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I had seen in the synapsis of the class that Dean Koontz was in it, well we didnt get to him sadly, so I am doing my presentation on Dean Koontz, the fantasy side of his books. He has a couple that reflect humanity back as itself, and one of them is called "Innocence". I will be going over a bit of it so I don't want to ruin it here. Just know that in this book he tries to start humanity over again, with two outcasts of the world.


UPDATE: I loved all the reader presentations! There were some I would have loved to touch base on also, like the dragons, and the exorcist and demonology! Over all there was some good presentations and very informative too, filled in the gaps nicely.

blog 12

Poe wants you to believe that this "disease" he has is a factual thing, he even goes as far as to describe what it is like to be in the state of comatose, how you can hear things and see things, but everything you see and hear are twisted and not of what you would normally see and hear. How you can't move which makes others believe you are dead, promoting the premature burial. The disease is actually called Cotard's delusion, its a metal disorder where the person has delusions believing they are no longer exist or are dead, first instance was in the 1700's.








This is like the old ghost tale around the campfire story. It is told that wishes come true and that the guy who "owned" it had bad things happen to him and the others don't care about the bad, they only care about the wishes, human greed. This is a supernatural story in the sense that it makes you believe that the wishes actually work, that the 200 lbs that was wished for was what caused the son's death, and then they wished him back, but you never find out if it was actually him at the door, though through a sixth sense the father believes the "thing" on the other side of the door is not his son. The end makes it seem like both the parents disappear. Very nicely put ghost story!


update: after talking about the common practice of being buried alive, I do believe I will be making it part of my will that whoever performs my autopsy makes sure I am dead before proceeding on, that is craziness! monkeys paw in theater form sucked, I really found it boring, I found more excitement by reading the story, at least it left things for the imagination.

blog 11

After reading this, twice, I feel as if this would be his wife, who also was his cousin, who also suffered a horrible death. Poe always has a way of making a simple thing like an illness seem demented and twisted, and how he felt about it the same way. The whole thing about the teeth though got me, maybe he had a fixation about her teeth from young and maybe his only way of remembering her was the teeth, that he had to have.





In every city of every state every room has a tale to tell. Some more grotesque then others, but still the same, like the story, people who take up residence in a room always leave a part of themselves there, whether it be a hair tie or a handkerchief, a part of them will always remain. The lovers in this story couldn't even be seperated by death because of a small piece that one left behind, her fragrance, one that he recognized and went to find. The possession of his mind by her at the end was such a twist! Just goes to show that ghosts are influential and can make the living do what they want.






This is one that I imagined was a story they would tell on late night radio back in the 50's, kind of like the Bradbury one of aliens taking over the planet. I do believe this story had a supernatural aspect in it. After preparing his wife's body and falling asleep, he awoke hours later to find himself trying to listen for something he didn't know what, after a brief encounter with the unknown, he takes out his gun and fires it and finds a panther trying to take his wife's body, after firing the round the panther dropped her by the window where it made its escape and in his wife's mouth was found the fur of the panther, like she was fighting the panther herself. Or maybe she was keeping the panther from attacking her husband who was asleep when it came through the window and was vulnerable prey. Things that make you go hmmmmmm........




Update: After looking at all the aspects of these stories, the madness element, the lost love element and the supernatural element, I would have to say Poe's short most definitely screams madness, as always, and O. Henry's is more definitely supernatural, and Bierce is definitely lost love. Each story had hints of all aspects, but I believe these stand out the most in each of the stories.