Eventually desiring true death, Valdemar convinces the mesmerist to end his life. He is kept “alive” for seven months, during which time all outer signs of life are nonexistent, save that he “speaks” through his bloated, blackened tongue. Known today as hypnotism, the story asks the question, What would happen if a person at the point of death were to be mesmerized? Poe’s story has Monsieur Valdemar dying of tuberculosis and agreeing to be hypnotized at the moment of his demise. Nevertheless, this radio dramatization holds true to the gimmick around which both versions center: mermerism. The story is relatively short and quite descriptively gruesome, unlike the Weird Circle adaptation which switches Poe’s victim from a man to a woman and forgoes Poe’s horrific conclusion. Valdemar,” and it ran simultaneously in December of 1845 in the Broadway Journal and American Review: A Whig Journal. Poe’s original title was “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” on Februas episode 71 of the series’ 78 shows. Weird Circle (1943-45) aired Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Case of M.
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