"So far, I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back, unbounded. I reached out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be.

I longed, dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew aghast lest there be nothing to see."

Edgar Allen Poe
The Pit and the Pendulum
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
Spencer Press, 1936