Death of a Tradition

Now if that doesn’t sound like a title of a Poe novel….I don’t know what does.

Poe is one of my favorite writers and was my first introduction into literary “horror” and crime novels (to be followed by Sir. Arthur Conan Doyels pipe/cigarette/opuim smoking Sherlock Holmes).

His “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” was the first murder mystery based on a true crime – that of the actual murder of Mary Cecilia Rogers, aka “The Beautiful Cigar Girl”, meanwhile the poem “The Raven” is a true classic – even today.

A purported alcoholic (  ), the mystery surrounding his death (caused by "cerebral inflammation", common euphemisms for deaths due to disreputable causes such as alcoholism) is almost as strange as that surrounding the annual visitor to his grave….a visitor who always left three roses and a half bottle of cognac on his birthday after raising a toast. 

Why cognac is also unknown– since it is alluded his drink of choice was whiskey, yet now it seems many of these questions shall go unanswered…..RIP Mr. Poe, and may your work go ever on.

Poe Fans Call an End to 'Toaster' Tradition

Edgar Allan Poe fans waited long past a midnight dreary, but it appears annual visits to the writer's grave in Baltimore by a mysterious figure called the "Poe Toaster" shall occur nevermore.

Poe House and Museum Curator Jeff Jerome said early Thursday that die-hard fans waited hours past when the tribute bearer normally arrives. But the "Poe Toaster" was a no-show for a third year in a row, leaving another unanswered question in a mystery worthy of the writer's legacy. Poe fans had said they would hold one last vigil this year before calling an end to the tradition.

"It's over with," Jerome said wearily. "It will probably hit me later, but I'm too tired now to feel anything else."

It is thought that the tributes of an anonymous man wearing black clothes with a white scarf and a wide-brimmed hat, who leaves three roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's original grave on the writer's birthday, date to at least the 1940s. Late Wednesday, a crowd gathered outside the gates of the burial ground surrounding Westminster Hall to watch for the mysterious visitor, yet only three impersonators appeared, Jerome said.

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