"Beyond the Wall of Sleep" by H.P. Lovecraft

"I have an exposition of sleep come upon me" -Shakespeare

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As used in this story, an "alienist" is the 19th century term for a psychiatrist.

The picture used is the main illustration for the story as published in "Weird Tales", in March 1938, vol. 31, no. 3, page 331.

To follow along: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64940/64940-h/64940-h.htm

You can really feel the influence of Edgar Allan Poe in this story. Indeed, if the name of author were left off, you could be forgiven for imagining it to be one of Poe's works. Indeed, Poe wrote TWO stories on mesmerism which are thematically fairly similar to this story. (For the interested, you can find my narrations of those Poe stories on mesmerism here on my channel, as "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" and "Mesmeric Revelation".)