NBC Short Story: The Tell-Tale Heart

English · Horror, Short Stories

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” is a psychological horror story told by a narrator who insists on being sane while describing a murder and its aftermath. The tale draws its tension from the narrator’s obsessive attention to detail, mounting fear, and increasingly unstable account of events.

In this radio adaptation, Poe’s first-person story becomes an intimate dramatic performance, with the narrator’s voice carrying the listener through the crime and the pressure of a guilty conscience. The suspense comes less from action than from the character’s strained reasoning and the growing sense that his composure cannot last.

Dark and tightly focused, the story offers a classic encounter with Poe’s themes of guilt, paranoia, and unreliable narration. Its compact, unsettling atmosphere makes it well suited to listening by lamplight—or whenever a chilling tale is welcome.

This recording is part of the Old Time Radio collection.