The Premature Burial

In The Premature Burial, the first-person unnamed narrator describes the horror caused by the danger of being buried alive. The theme gives rise to an ingenious exercise in sustained tension and offers an extraordinary warning: each one is a craftsman of his own hell. The genius of Edgar Allan Poe molds a perfect, claustrophobic, intriguing story to enjoy until the last word.

Edgar Allan Poe is the great master of horror literature, but that's not what made him unique. He also inaugurated the detective story and is one of the great creators of science fiction. However, his greatest contribution is probably having endowed the short story with a dignity and prestige unknown before its literary production.