Quoth the tour guide: Poe Museum sheds light on a dark storyteller

“It’s her dying wish to see him,” Luffman said. Poe raced back to Richmond for her funeral, “only to make it one day late.”

In 1830, thanks to John Allan’s influence, Poe was admitted to West Point Military Academy. But in part to spite his foster father, the cadet deliberately got kicked out: He stopped attending classes and was court-martialed the following year for “gross neglect of duty” and “disobedience of orders.”

Poe then moved to Baltimore, living with various relatives, including his aunt Maria Clemm and her daughter, Virginia. There, he continued writing poetry (dedicating a book of poems to the U.S. Corps of Cadets) and branched into fiction, publishing “Metzengerstein,” his first horror story.

His work caught the eye of Thomas White, publisher of the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. In 1835, after John Allan died (and left nothing in his will to his foster son), Poe moved to Richmond to write for and edit the magazine.

White asked Poe to “write something pleasant, something nice,” Luffman recounted. But “we know about Poe; that's not really his expertise.” Instead, Poe had the magazine publish his short story “Berenice,” about a man who digs up his fiancée’s grave to extract her teeth. Toward the tale’s end, the reader realizes that the woman had been buried alive.

“It’s pretty gross. It’s pretty horrible,” Luffman said. Readers were “angry, full of rage.” People complained about that graphic issue of the Southern Literary Messenger – but it sold like hot cakes.

It wasn’t just Poe’s writing that was controversial. In 1836, at 27 years old, he married his cousin Virginia, then 13.

“We simply don’t know how Virginia felt about this relationship,” Luffman said. Some biographers believe the couple, while loving, viewed one another more like brother and sister than husband and wife.

In 1838, Poe, who had struggled with alcoholism, left his job at the Southern Literary Messenger, and the family moved to Philadelphia. Poe wrote for and edited magazines there during a productive six years that included “A Descent into the Maelstrom” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” But Poe got into fights with employers and was beset with money problems, declaring bankruptcy in 1842.

In 1844, Poe moved his family to New York, where he wrote for the Evening Mirror, which published “The Raven” and brought him acclaim. Poe also became editor and owner of The Broadway Journal, but it quickly folded.

In 1847, Poe’s wife, then 24, died of tuberculosis. She was “the exact same age as his mother and died from the exact same disease,” Luffman noted.

That sent Poe into a spiral of depression and drinking. In 1849 – the year he wrote his last poem, “Annabel Lee,” ostensibly in his late wife’s memory – Poe traveled to Richmond. He rekindled a romance with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Shelton, who by then had been widowed. Poe joined a temperance society and pledged to give up alcohol.

Before dawn on Sept. 27, 1849, Poe went to the docks in Richmond and boarded a steamer for Maryland. He turned up six days later, on Oct. 3, at a Baltimore tavern “delirious, in a disheveled state and wearing someone else’s clothing,” Luffman said.

Poe spent the next four days in a hospital, “coming in and out of consciousness,” she said. He died on Oct. 7, 1849.

The exact cause of death remains a mystery. The Poe Museum has documented 26 theories, ranging from rabies and carbon monoxide poisoning to mugging and a brain tumor.

Luffman said a leading theory is that Poe was victimized by a gang engaged in voter fraud called cooping. In this scheme, poor people were forced to cast multiple votes for a particular political candidate. The perpetrators would ply the fraudulent voters with alcohol and have them change clothes before returning to the polls to cast another ballot.

It may be no coincidence, Luffman said, that Oct. 3 was an election day in Baltimore – and that the disoriented Poe was found near a polling place.

The drama surrounding Poe didn’t end with his death.

Twenty-six years after Poe’s body was buried in an unmarked grave, his remains were exhumed and moved to a prominent plot under a monument at Westminster Burial Ground in Baltimore. In the process, the coffin broke apart – which is how spectators, and eventually the Poe Museum, ended up with wooden souvenirs.

The reburial ceremony in 1875 was attended by such dignitaries as the writer Walt Whitman, Henry Longfellow, Alfred Tennyson and other poets who sent letters to be read aloud.

Beginning around 1949, on Poe’s birthday, a mysterious figure dubbed the “Poe Toaster” would enter the cemetery before dawn and leave three roses and a bottle of cognac on his grave. The anonymous visitor’s final appearance was in 2009, the bicentennial of Poe’s birth.

A display case at the Poe Museum features two bottles of Martell cognac and a note that had been left on the grave in 1993.

Poe’s literary career and cultural impact

Literary critics consider Poe America’s first great lyric poet and father of the modern short story. While known for his tales of terror and suspense, he also invented the detective story.

In “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Poe introduced C. Auguste Dupin, who reappears in “The Mystery of Marie Roget” and “The Purloined Letter.” Solving crimes with his intellect and imagination, Dupin became the model for Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot.

“Arthur Conan Doyle directly based his character on Poe’s detective,” Luffman said.

Poe also was a pioneer in writing science fiction such as “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall,” about a man who flies to the moon in a balloon to escape his creditors. That story influenced Jules Verne’s novel “From the Earth to the Moon.”

Edgar Allan Poe’s horror stories have been retold in numerous films, notably by Roger Corman and Vincent Price in the 1960s.

Jeff South, AARP Virginia Volunteer Newsroom

Decades after his death, Poe’s work has continued to resonate. It has been the basis for dozens of movies, including a series of films in the 1960s directed by Roger Corman and starring Vincent Price. Price visited the museum in Richmond to prepare for his roles.

More recently, Netflix released a reboot of “The Fall of the House of Usher” based on Poe’s 1839 short story of the same name.

Poe still surfaces in today’s pop culture, including in television shows such as “Stranger Things.”

Furthermore, Luffman noted, only one NFL team is named after a poem: the Baltimore Ravens, a nod to Poe’s most celebrated verse.

Luffman herself has a Poe connection.

Poe inspired Jules Verne to write his 1872 novel “Around the World in Eighty Days.” In 1889, the journalist Nellie Bly took Verne’s book as a challenge and circumnavigated the world in 72 days – a 25,000-mile journey that proved women could travel alone (by ship, train, rickshaw and even a donkey) faster than Verne’s fictional Phileas Fogg.

“She was my biggest inspiration growing up,” said Luffman, who studied communication at Freed-Hardeman University in Tennessee. She graduated in 2020 and joined the staff of the Poe Museum in 2024.