Poe Lives On...Forevermore

My first taste of the legendary literary master Edgar Allan Poe was from a 1970's Halloween record called "Famous Ghost Stories With Scary Sounds."
I'm very happy to hear that vinyl records are making a comeback in the digital age, but sadly I fear the era of Halloween records and CD's that contained stories and sound effects are now a thing of the past.
But those days were fun. And hearing this record I got to hear timeless classics like The Headless Horseman from Washington Irving's "The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow" and Charles Dickens' "The Signal-Man." Incredible stories to light up a young kids imagination.
However the one story that captivated me and stayed with me all these years was Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart."
It's hard, at least among my friends when I was younger, to tell at that age what a truly classic story was. Even these days I seem to be content with the content given to me. But I recognized this at an early age as a true classic story. I wasn't wrong.
That started a long love of all thing Poe.
I adored his poetry, with the obvious ("The Raven") and the not so obvious ("El Dorado"), and I considered him then (as I do now) as being the king of the horror short story.
Later on I discovered H.P. Lovecraft and Clive Barker but Poe still ranks first for me. Though dark in nature, his tales weren't as cosmic and out there as Lovecraft nor gory and tempting as Barker. His stories have that classic feel to them. Not that the others aren't classic. It's just a matter of accessibility.
He was born in 1809 and died in 1849. He died under tragic circumstances and had he not been a brilliant storyteller he may very well have drifted off into the mists of time.
But that is not the case.
His stories, poems, and tales live on. Thus...HE lives on. Forevermore.