Edgar Allan Poe: Master of Horror

Halloween time. 

Is there a best time to talk about the writer that made perhaps the most to give the literature of horror some of its greatest pieces ever? And that for sure is Edgar Allan Poe, the Bostonian born on January 19, 1809. He did not write Frankestein or Dracula and still that was not necessary to make him the indisputable recipient of the "Master of Horror" title.

The author of short stories such as MS. Found in a Bottle, The Black Cat, The Facts in The Case of Mister Valdemar, The Fall of The House of Usher, The Premature Burial, The Masque of the Red Death ventured also into poetry with The Raven and Annabel Lee. He is considered the creator of detective stories with The Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Purloined Letter and even Science Fiction The Unparalleled Adventures of Some Hans Pfall. 

His only novel is one of sea adventures, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, which describes one of the most disturbing passages I have ever read and here you are:

"As our first loud yell of terror broke forth, it was replied to by something, from near the bowsprit of the stranger, so closely resembling the scream of a human voice that the nicest ear might have been startled and deceived. At this instant another sudden yaw brought the region of the forecastle for a moment into view, and we beheld at once the origin of the sound. We saw the tall stout figure still leaning on the bulwark, and still nodding his head to and fro, but his face was now turned from us so that we could not behold it. His arms were extended over the rail, and the palms of his hands fell outward. His knees were lodged upon a stout rope, tightly stretched, and reaching from the heel of the bowsprit to a cathead. On his back, from which a portion of the shirt had been torn, leaving it bare, there sat a huge sea-gull, busily gorging itself with the horrible flesh, its bill and talons deep buried, and its white plumage spattered all over with blood. As the brig moved farther round so as to bring us close in view, the bird, with much apparent difficulty, drew out its crimsoned head, and, after eyeing us for a moment as if stupefied, arose lazily from the body upon which it had been feasting, and, flying directly above our deck, hovered there a while with a portion of clotted and liver-like substance in its beak. The horrid morsel dropped at length with a sullen splash immediately at the feet of Parker.
It's twisted, isn't it? But that was him, a writer who was ahead of his time, perhaps the most important in the literature of the U.S. and still one who went unrecognized without the honors he deserved.