A traveler, stricken with a serious illness, stops for the night in an abandoned castle. In order to somehow pass the time, he looks at the paintings and reads descriptions of them in a volume found on the pillow. Moving the candelabra, he suddenly sees in a niche of the room, hitherto hidden by shadows, an amazing painting - a portrait of a young girl. Something unknown and strange attracts the eye to the portrait, and something equally terrible repels it. The story “In Death there is Life” is the first version of the story “Oval Portrait”. Subsequently, the text was shortened by the author and published under its final title in 1845.