Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is, without a doubt, one of the teachers of the short story, a genre of which he was a pioneer. Famous for his stories of terror and mystery, Poe knew how to give life and expression to the darkest and most turbulent regions of the human soul. In these stories, Poe explores madness, death, pain, cruelty, and the murderous instinct, loneliness, isolation, and the physical and moral disintegration of human nature in an alarm of mastery of the creation of atmospheres. The writer outlines the psychology of the characters distressed by nightmares, fantasies and fears. The stories that make up this work are: The Fall of the Usher House, The Golden Beetle, The Oval Portrait, The Barrel of the Amontillado, The Crimes of the Morgue Street, The Black Cat, The Raven, The Mask of Red Death, Manuscript found in a bottle, The well and the pendulum, Premature burial, The case of Mr. Valdemar, Tell-tale heart, The Demon of perversity, Silence.