It is what Edgar Allan Poemight have called “a mystery all insoluble”: Every year for the pastsix decades, a shadowy visitor would leave roses and a half-emptybottle of cognac on Poe’s grave on the anniversary of the writer’sbirth. This year, no one showed.
Did themysterious “Poe toaster” meet his own mortal end? Did some kind ofghastly misfortune befall him? Will he be heard from nevermore?
“I’m confused, befuddled,” said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
Thevisitor’s absence this year only deepened the mystery over hisidentity. One name mentioned as a possibility was that of a Baltimorepoet and known prankster who died in his 60s last week. But there islittle or no evidence to suggest he was the man.
Poe was the American literary master of the macabre, known for poems such as “The Raven” and grisly short stories like “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Pit and the Pendulum.” He is also credited with writing the first modern detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” He died in 1849 in Baltimore at age 40 after collapsing in a tavern.
In the history of the Poe toaster, little is certain.