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The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar, written in 1845, is an example of a story which we would now class as "horror", but which Edgar Allan Poe submitted to the public as an essay. It is a tale about "mesmerism", which was then a newly fashionable method of inducing a trance-like state. It developed later into what we term today hypnotism. A mesmerist put a man in a suspended hypnotic state at the moment of death. The story includes medical students and nurses as witnesses to add to its authenticity. It was originally presented to the public as an essay, and only later admitted by Edgar Allan Poe to be a work of fiction.

The descriptions in this story are particularly detailed and gruesome, as if the author intends to shock and disgust his readers. The physical details seem quite realistic, suggesting that Edgar Allan Poe did extensive research and studied medical texts for himself. For example the dying man Valdemar's eyes at one point leak a "profuse outflowing of a yellowish ichor". And here is the last image:

(view spoiler)["his whole frame at once - within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk - crumbled - absolutely rotted away beneath my hands. Upon the bed, before that whole company, there lay a nearly liquid mass of loathsome - of detestable putrescence." (hide spoiler)] This is exceptionally graphic and original for the time, and not easily forgotten.

I have reviewed many other short stories by this author, and those reviews can be displayed by searching for Edgar Allan Poe on my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ shelves.