BEYOND THE WALL OF SLEEP was written in 1919 and first published in Pine Cones in October of that same year. The story is narrated by an unnamed researcher at a mental hospital who becomes fascinated by a violent, backwoods patient named Joe Slater. Slater, a degenerate from the Catskill Mountains, suffers from strange, vivid dreams in which he experiences celestial visions and claims to transform into a luminous, cosmic being.