"Berenice" is a short horror story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1835.

The narrator Egaeus, a studious young man, grows up in a large, gloomy mansion with his cousin Berenice.

Originally beautiful, Berenice suffers from an unspecified degenerative illness, of which periods of catalepsy, are a symptom, which he refers to as a "trance".

The Latin epigraph, "Dicebant mihi sodales si sepulchrum amicae visitarem, curas meas aliquantulum fore levatas" at the head of the text may be translated as: "My companions said to me, if I would visit the grave of my friend, I might somewhat alleviate my worries.

In "Berenice", Poe was following the popular traditions of Gothic fiction, a genre well-followed by American and British readers for several decades.

As the narrator looks at the box which he may subconsciously know contains his cousin's teeth, he asks himself, "Why... did the hairs of my head erect themselves on end, and the blood of my body become congealed within my veins?"

The reader also knows that Egaeus was in a trance-like state at the time, incapable of responding to evidence that his cousin was still alive as he committed the gruesome act.

Egaeus may come from Aegeus, a legendary king of Athens who had committed suicide when he thought his son Theseus had died attempting to kill the Minotaur.

[3] Poe's spelling of the name, however, suggests a different allusion: Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which depicts Egeus as a figure who fails to understand love.

[citation needed] The final lines of the story are purposely protracted using a series of conjunctions connecting multiple clauses.

Several often-repeated themes in Poe's works are found in this story: First published in the relatively genteel Southern Literary Messenger[9] in March 1835.

The four removed paragraphs describe a scene where Egaeus visits Berenice before her burial and clearly sees that she is still alive as she moves her finger and smiles.

Eerie Magazine Issue 11 (September 1967) includes a comic adaptation by Archie Goodwin with art by Jerry Grandenetti.

It was directed by Himan Brown, Adapted by George Lowther, starring Michael Tolan, Norman Rose, Joan Lovejoy, and Roberta Maxwell.