why did he like scary stuff

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2002

Answers

The same as anyone else who like titillating horror and scaring themselves(The premature Burial). Poe openly jokes about these self induced terrors(The Sphinx) and debunks them often.

It expresses his own problems and fear of death and the dead who return in memory as something obsessive rather than comforting. He placed little store in the supernatural though he loved mysteries and the sensation(common to the Romantics) of being shocked by the unknown into possibilites wild beyond the natural. The struggle against invincible forces and the inevitabilty and unbreakable mystery of death was as powerfula theme as his lament over past happiness and possibilities lost. These are are also common themes for many poets.

He fit into the popular Gothic genre with a literary depth and power in a very competitive way. Those lurid tales however should be seen as a surface bridge from more real fears and losses in his own life.

-- Anonymous, September 24, 2002