Edgar Allen Poe's Grave is Haunted
Writer's Baltimore Resting Place and Former Home Visited by Ghosts
Jun 29, 2007
Poe the Man
Poe is considered to be one of America’s greatest writers. His work is haunting and melancholy, reflecting the illnesses, poverty and tragedies that plagued his life. It is said he suffered from the melancholia, which is now called depression.
He served in the Army and was stationed at Fort Monroe. Poe married his cousin. He was widowed when she died of tuberculosis at a young age which left him devastated.
He was found lying in a gutter in Baltimore, nearly unconscious. He was taken to a hospital where he died soon after. While there, he cried and shook uncontrollably. He screamed the name, Reynolds. No one knows who this person was.
His cause of death remains a mystery. Theories abound. They range from arsenic to alcoholism to pneumonia to drugs and, even, rabies.
He was buried in the Old Western Burial Ground.
Hauntings
Poe’s house, now a museum, is haunted. There are cold spots and people have felt something tapping them on the shoulder. Windows fly open and shut by unseen hands. Witnesses have reported seeing an overweight grey haired woman dressed in clothing of the 1800s. People have heard mysterious voices. An actress was getting dressed for a play based on Berenice, a horror story Poe wrote. A window suddenly fell and crashed to the floor. It had been secure and there were no wind gusts.
During the riots that followed Martin Luther King’s assassination, people saw lights in the house and called the police who also witnessed the lights that moved from floor to floor. They could not get into the house and did not want to break into it, so they surrounded the building and waited for the curator. No one had been in the house.
While no one has reported seeing Poe’s ghost in the house, it has been seen in the cemetery, catacombs of a nearby church and at Fort Monroe.
Mysterious Visitor
Since 1949, a man dressed in black, wearing a fedora and scarf to cover his face, visits Poe’s grave on January nineteenth, Poe’s birth date. He carries a cane. Every year, he has left three red roses and a bottle of cognac. No one knows the significance of these gifts. One year, he left an unsigned note to let Poe know he has not forgotten him. A photographer took a picture of him. Life magazine published the snapshot.
It is believed that there is more than one visitor. Some report his hair as white. Others say it is black.
Jeff Jerome, the curator of the Poe house, had been accused of being the mysterious man. He held a party with nearly seventy invited guests to gather near Poe’s grave at midnight on January nineteenth. A man dressed in black carrying a cane running through the graveyard was seen. He disappeared at the yard’s east wall. When the group went to the grave, they found the cognac and roses.
Jerome said if it were up to him, the man’s identity will never be revealed. He has received many phone calls from people requesting that the man will not be accosted.
This visitor to Poe’s grave, as with the cause of the author’s death, will, most likely remain a mystery.
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Sources:
The Ghostly Register, Meyers, Arthur, (Contemporary Books, Inc., 1986)
Haunted America, Norman, Michael & Beth Scott, (Tor, 1994)
