Poe, the master of the macabre, was born in Boston in 1809, the son of stage actors who died when Poe was quite young. He was raised as a foster child in Richmond, Virginia, where later he enrolled in the university. Academia was short lived however, as his gambling addiction and mounting debts forced him to drop out and once again, he headed back to Boston in 1827 where his first collection of poems were published but not to critical acclaim as they did not set the literary world on fire.
Dejected and broke, he left Boston and moved in with his aunt, Maria Clemm in Baltimore. At this point his fortunes began to change and he began to sell short stories to magazines and small publishing houses. Then love came calling and in 1836, he married his cousin, Virginia Clemm--which was not an unusual practice in those days. She would die 11 years later from tuberculosis, but, it was that same 11 year period that was Poe's most prolific, churning out macabre masterpieces such as "The Raven", "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and so many others that today are considered, and rightfully so, as true classics of horror and American literature.
Poe was a tormented artist with personal demons that included debilitating depression and alcoholism that affected his writing and his career. He was found delirious on the streets in Baltimore in 1849 raving and incoherent, dying four days later of what doctors called "acute congestion of the brain." Later forsenics performed on Poe's remains have created the speculation that he may have suffered and died of rabies, although nothing conclusive has been determined which only adds to the morbid mystery of the life and death of Edgar Allan Poe in that year.
Our tale does not end in 1849 with Poe's death. It continues today in Baltimore at Poe's final resting place, where every January on the anniversary of his birth, usually on a dark night and "a midnight dreary" a mystery began a half a century ago as the mystery of the Poe legend seems to reach out from the grave over 150 years after his death.
It's a tale right out of the pages of Poe himself. For the past 60 or 70 years on, January 19, a mysterious stranger, referred to as the Poe Toaster, has appears at the grave leaving a bottle of Cognac and three roses. Shrouded in as much mystery as Bigfoot, the Lock Ness Monster and crop circles, no one knows the name of this "ghostly" visitor or how the tradition got started. One thing that stands out however is the fact that it is probably different people over the years who have taken up the mysterious stranger mantle and kept the Toaster tradition very muchalive. If that is the case, then Poe himself would certainly approve of it. It's classic Poe at it's very post mortem best.
To make the Poe pilgrimage to his final resting place in Baltimore, you'll have to go to the small church graveyard, now called Westminster Hall located at the corner of Fayette and Greene Streets. It's located near the front corner of the cemetery and a large monument and not an "X" marks the spot. If you listen real closely you may even imagine you can hear his tell tale heart beating from the great beyond below.
The Baltimore Poe House is located at 203 Amity Street and was built in 1830. Poe lived in the home for awhile with the Maria Clemm and her daughter, Poe's wife Virginia. Eventually Edgar moved to Richmond in 1835 to edit a Southern Literary Magazine. The building was scheduled for demolition in 1941 but was saved by the efforts of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.
If you tour the home you'll see a number of pieces on exhibit including his telescope, sextant, and a traveling desk or what they called a "lap desk" in those days, the 19th Century version of todays lap tops! There is also a portrait of his wife Virginia on display along with a set of 1884 illustrations done for Poe's "The Raven" housed now on the second floor. There are interactive displays and video's documenting his life and his death. For the more offbeat articles on display are several bottles of cognac left over the course of the years at his grave by the mysterious Poe Toaster!
Edgar Allan Poe continues to fascinate us...his life..his mysterious death...and the literary genius of his dark writings. His works will live forever in the hearts of horror fans everywhere as his legacy survives his life and has itself found new life in his death and the strange happenings in the graveyard in Baltimore every January. So bring a bottle of cognac and feel free to drink a toast to the Poe Toaster and the Quothing Raven...Poe would be proud of the legacy he has left behind!