It's tempting to deride "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" as an earlier century's curiosity that no one would take as a factual report now. Hypnotizing the dying. Talking to the dead. Gruesome physical transformation.

Yet think of all the really bizarre paranormal and pseudoscientific accounts that millions of people do accept as real today.

And I have to admit, while reading one of Edgar Allan Poe's strangest stories—knowing it was fiction and being skeptically minded—I had flashes of wondering, "Could this work?" and "What would it be like to experience death under the influence of a mesmerist?"

Of course the tale's credibility falls away quickly with any recent analysis. We have a different idea of what mesmerism (or animal magnetism as it was also styled) can do, compared to the quasi-medical, nearly magical powers people attributed to it in Poe's time. Many readers back then did think "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" was a report of an actual experiment, as the title implied.

Crossing into death

So you may imagine the story to be laughably outdated for today's reader. In fact it does have to struggle with modern doubt. The willingness to suspend disbelief, necessary for appreciating all fiction, is a little harder than usual to come by.

But the story is so well constructed—so rationally laid out. As it builds, the narrator introduces each step with precise, factual language, indulging in no horror-story hysterics. One doesn't read on in fear or agitation, but in calm curiosity. What will be discovered about the crossing from life into death?

This calm makes the sensational elements, when they finally arrive, all the more affecting. They're still not big otherworldly phenomena, but quietly creepy, if that makes sense. Even if you never buy into the reality of the account, you can still sense tremors of terror on behalf of the characters.

The last lines of "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" don't really make sense. No cause for the final state of the dying man is offered. It seems to be thrown in to cap the mystery with revulsion, a favourite Poe feeling.

That he is striving for this effect is confirmed by the variant wording of the story's end. Poe's manuscript originally ended with "detestable putrescence". The author changed it to "detestable putridity", which is more...well, putrid.

— Eric

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