The Pit and the Pendulum

Young people enjoy being scared, and Edgar Allan Poe can scare them more than almost anyone. He is one of the all-time masters of creeping flesh and goose- pimple raisers. In one of his tales of terror, ' 'The Pit and the Pendulum," he stirs, in the minds and hearts of his readers, a prickly sense of terror. "The Pit and the Pendulum," like ghost stories around a campfire, fulfills Poe's intention more successfully when heard.