The Premature Burial

Title: The Premature Burial
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Narrator: Jonathan Dunne
Original Publication: 1844
Public Domain: Yes
Series Placement: Number 37 in the Timeless Terrors series
Description:
The Premature Burial by Edgar Allan Poe is one of the author’s most chilling meditations on fear — not of the supernatural, but of the terrible possibilities of life and death themselves. Blending meticulous realism with mounting horror, Poe explores the paralyzing dread of being buried alive, a fate all too plausible in an age before medical certainty.
As the narrator recounts true tales of premature interment and his own spiraling obsession with the grave, the story becomes both a psychological study and a reflection on humanity’s darkest anxieties. Poe’s prose traps the listener in a space between reason and terror — where the heart still beats beneath the coffin lid, and imagination becomes a tomb.
Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance captures the suffocating tension and morbid fascination that make The Premature Burial one of Poe’s most enduring works of gothic dread. While the text itself is in the public domain, this narration is an original performance and copyright © 2025 Jonathan Dunne.
Part of Timeless Terrors, a series devoted to resurrecting the masters of the macabre, The Premature Burial stands as a timeless reminder that the truest horror lies not in monsters, but in the fragile boundary between consciousness and the grave.