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Teachers & SchoolsThe Supernatural
"Dream-Land" is packed with spooky, weird creatures. There are ghosts, ghouls and phantoms, not to mention all kinds of strange events and incidents. Nothing in this poem is quite like it is in the natural world, and it seems to be filled with a kind of evil, scary energy. It's not quite like a horror movie – there's no jump-out-and-scare-you stuff – but there's creepy magic in almost every line. You might say it's eerie or ghostly. Do we sound like a thesaurus? You get the idea: things aren't how they're supposed to be here.
Poe carefully plays on our fear of ghosts at the beginning of the poem, before turning them into something positive at the end. This helps us to see how profoundly the speaker has been changed by his grief.
By setting this poem in a fantastical land, Poe is able to remake the rules of reality and make the supernatural seem almost normal.