The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 142: OCCASIONALLY--Halloween

Episode Date: October 31, 2019

It's All Hallow's Eve! So what better way to mark the occasion than with an episode of OCCASIONALLY. Mike pays homage to the macabre musings of the great Edgar Allan Poe by reciting perhaps his most famous story. Light a candle, pour a beverage, and let the Victorian goosebumps wash over you. Prepare yourself for the insidious beating of... The Tell Tale Heart

This is the way I heard it. Hey there, it's Mike Row, and this is not the way I heard it. This is occasionally, and the occasion is Halloween. And I thought it might be fun to commemorate this occasion with a ghost story. Seems like every day nowadays is national something or other day. I don't know if this is going to be an ongoing thing, but because it's Halloween and because I love Edgar Allan Poe, I thought it might be fun to share one of his better-known tales with you guys. It's called the telltale heart.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with it. If you're not, and if you're not familiar with Poe, well, he was unexampled. Difficult life. Guy was born in Boston back in 1809. His parents were actors. They both died. Before he was two, he grew up in Virginia with foster parents, moved to my hometown in Baltimore, and got busy writing. His biography is amazing.

Nobody can quite pin the guy down. A lot of scholars agree he was a heavy drinker addicted to a drug called Loudnam. There's a lot of gossip and speculation and fabrication regarding his death, but he probably died as a result of drug and alcohol complications, October 13th, 1849 at Church Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, not far from where I grew up. Poe believed that a perfect story should be readable in just one sitting, that it should be tightly controlled, highly compressed with topics that everybody can relate to. What you're about to hear is 10 paragraphs long.

The Telltale Heart is, I think, a perfect example of Poe's theory of writing. Fun to listen to, I hope, and certainly fun to read. One quick mention before we get into it, a lot of people are asking me if the goal, story in my book is true. I have a book called The Way I heard it. You've probably heard me flogging it here on the podcast for the last month or so. But in the book, I tell the story of the year I spent living in a place called Georgia Farm, an old mansion in the middle of the country while I was working at the QVC cable shopping channel. There was so much weirdness in my life in 1992. I can't even sum it up. But to those of you who are asking, yeah, the story is true. Georgia

farm is still there, and it was most assuredly haunted. More on that at micro.com slash book, if you're curious, for now. Edgar Allan Poe set the mark pretty high with this one. It's a tell-tale heart, and this is the way I read it. True, nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous. I had been and am, but why will you say that I'm mad? The disease had sharpened my senses, not destroyed, not dull, them. Above all, was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth.

I heard many things in hell. How then am I mad, hearken, and observe how healthily, how calmly, I can tell you the whole story. It's impossible to say how first the idea entered my brain, but once conceived, it haunted me day and night. Object, there was none. Passion, there was none. I loved, the old man. He had never wronged me. He had never given me insult. For his gold, I had no desire. I think it was his eye. Yes, it was this. He had the eye of a vulture, a pale blue eye with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold, and so by degrees very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid my mind. My blood ran cold, and so, by degrees, very gradually, I made up my mind to take the life of the old man, and thus rid myself of the eye forever.

Now, this is the point. You fancy me mad. Mad men know nothing, but you should have seen me. You should have seen how wisely I proceeded, with what caution, with what foresight, with what dissimulation I went to work. I was never kinder to the old man than during the whole week before I killed him. And every night, about midnight, I turned the latch of his door and opened it.

Oh, so gently. And then, when I had made an opening sufficient for my head, I put in a dark lantern all closed, closed, so that no light shone out, and then I thrust in my head. Oh, you would have laughed to see how cunningly I thrust it in. I moved it slowly, very, very slowly, so that I might not disturb the old man's sleep. It took me an hour to place my whole head within the opening so far that I could see him as he lay upon his bed. Would a madman have been so wise as this? And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously.

Oh, so cautiously, cautiously for the hinges creaked. I undid it just so much that a single thin ray fell upon the vulture eye. And this I did for seven long nights, every night just at midnight. But I found the eye always closed. And so it was impossible to do the work, for it was not the old man who vexed me, but his evil eye. and every morning, when the day broke, I went boldly into the chamber and spoke courageously to him, calling him by name, in a hearty tone, and inquiring how he is past the night. So, you see, he would have had to have been a very profound old man, indeed,

to suspect that every night, just at 12, I looked in upon him while he slept. Upon the eighth night, I was more than usually cautious in opening the door. A watch's minute hand moves more quickly than did mine. Never before that night had I felt the extent of my powers, of my sagacity. I could scarcely contain my feelings of triumph to think that there I was, opening the door little by little, and he, not even to dream of my secret deeds or thoughts, I fairly chuckled at the idea. And perhaps he heard me, for he moved on the bed suddenly, as if startled.

Now you may think that I drew back, but no. His room was as black as pitch with the thick darkness, for the shutters were close-fastened through fear of robbers. And so I knew he could not see the opening of the door, and I kept pushing it on steadily, steadily, steadily. I had my head in and was about to open the lantern when my thumb slipped upon the tin fastening and the old man sprang up in bed, crying out, who's there? I kept quite still and said nothing. For a whole hour I did not move a muscle. And in the meantime, I did not hear him lie down.

he was still sitting up in the bed, listening, just as I have done, night after night, hearkening to the death-watches in the wall. Presently, I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief. Oh, no. It was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when over-cheworthy. charged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening with its dreadful echo, the terrors that

distracted me. I say I knew it well. I knew what the old man felt and pitied him, although I chuckled at heart. I knew that he had been lying awake ever since the first slight noise when he had turned in the bed. His fears had been ever since growing upon him. He had been trying to fancy them causeless, but could not. He had been saying to himself, it is nothing but the wind in the chimney. It is only a mouse crossing the floor, or it is merely a cricket which has made a single chirp. Oh yes. He had been trying to comfort himself with these suppositions, but he had found all in vain, all in vain, because death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim. And it was the mournful influence of the

unperceived shadow that caused him to feel, although he neither saw nor heard, but to feel the presence of my head within the room. When I had waited a long time, very patiently, without hearing him lie down, I resolved to open a little, a very, very little crevice in the lantern. So I opened it. You cannot imagine how stealthily, stealthily, until it length the simple, dim ray like the thread of a spider, shot from out of the crevice and fell full upon the vulture eye. It was open, wide, wide, open, and I grew furious as I gazed upon it. I saw it with perfect distinctness, all a dull blue, with a hideous veil over it that chilled the very marrow in my bones, but I could see nothing else of the old man's face or person, for I had directed the ray as if by instinct,

precisely upon the damn spot. And have I not told you that what you mistake for madness is but over-acuteness of the sense? Now, I say there came to my ears, a low, dull, quick sound, such as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I knew that sound well, too. It was the beating of the old man's heart. It increased my fury as the beating of a drum stimulates the soldier into courage. But even yet, I refrained and kept still. I scarcely breathed. I held the lantern motionless. I tried how steadily I could maintain the ray upon the eye. Meantime, the hellish tattoo of the heart increased. It grew quicker and quicker, louder and louder at every instant. The old man's terror must have been extreme. It grew louder. I say louder every moment. Do you mark me well? I have told you. I am nervous.

So I am. And now at the dead hour of the night amid the dreadful silence of that old house so strange a noise as this, it excited me to uncontrollable terror. Yet for some minutes longer, I refrained and stood still. But the beating grew louder, louder. I thought the heart must burst, and now a new anxiety seized me. The sound would be heard by a neighbor. The old man's hour had come. With a yell, I threw open the lantern and leaped into the room. He shrieked once, once only. In an instant, I dragged him to the floor and pulled the heavy bed over him. I then smiled gaily to find the deed so far done. But for many minutes. The heartbeat on with a muffled sound. This, however, did not vex me. It would not be heard

through the wall. At length, it ceased. The old man was dead. I removed the bed and examined the corpse. Yes, he was stone, stone dead. I placed my hand upon the heart and held it there for many minutes, there was no pulsation, he was stone dead. His eye would trouble me no more. If still you think me mad, you will think so no longer when I described the wise precautions I took for the concealment of the body. The night waned, and I worked hastily, but in silence. First of all, I dismembered the corpse. I cut off the head and the arms and the legs. I then, I then then took up three planks from the flooring of the chamber and deposited all between the scantlings. I then replaced the boards so cleverly, so cunningly, that no human eye, not even his,

could have detected anything wrong. There was nothing to wash out, no stain of any kind, no blood spot, whatever. I had been too wary for that. A tub had caught all. When I had made an end of these labors, it was for a car. clock, still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, for what had I now to fear? There entered three men who introduced themselves with perfect suavity as officers of the police.

A shriek had been heard by a neighbor during the night. Suspicion of foul play had been aroused. Information had been lodged at the police office, and they, the officers, had been deputed to search the premises. I smiled for what had I to fear. I bade the gentleman welcome. The shriek, I said, was my own in a dream. The old man, I mentioned, was absent in the country. I took my visitors all over the house.

I bade them search. Search well. I led them at length to his chamber. I showed them his treasures, secure, undisturbed. In the enthusiasm of my confidence, I brought chairs into the room and desired them here to rest from their fatigues, while I myself, in the wild audacity of my perfect triumph, placed my own seat upon the very spot beneath which reposed the corpse of the victim. The officers were satisfied. My manner had convinced them. I was singularly, at ease. They sat, and while I answered cheerily, they chatted of familiar things. But ere long,

I felt myself getting pale and wished them gone. My head ached, and I fancied a ringing in my ears, but still they sat and chatted. The ringing became more distinct. It continued and became more distinct. I talked more freely to get rid of the feeling, but it continued. and gained definiteness, until at length I found that the noise was not within my ears. No doubt I grew very pale, but I talked more fluently and with a heightened voice, yet the sound increased, and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound, much like a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath, and yet the officers heard it not.

I talked more quickly, more vehemently, but the noise steadily increased. I arose and argued about trifles in a high key, and with violent gesticulations, but the noise steadily increased. Why would they not be gone? I paced the floor to and fro with heavy strides as if excited to fury by the observations of the men, but the noise steadily increased. Oh, God, what could I do? I phoned.

I raved. I swore. I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting and grated it upon the boards. But the noise arose over all and continually increased. It grew louder, louder, louder, and still the men chatted pleasantly and smiled.

Was it possible? They heard not. Almighty God, no. No, they heard. heard, they suspected. They knew they were making a mockery of my horror. This I thought, and this I think. But anything was better than this agony. Anything was more tolerable than this derision. I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer. I felt that I must scream or die. And now, again, hark, louder, louder, louder, louder, louder. Villains, I should. Villains, I should.

shrieked, dissembled no more! I admit the deed. Tear up the planks. Here, here! It is the beating of his hideous heart!