[adapted]

by
Edgar Allan Poe

Of course I will not pretend to think it anything strange, that the very unusual case of M. Valdemar has caused discussion. It would have been a miracle if it had not—especially in this situation. Because everyone involved wanted to keep the matter from the public, at least for now, or until we had more chances to investigate—because we tried to do this—a mixed-up or exaggerated story reached the public, and became the cause of many unpleasant false reports; and, very naturally, of a lot of doubt.

It is now necessary that I give the facts—as far as I understand them myself. They are, simply, these:

My attention, for the last three years, had been often drawn to the subject of Mesmerism; and about nine months ago, it came to me, very suddenly, that in the series of experiments done until then, there had been a very unusual and most hard to explain leaving out: no person had yet been mesmerized at the point of death. It still had to be seen, first, whether, in such a condition, there existed in the patient any sensitivity to the magnetic influence; second, whether, if any existed, it was made weaker or stronger by the condition; third, how much, or for how long a time, the coming of Death might be stopped by the process. There were other points to be found out, but these most made me very curious—the last one especially, because of the very important nature of its results.

In looking around me for someone I might use to test these facts, I began to think of my friend, M. Ernest Valdemar, the well-known editor of the “Bibliotheca Forensica,” and author (under the pen name of Issachar Marz) of the Polish translations of “Wallenstein” and “Gargantua.” M. Valdemar, who has lived mostly at Harlem, N. Y., since the year 1839, is (or was) very easy to notice for being very thin in body—his legs being very much like those of John Randolph; and, also, for the whiteness of his whiskers, in strong contrast to the blackness of his hair—the hair, as a result, being very often thought to be a wig.

His nature was very nervous, and this made him a good subject for a hypnotism experiment. Two or three times I had put him to sleep with little difficulty, but I was disappointed in other results which his unusual health had naturally led me to expect. His will was at no time clearly, or completely, under my control, and about seeing hidden things, I could do nothing with him that could be trusted. I always thought my failure at these points was because of the poor state of his health. For some months before I met him, his doctors had said he had a serious lung disease. It was his habit, indeed, to speak calmly of his coming death, as a thing that could not be avoided or regretted.

When the ideas I had mentioned first came to me, it was of course very natural that I should think of M. Valdemar. I knew the man’s calm way of thinking too well to expect any doubts from him; and he had no relatives in America who would be likely to interfere. I spoke to him openly about the subject; and to my surprise, he seemed very interested. I say to my surprise; for, although he had always let me do experiments on him, he had never before given me any signs that he agreed with what I did. His disease was of the kind that would allow an exact guess about the time when it would end in death; and it was finally agreed between us that he would send for me about twenty-four hours before the time announced by his doctors as that of his death.

It is now a little more than seven months since I received, from M. Valdemar himself, the note below:

“My dear P——,

“You should come now. D—— and F—— agree that I cannot live after to-morrow midnight; and I think they have guessed the time very nearly.

“Valdemar.”

I received this note half an hour after it was written, and in fifteen minutes more I was in the dying man’s room. I had not seen him for ten days, and was shocked by the terrible change which the short time had made in him. His face had a dull gray color; his eyes were completely dull; and the thinness was so extreme, that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. He was coughing up a lot. His pulse was hardly noticeable. Even so, he still kept, in a very unusual way, both his clear mind and a small amount of physical strength. He spoke clearly, took some pain-relieving medicines without help—and, when I entered the room, was busy writing notes with a pencil in a notebook. He was held up in the bed by pillows. Doctors D—— and F—— were present.

After pressing Valdemar’s hand, I took these gentlemen to one side, and got from them a very detailed description of the patient’s condition. The left lung had been for eighteen months partly hard like bone or cartilage, and was, of course, completely useless for all purposes of life. The right lung, in its upper part, was also partly, if not fully, turned to bone, while the lower part was only a mass of pus-filled lumps, joining one into another. There were several large holes; and, at one point, permanent sticking to the ribs had happened.

These signs in the right lobe were quite recent. The hardening into bone had gone on very fast; no sign of it had been found a month before, and the sticking together had only been seen during the three days before. Besides the lung disease, the patient was thought to have a swelling of the aorta; but about this, the bone signs made an exact medical answer impossible. Both doctors thought that M. Valdemar would die about midnight on the next day (Sunday). It was then seven o’clock on Saturday evening.

When leaving the sick man’s bedside to talk with me, Doctors D—— and F—— had said a last goodbye to him. They did not plan to return; but because I asked them, they agreed to check on the patient about ten o’clock the next night.

When they had gone, I spoke freely with M. Valdemar about his coming death, as well as, more exactly, about the planned experiment. He still said he was very willing and even eager to have it done, and urged me to start it at once. A male and a female nurse were there; but I did not feel free to do a task like this with only these people as witnesses, who might not be reliable, in case a sudden accident happened. I therefore put off the work until about eight the next night, when the arrival of a medical student I knew a little (Mr. Theodore L——l), relieved me from further worry. I had planned, at first, to wait for the doctors; but I was led to go on, first, by the strong pleas of M. Valdemar, and secondly, by my belief that I had no time to lose, as he was clearly getting worse fast.

Mr. L——l was so kind as to agree to my wish that he would take notes of all that happened; and it is from his notes that what I now have to tell is, mostly, either shortened or copied word for word.

It was about five minutes to eight when, holding the patient’s hand, I asked him to say, as clearly as he could, to Mr. L——l, if he (M. Valdemar) was completely willing that I should try the experiment of hypnotizing him in his present condition.

He replied weakly, yet quite clearly, “Yes, I wish to be hypnotized”—adding right after, “I am afraid you have waited too long.”

While he spoke like this, I began the passes which I had already found most effective in calming him. He was clearly affected by the first side-to-side movement of my hand across his forehead; but even though I used all my power, there was no more clear effect until a few minutes after ten o’clock when Doctors D—— and F—— arrived, as planned. I explained to them, in a few words, what I planned, and as they did not object, saying that the patient was already dying in great pain, I continued without delay—changing, though, the sideways passes for downward ones, and looking only into the right eye of the patient.

By this time his heartbeat could not be felt and his breathing was noisy, and came every half a minute.

This condition was almost unchanged for fifteen minutes. At the end of this time, however, a natural, although very deep, sigh came from the chest of the dying man, and the loud, heavy breathing stopped—that is, its loud, heavy sound was no longer clear; the pauses were unchanged. The patient’s hands and feet were icy cold.

At five minutes before eleven, I saw clear signs of the hypnotic effect. The glassy roll of the eye was changed to that look of uneasy inward look which is never seen except in cases of sleepwalking, and which is quite impossible to mistake. With a few quick side passes I made the eyelids shake, as in beginning sleep, and with a few more I closed them completely. I was not satisfied, however, with this, but continued the actions strongly, and with the fullest effort of my will, until I had completely made the limbs of the sleeper stiff, after placing them in a position that seemed easy. The legs were at full length; the arms were nearly so, and rested on the bed at a medium distance from the hips. The head was very slightly raised.

When I had finished this, it was exactly midnight, and I asked the men there to check M. Valdemar’s condition. After a few tests, they said that he was in a very deep mesmeric trance. Both doctors became very curious. Dr. D—— decided at once to stay with the patient all night, while Dr. F—— said goodbye with a promise to come back at sunrise. Mr. L——l and the nurses stayed.

We left M. Valdemar completely alone until about three o’clock in the morning, when I went to him and found him in exactly the same state as when Dr. F—— left—that is, he lay in the same position; the pulse could not be felt; the breathing was gentle (hardly noticeable, except by the use of a mirror to the lips); the eyes were closed naturally; and the arms and legs were as stiff and as cold as stone. Still, the general look was clearly not like death.

As I came near M. Valdemar I made a kind of half effort to make his right arm follow my own. As I moved it gently back and forth over his body. In such tests with this patient, I had never perfectly succeeded before, and surely I did not expect to succeed now; but to my surprise, his arm very easily, though weakly, followed every direction I gave it with mine. I decided to try a few words of talk.

“M. Valdemar,” I said, “are you asleep?” He did not answer, but I noticed a small shaking around the lips, and so I repeated the question, again and again. At the third time I repeated it, his whole body shook a little; the eyelids opened just enough to show a white line of the eyeball; the lips moved slowly, and from between them, in a very quiet whisper, came the words:

“Yes;—asleep now. Do not wake me!—let me die like this!”

Here I felt the arms and legs and found them as stiff as before. The right arm, as before, followed my hand. I asked the sleep-waker again:

“Do you still feel pain in the chest, M. Valdemar?”

The answer now came at once, but even harder to hear than before:

“No pain—I am dying.”

I did not think it a good idea to bother him more at that time, and nothing more was said or done until the coming of Dr. F——, who came a little before sunrise, and was very surprised to find the patient still alive. After feeling the pulse and putting a mirror to the lips, he asked me to speak to the sleep-waker again. I did so, saying:

“Mr. Valdemar, do you still sleep?”

As before, some minutes passed before an answer was given; and during this time the dying man seemed to be gathering his strength to speak. At my fourth time asking the question, he said very softly, almost not able to be heard:

“Yes; still asleep—dying.”

It was now the opinion, or rather the wish, of the doctors, that M. Valdemar should be left alone in his current condition that seems calm, until death should happen—and this, most people agreed, must now happen within a few minutes. But I decided to speak to him once more, and only repeated my earlier question.

While I spoke, there came a clear change over the face of the sleeper. The eyes slowly opened, the dark centers of the eyes moving up and disappearing; the skin generally took on a dead-looking color, looking not so much like old yellow paper as like white paper; and the round red spots which, until now, had been very clear in the centre of each cheek, went out at once. I use this expression, because the sudden way they left made me think of nothing so much as the blowing out of a candle by a puff of breath. The upper lip, at the same time, drew back from the teeth, which it had before covered completely; while the lower jaw fell with a jerk that could be heard, leaving the mouth wide open, and showing clearly the swollen and black tongue. I suppose that no one in the group there was not used to the horrors of a death-bed; but the look of M. Valdemar at this moment was so terrible, beyond what anyone could imagine, that there was a general drawing back from the area of the bed.

I now feel that I have reached a point of this story where every reader will be surprised and will not believe it. It is my job, however, simply to go on.

There was no longer the slightest sign of life in M. Valdemar; and thinking him to be dead, we were giving him into the care of the nurses, when a strong shaking movement was seen in the tongue. This continued for perhaps a minute. At the end of this time, there came from the wide and still jaws a voice—such as it would be crazy for me to try to describe. There are, indeed, two or three words which might be thought as fitting to it in part; I might say, for example, that the sound was harsh, and broken, and hollow; but the horrible whole cannot be described, for the simple reason that no similar sounds have ever shocked the ear of people.

There were two details, however, which I thought then, and still think, could fairly be said to be typical of the tone—well suited to give some idea of its not-of-this-world strangeness. In the first place, the voice seemed to reach our ears—at least mine—from a great distance, or from some deep cave in the earth. In the second place it seemed to me (I fear, indeed, that it will be impossible to make myself understood) as jelly-like or sticky things feel to the touch.

I have spoken both of “sound” and of “voice.” I mean to say that the sound was one of clear—of even wonderfully, very clear—speaking in syllables. M. Valdemar spoke—obviously in reply to the question I had asked him a few minutes before. I had asked him, as you will remember, if he still slept. He now said:

“Yes;—no;—I was sleeping—and now—now—I am dead!”

No person present even tried to deny, or tried to hold back, the unspeakable, shaking horror which these few words, spoken in that way, were so likely to cause. Mr. L——l (the student) fainted. The nurses at once left the room, and could not be made to return. My own feelings I will not try to make clear to the reader. For nearly an hour we kept ourselves busy, silently—without saying a word—in trying to bring Mr. L——l back. When he woke up we again began to examine M. Valdemar’s condition. It stayed in every way as I have at last described it, except that the mirror no longer showed any sign of breathing. An attempt to take blood from the arm failed. I should mention, too, that this arm was no longer under my control.

I tried without success to make it follow the direction of my hand. The only clear sign, indeed, of the hypnotic influence, was now found in the shaking movement of the tongue, whenever I asked M. Valdemar a question. He seemed to be trying to reply, but no longer had enough will. To questions asked by anyone else but me he seemed completely unaware—although I tried to put each member of the group in a hypnotic link with him. I believe that I have now told all that is necessary to understand the sleep-waker’s state at this time. Other nurses were found; and at ten o’clock I left the house with the two doctors and Mr. L——l.

In the afternoon we all came again to see the patient. His condition was still exactly the same. We now talked about whether it was right and possible to wake him; but we soon agreed that nothing good would come from doing so. It was clear that, so far, death (or what people usually call death) had been stopped by the mesmeric treatment. It seemed clear to us all that to wake M. Valdemar would only make sure of his immediate, or at least his quick, death.

From this time until the end of last week—a time of almost seven months—we kept making daily visits to M. Valdemar’s house, sometimes with doctors and other friends. All this time the sleep-waker stayed exactly as I have finally described him. The nurses cared for him all the time.

It was last Friday that we finally decided to try the experiment of waking, or trying to wake him; and it is the (perhaps) unlucky result of this last experiment which has caused so much talk in private groups—to so much of what I cannot help thinking is unfair public feeling.

To bring M. Valdemar out of the hypnotic trance, I used the usual passes. These, for a time, did not work. The first sign of waking was shown by a partial lowering of the iris. It was seen, as very strange, that this lowering of the pupil was accompanied by a lot of yellowish fluid flowing out (from under the lids) with a strong and very bad smell.

Someone now said that I should try to move the patient’s arm, as before. I tried and failed. Dr. F—— then said he wanted me to ask a question. I did so like this:

“M. Valdemar, can you tell us what you feel or want now?”

There was a sudden return of the red circles on the cheeks; the tongue shook, or rather rolled wildly in the mouth (though the jaws and lips stayed stiff as before); and at last the same terrible voice which I have already described, burst out:

“Please!—quick!—quick!—put me to sleep—or, quick!—wake me up!—quick!—I say to you that I am dead!”

I was very nervous, and for a moment did not know what to do. At first I tried to calm the patient; but failing in this because he had no will at all, I went back and tried very hard to wake him. In this attempt I soon saw that I would be successful—or at least I soon thought that my success would be complete—and I am sure that everyone in the room was ready to see the patient wake up.

As for what really happened, it is completely impossible that any person could have been ready.

As I quickly made the hypnotic hand movements, in the middle of shouts of “dead! dead!” absolutely bursting from the tongue and not from the lips of the patient, his whole body at once—within the space of a single minute, or even less, shrunk—fell to pieces—absolutely rotted away under my hands. On the bed, before that whole group, there lay a nearly liquid mass of disgusting—of hateful rot.

The End