Some of the most interesting facets of Edgar Allan Poe's fiction are his imaginative speculations concerning the metaphysical experiences of the soul, the individual psychic "identity." His interest focuses primarily on three related aspects of the soul's experiences (1) metempsychosis (or reincarnation and transmigration); (2) suspension between "death" and the after-life or states of unconsciousness and consciousness, sleep and waking; and (3) the terrors, real or imagined, of premature burial.