Based on Edgar Allen Poe's story The Tell-Tale Heart, the song tells the story of a narrator who, while insisting that they're sane, suffers from nervousness that causes "over-acuteness of the senses" or Hyperesthesia which is a neurological condition that causes a person extreme sensitivity to touch, pain, pressure, and thermal sensations. The narrator tries to convince us that he isn't insane, while simultaneously detailing a murder he committed. The murder was of an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye," which he emphasizes his careful calculation of the murder as the perfect crime; He'd dismembered the body in a bathtub and hidden it under the floorboards. Ultimately, his action results in him being haunted by a thumping sound, which he interprets as the dead man's beating heart.
Based on Edgar Allen Poe's story The Tell-Tale Heart, the song tells the story of a narrator who, while insisting that they're sane, suffers from nervousness that causes "over-acuteness of the senses" or Hyperesthesia which is a neurological condition that causes a person extreme sensitivity to touch, pain, pressure, and thermal sensations. The narrator tries to convince us that he isn't insane, while simultaneously detailing a murder he committed. The murder was of an old man with a filmy pale blue "vulture-eye," which he emphasizes his careful calculation of the murder as the perfect crime; He'd dismembered the body in a bathtub and hidden it under the floorboards. Ultimately, his action results in him being haunted by a thumping sound, which he interprets as the dead man's beating heart.