Shadow: A Parable

Shadow: A Parable is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1835.

In a lamplit chamber, a small circle of companions gathers in the house of Oinos to find solace after a pestilence has ravaged their city. Their conversation turns to memory and metaphysics, an effort to face collective grief and a world unmoored.

Then a presence glides across the wall: a shadow without a source, wavering like smoke and seeming to carry many voices. The apparition unsettles the revel, marking the intrusion of the uncanny into ordinary refuge and the failure of easy explanations.

Spare and somber, the tale distills terror, mystery, and philosophical reflection into a single lingering image. It reads as a meditation on mortality and the limits of human assurance, where fellowship and reason grow quiet before the dark.

"Ye who read are still among the living; but I who write shall have long since gone my way into the region of shadows. For indeed strange things shall happen, and secret things be known, and many centuries shall pass away, ere these memorials be seen of men."