsy.
Speaker A: And now, at last, as if by the rush of an ocean, my shuddering spirit is overwhelmed by the one grim danger, by the one spectral and ever prevalent idea.
Speaker A: For some minutes after this fancy possessed me, I remained without motion.
Speaker A: And why I could not.
Speaker A: Some encouraged move.
Speaker A: I dared not make the effort which was to satisfy me of my fate.
Speaker A: And yet there was something at my heart which whispered me.
Speaker A: It was sure.
Speaker A: Despair, such as no other species of wretchedness ever calls into being.
Speaker A: Despair alone urged me, after long irresolution, to uplift the heavy lids of my eyes.
Speaker A: I uplifted them.
Speaker A: It was dark, all dark.
Speaker A: I knew that the fit was over.
Speaker A: I knew that the crisis of my disorder had long passed.
Speaker A: I knew that I had now fully recovered the use of my visual faculties.
Speaker A: And yet it was dark, all dark.
Speaker A: The intense and utter raylessness of the night that endureth forevermore and ever to shriek.
Speaker A: And my lips and my parched tongue moved convulsively together in the attempt.
Speaker A: But no voice issued from the cavernous lungs, which oppressed as if by the weight of some incumbent mountain, gasped and palpitated with the heart.
Speaker A: At every elaborate and struggling inspiration.
Speaker A: The movement of the jaws in this effort to cry aloud showed me that they were bound up, as is usual with the dead.
Speaker A: I felt, too, that I lay upon some hard substance, and by something similar to my sides were also closely compressed.
Speaker A: So far I had not ventured to stir any of my limbs.
Speaker A: But now I violently threw up my arms, which had been lying at length.
Speaker A: With the wrists crossed, they struck a solid wooden substance which extended above my person at an elevation of not more than six inches from my face.
Speaker A: I could no longer doubt that I were posed within a coffin at last.
Speaker A: And now, amid all my infinite miseries, came sweetly the cherub hope.
Speaker A: For I thought of my precautions.
Speaker A: I writhed and made spasmodic exertions to force open the lid.
Speaker A: It would not move.
Speaker A: I felt my wrists for the bell rope.
Speaker A: It was not to be found.
Speaker A: And now the comforter fled forever.
Speaker A: And a still, sterner despair reigned.
Speaker A: Triumphant wreck could not help perceiving the absence of the paddings which I had so carefully prepared.
Speaker A: And then, too, there came suddenly to my nostrils the strong, peculiar odor of moist earth.
Speaker A: The conclusion was irresistible.
Speaker A: I was not within the vault.
Speaker A: I had fallen into a trance while absent from home, all among strangers when, or how, I could not remember.
Speaker A: And it was they who had buried me as a dog, nailed up in some common coffin.
Speaker A: And thrust deep, deep and forever into some ordinary and nameless grave.
Speaker A: As this awful conviction forced itself thus into the innermost chambers of my soul, I once again struggled to cry aloud.
Speaker A: And in the second endeavor I succeeded.
Speaker A: A long, wild and continuous shriek or yell of agony.
Speaker A: Resounded through the realms of the subterranean night.
Speaker A: Hello.
Speaker A: Hello there, said a gruff voice in reply.
Speaker A: What the devil’s the matter now?
Speaker A: Said a second.
Speaker A: Get out of that.
Speaker A: Said a third.
Speaker A: What do you mean by yowling in that air?
Speaker A: Kind of style, like a caddy mount, said a fourth.
Speaker A: And hereupon I was seized and shaken without ceremony for several minutes by a junto of very rough looking individuals.
Speaker A: They did not arouse me from my slumber, for I was wide awake when I screamed, but they restored me to the full possession of my memory.
Speaker A: This adventure occurred near Richmond in Virginia.
Speaker A: Accompanied by a friend, I had proceeded upon a gunning expedition some miles down the banks of the James River.
Speaker A: Night approached, and we were overtaken by a storm.
Speaker A: The cabin of a small sloop, lying in anchor in the stream and laden with garden mold, afforded us the only available shelter.
Speaker A: We made the best of it and passed the night.
Speaker A: On board, I slept in one of the only two berths in the vessel, and the berths of a sloop of 60 or 20 tons need scarcely be described.
Speaker A: That which I occupied had no bedding of any kind.
Speaker A: Its extreme width was 18 inches.
Speaker A: The distance of its bottom from the deck overhead was precisely the same.
Speaker A: I found it a matter of exceeding difficulty to squeeze myself in.
Speaker A: Nevertheless, I slept soundly in the whole of my vision, for it was no dream, and no nightmare arose naturally from the circumstances of my position, from my ordinary bias of thought, and from the difficulty to which I have eluded of collecting my senses and especially of regaining my memory.
Speaker A: For a long time after awaking from slumber the men who shook me or the crew of the sloop and some laborers engaged to unload it.
Speaker A: From the load itself came the earthly smell.
Speaker A: The bandage about the jaws was a silk handkerchief in which I had bound up my head in default of my customary nightcap.
Speaker A: The tortures endured, however, were indubitably, quite equal for the time to those of actual sepulcher.
Speaker A: They were fearfully, they were inconceivably hideous, but out of evil proceeded good, for their very access wrought in my spirit an inevitable revulsion.
Speaker A: My soul acquired tone, acquired temper.
Speaker A: I went abroad.
Speaker A: I took vigorous exercise.
Speaker A: I breathed the free air of heaven.
Speaker A: I thought upon other subjects than death.
Speaker A: I discarded my medical books.
Speaker A: Buchan I burned.
Speaker A: I read no night thoughts, no fustian about churchyards, no bugaboo tales such as this.
Speaker A: In short, I became a new man and lived a man’s life.
Speaker A: From that memorable night, I dismissed forever my charnal apprehensions, and with them vanished the catalyptic disorder, of which perhaps they had been less the consequence than the cause.
Speaker A: There are moments when, even to the sober eye of reason, the world of our sad humanity may assume the semblance of a h***.
Speaker A: But the imagination of man is no car.
Speaker A: This to explore with impunity its every cavern.
Speaker A: Alas, the grim legion of separatual terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful.
Speaker A: But like the demons in whose company Aphrosiab made his voyage down the oxys, they must sleep.
Speaker A: They will devour us.
Speaker A: They must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.
Speaker A: Thank you for joining Freya’s fairy tales.
Speaker A: Be sure to come back next week for Lila’s journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.
