Sleep came not near my couch—while the hours waned and waned away. I struggled to reason off my nervousness which had dominion over me. I endeavoured to believe that much, if  not all  of what I felt, was due to the bewildering influence of the gloomy furniture of the room—of the dark and tattered draperies, which, tortured into motion  by the breath of a rising tempest, swayed fitfully to and fro upon the walls, and rustled uneasily about the decorations of the bed. But my efforts were fruitless. An irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my very heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm.  Shaking this off with a gasp and a struggle, I uplifted myself upon the pillows, and, peering earnestly within the intense darkness of the chamber, hearkened—I know not why, except that an instinctive spirit prompted me—to certain low and indefinite sounds which came, through the pauses of the storm, at  long intervals, I knew not whence. Overpowered by an intense sentiment of horror, unaccountable but unendurable, I threw on my clothes with haste (for I felt that I should sleep  no more during the night), and endeavoured to arouse myself from the pitiable condition into which I had fallen by pacing  rapidly  to and fro through the apartment.

From ‘The Fall of the House of Usher,” by Edgar Allan  Poe

 As if he were Alfred Hitchcock’s predecessor,  Edgar Allan Poe described the horror that a guest felt when darkness, the inclemency of weather, and fear of the unknown conspired to frighten him.   Unsure whether a woman lay in a cataleptic state or was dead, her body had been placed in a vault beneath his room for two weeks.   When he heard strange noises, the scared guest freaked out; wouldn’t you?  Allan Poe related step by step all the defense mechanisms that we use to dispel this type of fear and  how fear overpowers them all.