The Pit and the Pendulum and Other Stories

by John Escott (Adapter), Edgar Allan Poe

A level 2 Oxford Bookworms Library graded reader. Retold for Learners of English by John Escott.

Everybody has bad dreams. Horrible things move towards you in the dark, things you can hear but not see. Then you wake up, in your own warm bed, and turn over to go back to sleep. But imagine that you wake up on a hard floor, in a darkness blacker than the blackest night. You listen to the silence, and smell a wet dead smell. Death is all around you, waiting . . . In these stories by Edgar Allan Poe, death whispers at you from every dark corner, and fear can send you mad . . .

Genres: Horror

64 pages, Paperback

Published March 15, 2008

About the author

John Escott started by writing children's books and comic scripts, but now writes and adapts books for students of all ages. He especially enjoys writing crime and mystery thrillers, and is a member of the British Crime Writers Association.

With Oxford University Press John has published London for the Oxford Bookworms Factfile series; Agatha Christie, Woman of Mystery, Star Reporter, Girl on a Motorbike, The Fly and Other Horror Stories, and The Scarlet Letter for the Oxford Bookworms Library series; The Magician, Time for a Robbery, Star for a day, Tomorrow's Girl, and The Man with Three NAMEs for the Hotshot Puzzles series; and A Pretty Face for the Dominoes series.

Reviews

[Florence (Lefty) MacIntosh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preferring to retain my childhood memory of enthralled terror I refuse to re-read this. As a little girl my parents gave me a boxed set of classics for Christmas one year, Heidi, Black Beauty, books of that ilk, can't remember the others but I sure remember this one! They were bound in what appeared to be red leather & gold embossed, I felt very privileged & grown up. Honestly, I don't believe I'll ever be as thrilled with any gift again. I was very young, perhaps 10 or 11 at the time. Had they known what a terrifying horror story this was I don't believe they'd have allowed me to read it, which just made it all the more delicious.

[Hiroki Yasui · Rating 4 out of 5]

1,The pit and the pendulum 2,Chemical secret
11/5 (35minutes, 2=50 minutes

Tomb, pit, pendulum, prison, death, ceiling, scream

" Come! Cut me! Be quick, give me death!! "

All of stories were gloomy. In the first story, a man was in a tomb and wandered. A man didn't know he is alive or dead, and that is real or dream. However, in my thought, he was dead, and he was in the hell. As you can see from some pictures, that tomb cam be seen like a hell. It is said that after we are died, we will go to the heaven or hell. Some people maybe experience such this story.

[Mio Takasaki · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. OXFORD&2
2. 05/14=10minutes,05/15=10minutes, 05/17=80minutes
3.darkness, terror, party, noises, fear, coffin, portrait
4.a. This story's situation was a prison. You heard some strange voice from this prison. The person who was in the prison became frightened all the time.
b. My favorite passage was that the person fell senseless because a new incident started after that.
5. This story was so scary and difficult for me. This story was also written about history of Europe. I felt like a reality. I think it was was drawn sensitive story by author.

[Nicholas Story, solicitor · Rating 2 out of 5]

This actually wasn't the edition that I read: I went for the Penguin one, containing a very nice intro from Peter Ackroyd. In fact, the intro was one of the highlights of the book. The style is just far too elaborate for my taste. Nothing is ever said in one word if twenty would do, and I never imagined that I would read a 5 page story and find it too long, but that is what happened. My own view is that these works haven't aged well. As Poe might say, henceforth one's detours into literary darkness will be curtailed.

[Zahra Essa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just read the judge's house for Bram Stoker "the same author of dracula" and i didn't like it much , it was good ,but i think maybe there are scarer stories than this one , or i'd like it if i read the original version .

It deserves reading