BALTIMORE — Is this tradition nevermore?
A mysterious visitor who left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the writer’s birthday failed to show early Tuesday, breaking with a ritual that began more than 60 years ago.
“I’m confused, befuddled,” said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
The tradition dates back to at least 1949, according to newspaper accounts from the era, Jerome said. Since then, an unidentified person has come every Jan. 19 to leave three roses and a half-bottle of cognac at Poe’s grave in a church cemetery in downtown Baltimore.
The event has become a pilgrimage for die-hard Poe fans, some of whom travel hundreds of miles. About three dozen stood huddled in blankets during the overnight cold Tuesday, peering through the churchyard’s iron gates hoping to catch a glimpse of the figure known only as the “Poe toaster.”
At 5:30 a.m., Jerome emerged from inside the church, where he and a select group of Poe enthusiasts keep watch over the graveyard, and announced to the crowd that the visitor never arrived.
Poe was the American literary master of the macabre, noted for poems and short stories including “The Raven,” “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,” which appeared in 1841.
He died Oct. 7, 1849, in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.
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