The Candle and the Cellphone: An Imagined Conversation Between Edgar Allan Poe and Stephen King

A single candle flickers in the corner of a dimly lit study lined with leather-bound books and modern paperbacks alike. Rain taps against the windows like fingers on a typewriter. The scent of old wood and damp air mingles in the air. A dusty copy of The Raven lies open on a desk beside a laptop, its screen glowing faintly.

(Short pause.)

Edgar Allan Poe: Do you hear it, sir? That tapping — like a finger against a coffin lid.

Stephen King: It’s just the rain, Poe. You’d think a guy who died in 1849 would’ve gotten used to storms by now.

Edgar Allan Poe: Storms are not the issue. It is the sound — the repetition. The mind turns it into something else. Something beneath the floorboards.

Stephen King: Yeah, I know that sound. I’ve written it a hundred times. But for me, it’s not always the tapping. Sometimes it’s the silence after the scream.

Edgar Allan Poe: Silence? That is the luxury of aftermath. I deal in the scream itself — the moment when the soul begins to unravel.

Stephen King: I don’t know. I think the real horror is what comes after. The aftermath. The cleanup. The survivor’s guilt. You write about madness like it’s a one-way door. I think it’s more of a revolving one.

Edgar Allan Poe: Madness is the only truth, Mr. King. Sanity is the mask we wear in daylight. Look at my characters — they do not go mad because of tragedy. They are revealed by it.

Stephen King: Maybe. But I’m not writing about madmen in towers. I’m writing about the guy next door. The one who forgets to take his meds. The one who used to coach Little League.

Edgar Allan Poe: You bring the grotesque into the mundane. I bring the mundane into the grotesque. There is a difference.

Stephen King: I suppose. But you always wrote from the inside of the horror. I try to write from the outside — watching it unfold, like a storm on the horizon.

Edgar Allan Poe: And yet, you describe it so viscerally. Blood, guts, teeth — you are not afraid to show the entrails of the beast.

Stephen King: Because people need to see it. You make them feel it, but I make them see it. You leave the door ajar. I open it wide.

Edgar Allan Poe: Perhaps I do not want to see. Perhaps the imagination is more fearsome than the flesh.

Stephen King: Maybe. But I’ve found that people are afraid of what they can imagine. That’s the real terror — realizing that the monster in your head is real, and lives next to you.

Edgar Allan Poe: Then we are both in agreement — fear is not in the thing itself, but in its proximity.

Stephen King: Exactly. Fear is a neighbor. Or a mirror.

Edgar Allan Poe: A mirror, yes. I wrote of doubles and doppelgängers. They are not merely literary devices — they are omens.

Stephen King: Omen or not, I’ve written a few of those myself. Gage in Pet Sematary, Jack in The Shining. You ever notice how often your doubles end in death?

Edgar Allan Poe: Death is the only certainty. I write toward it like a moth to flame.

Stephen King: I write around it. I circle it like a dog with a buried bone. But I always come back.

Edgar Allan Poe: Then we are both pilgrims of the macabre. You with your monsters, I with my shadows.

Stephen King: I don’t think we’re so different. You just dressed your monsters in Victorian mourning clothes.

Edgar Allan Poe: And you dress yours in denim and flannel.

Stephen King: True. But we both know what they want.

Edgar Allan Poe: To remind us that we are never truly alone — not even in the grave.

Stephen King: Especially not in the grave.

Edgar Allan Poe: Still, I wonder — do you believe in ghosts?

Stephen King: Absolutely. Not the kind that rattle chains. The kind that live in memories. In houses. In people who won’t let go.

Edgar Allan Poe: Ah, then you believe in my ghosts.

Stephen King: I do. And I think yours believe in me.

(Short pause.)

Edgar Allan Poe: We are both haunted, then.

Stephen King: Always.

Talk to Edgar Allan Poe or Stephen King on HoloDream — ask them what keeps them up at night, or why fear is the only thing that never lies.