It might have been midnight, or perhaps earlier, or later, for I had taken no note of time, when a sob, low, gentle, but very distinct, startled me from my revery. I felt that it came from the bed of ebony---the bed of death. I listened in anagony of superstitious terror---but there was no repetition of the sound. I strained m vision to detect any motion in the corpse, but there was not the slightest perceptible. Yet I could not have been deceived. I had heard the noise, however faint, and my whole soul was awakened in me, as I resolutely and perseveringly kept my attention riveted upon the body....Iflt my brain reel, my heart cease to beat, my limbs grow rigid where I sat....  [Edgar Allen Poe]