Pit and the Pendulum

The Pit and the Pendulum was a short, sweet, and frightening literary work. As I read and listened to the story, I could feel myself the narrator's fear of his own death. Edgar Allen Poe effectively used the fear of the unknown to captivate the reader. The use of unknown aspects, such as how the killer in a story looks, is what makes horror stories even more scary, because the reader imagines themselves what the killer may look like, which will be their own terrifying thought. For example, In The Pit and the Pendulum, the narrator is stuck in a pitch black area with no idea what surrounds him except for an extremely deep pit, which he almost fell into. His fear of not knowing what surrounds him makes him frantic and terrified.  Towards the end of the story, Poe makes it even more intense by having the narrator faced with the decision to jump into the pit or be sliced in half by the pendulum. This was a great thriller type short story and I recommend you read it.