The theme for our July Unhappy Hour centered on Poe's classic tale of wine and revenge, "The Cask Of Amontillado". Since Poe's tale is set in Italy during "the supreme madness of the Carnival season," we decided to celebrate with a little carnival of our own in the Enchanted Garden.
It was a very hot and humid night, but we had lots of wonderful folks brave the heat to enjoy the festivities anyway and it was well worth the effort.
Local band Beggars of Life provided the perfect musical accompaniment to the evening. Here is a video of Lulu, Phineas Figg and Stinky Patterson in action in ...
short story
“The Pit and the Pendulum” Exhibit
Some of Poe’s most popular tales of terror were inspired by true events. One example is “The Pit and the Pendulum,” which tells of the story of a prisoner of the Spanish Inquisition, an infamous program of trials in which the judges were allowed to use torture to extract confessions from the accused. Poe sets this story in a torture chamber during the Spanish Inquisition. He may have been inspired by a paragraph in Thomas Dick’s Philosophy of Religion (1825): “On entry of the French into Toldeo during the late Peninsular War, General Lasalle visited the Palace of the Inquisition. The great ...
