4 Edgar Allan Poe Stories to Read This Halloween

Michelle Green
Oct 12, 2020
3 min read

Updated: Oct 16, 2020

I’m switching it up a bit this week while keeping the October spirit alive!

Other than Stephen King, who comes to mind when you think of strange, weird, scary stories? For me, it’s Edgar Allan Poe. He's one of my favorites and I even have three different anthologies of his short stories and poems.

I may have a slight obsession.

Anyway, four of his short stories come to mind when Halloween rolls around and I try and read every year. He perfectly encapsulates the creepy, insane, and in one of these stories, the recent.

I’ve done my best in this post to avoid spoiling the endings so you can still read them and add to your own spooky reading list.

The Masque of the Red Death (1845)

4/5

This story feels timely, even though it was published 175 years ago.

It’s about a deadly plague, called the “Read Death” and a prince, Prospero. The Read Death’s victims die quickly and the disease spreads far and wide. Several months after locking the gates to his palace, the prince hosts a large masquerade ball while the plague is still rampant.

At this ball, a mystery guest shows up, and his appearance is rather unsettling to the guests. Specifically, his mask looks like a corpse, almost like he was a victim of the Red Death.

Sounds ominous, right? Given the times we’re currently in, it definitely adds an eerie, creepy feel to our everyday.

The Black Cat (1843)

5/5

The unnamed narrator claims that while the story he is about to recount is crazy, but he is completely sane. He and his wife married when they were young, and they take care of several animals. One of those animals is a black cat named Pluto.

Throughout the story, the narrator suffers from mood swings due to his drinking and mistreats his wife and the animals. One night, while he is in a spiraling in a drunken rage, he grabs the cat, gets bitten, and he takes a penknife and cuts out one of the cat’s eyes.

The next day, he hangs poor Pluto from a tree. That night, his house burns down, and the neighbors notice only one wall still standing. The lone wall had an impression of a cat with a rope around its neck.

This story has the most stereotypical of “spooky” things: a black cat. And it's quintessential Poe, so it’s a must read.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841)

4/5

This story is more of a murder mystery than a true scary story, but it feels Sherlockian which is great (and the detective serves as a model for Holmes and Poirot later).

The narrator and C. Auguste Dupin meet while they are looking for the same book at a library in the Rue Montmartre, in Paris. They start talking and become quick friends and end up living together and splitting the costs.

Later, they both read the headlines in the newspaper which details a gruesome murder at a home in Rue Morgue, a fictional street in Paris. Witnesses claim hearing two voices the night of the murder, but no one can agree what language the second voice was speaking. A daughter and mother were brutally murdered and found in the locked room was a bloody straight razor, tufts of grey hair, and two bags of gold coins.

While this one isn’t a story you would immediately think of as a scary story, Poe’s macabre descriptions and storytelling makes this a perfect October read.

The Tell-Tale Heart (1843)

5/5

Clearly a theme Poe has, his narrator assures the reader that he is sane, and just nervous. He’s telling the story because he wants to confess but defend himself for murdering an old man. His reason for murder? He was afraid of the old man’s blue eye.

The story recounts his self-prescribed coolness and rational thought while he was watching the old man ever night as he slept.

This story spirals quickly from there, so if you’ve never read it, I don’t want to give too much away. But in true Edgar Allan Poe fashion, it’s a dark and chilling tale that just belongs in October.