Edgar Allan Poe. The Tomahawk Man. Progenitor of what some may deem as horror, the psychedelia and the psychosis and the wherewithal of the human condition, writ upon the pages of burgeoning, and troubling, times—whilst going through his own troubling times, mind you: rifling through the waning cupboards of poverty, circumstances orphaning, abandoning, coming to awful grips with the loss of both his Wife and Mother at the early hands of tuberculosis, struggling the throes of alcoholism, addiction, defamation. All drenched atop the minuscule praises and recognitions he received, and the lack thereof. These things for him compounded a depression, a life of traumatic events, tragedies, resulting ultimately in an early, and quite befuddling death. A mystery of mysteries. An unfinished horror story in its own right. A haunting thing, really. Poe was an apotheosis of the literary worlds, stretching out far across the globe of genre. The man accredited with the namesake of a god: the creator of detective fiction, as found within the confines of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. The perpetuity of his inspiration and influence washes deep, apparently beaconing out to workers and writers such as H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King, and . . . and just about any avid fan or writer or creative tucked dusty within the wheelhouse of horror. And whether that be cosmical or societal or psychological or deeply, darkly fantastical, Edgar Allan Poe understood truly its important, and irreplaceable, nature within the wide of literature, within poetry—within media. Utilizing the fragrances and tones of loss and trauma and grief and isolation and hysteria, Poe weaved for us a twinkling scape of frightening stars, ghastly, gravid constellations through which we can discern and discuss and contemplate the incongruities of our own reality, of our place, of our interpersonal relationships, and how we may navigate such twilit vistas. He understood that horror was man’s truest name, and, that without it, there’s not much beauty of life to see. Our dearest, dearest Poe carved it up a stain across the plinth of nighttime sky. Shoveling snows, beneath cloudy coverlets and fogs on moonfull nights, you can hear it—you can feel it. It’s that warn against the lightless corners of abandoned streets. It’s that name of yours called distant in the hush. It’s that flush of instant fever writhing wretched within your skins as the footsteps step ever closer and you freeze . . . And so let us here, us doubly troubled souls at Dark Room Horror, take you there for a moment or two, or three, to peek at the beneaths of those gauntish, guilty floorboards, to discuss the whapping beats of those hidden, telling hearts, and to unrest awhile uneasily, as we do delve into the works of the Tomahawk Man. If only he could see us now, we wonder. What a laughter that would be. -David Burchell
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