The Haunted Edgar Allan Poe Museum
Does the Ghost of the Legendary Author Still Linger?
The Edgar Allan Poe Museum was established in 1921 in the tiny, three hundred year-old Old Stone House in Richmond’s historic Shockoe district. A shrine to the author was erected behind the museum, made from the salvaged brick of the Southern Literary Messenger building, Poe’s former employer. A beautiful courtyard garden was also added that featured a variety of plants mentioned in some of the writer’s most famous works.
Today, the museum is comprised of several buildings surrounding the Old Stone House that feature exhibits of artifacts from various stages in Poe’s life. Visitors can view Poe’s boyhood bed, furniture and artwork from the Allan family home, the desk and writing chair he used at the Messenger, and even the author’s personal trunk and the items it contained upon his death in 1849.
If you're lucky, you may even catch a glimpse of one of the museum's famous ghosts.
A Dark Shadow
Poe, not a wealthy man, had few possessions he held dear. Some of those artifacts, including the mirror belonging to his deceased young wife, are on display in a building where a shadowy figure is often seen on the grounds. Could this be Poe keeping watch over his treasured collection?
Marcia Skiffington, an area tour guide, recalled a chilling encounter with the Shadow. After leading a group to the outside of the courtyard gate one evening and relaying the history of the Old Stone House, several of the tourists approached her asking if anyone had ever reported seeing ghosts in the area. Suspicious of their questioning, she told them about the dark figure that had been rumored to lurk in and around the front garden. The tourists then showed her the photos they had snapped just a few minutes earlier – with a mysterious shadow man standing only a few feet away from the guide in each shot.
The Courtyard Children
The Poe Museum is a popular venue for spring and summer weddings because of its tranquil atmosphere. After exhausting all other leads, several couples have come back to the employees of the museum inquiring about unknown children in their wedding photos.
The children, a fair blonde boy of about five and a girl with similar features of about seven, are often captured in photos playing in the back corner of the courtyard garden. No guests or museum staff have ever claimed to witness the pair in person, only in photographs.
Entertaining Entities
The spirits thought to inhabit the Old Stone House seem to find great delight in playing pranks on Poe Museum employees. A former guide shared a tale of a particularly amusing occurrence in the museum’s gift shop.
Just before the shop closed for the day, a large shipment of Edgar Allan Poe bobble-head dolls arrived. The attendant opened the carton only to inspect the contents and then placed it behind the counter to be unpacked and displayed the following day. When the shop attendant arrived the next morning, she found all of the bobble-heads removed from their boxes and arranged in a line just in front of the counter. The empty boxes were all neatly tucked away in the shipping carton as though they had never been disturbed.
Only adding to the mystery, Kat Spears, the museum's director, confirmed that alarm records from that evening show that the security system was set at the close of day and was not disarmed until the following morning.
A Ghostly Mystery
The identities of the entities reported at the Edgar Allan Poe museum remain unknown. Some believe that the children photographed in the courtyard and the playful spirits in the Old Stone House are the children of the German immigrant family that is credited with the home’s construction. Hopeful fans stick by the belief that the gloomy Shadow Man is Poe himself, still macabre even after death.
Courtyard Garden set for a wedding.
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