The Black Cat

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"For the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief.  Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence.  Yet mad am I not - and very surely do I not dream.  But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul.
"This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body.
"I determined to wall it up in the cellar - as the monks of the Middle Ages are recorded to have walled up their victims.
"For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted.  Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from hardening.  Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up..."

~ *Edgar Allan Poe (d. Oct. 7, 1809, 40 years of age)  American writer. London Oxford University Press.