[00:00:00] It begins not with a scream or a struggle, but with silence. A man collapses outside a public house on a damp October day in Baltimore. His hair is matted. His hands tremble. His eyes flicker with something between madness and fear. He is dressed in another man's clothes, coarse stained. Wrong. He doesn't know where he is.
[00:00:26] He does not know who he's speaking to, but over and over he utters a single name as if it holds the key to everything. He will not recover. He will not explain. And in just four days time, he will be dead. No autopsy, no final letter. No clean cause to put the mind at ease. Only the quiet irony that the father of the modern detective story.
[00:00:52] Would leave behind a mystery no one could solve. Was it madness? Murder, fate, folly, whatever the truth may be. It slipped through our fingers like smoke, like ink, like the final breath of a man. Already half gone. This is the House of Six, and tonight we follow the dying footsteps of Edgar Allen Poe into Ravens Ruin and Reynolds.
[00:01:24]
[00:01:24]
[0:01:24] Jenn: welcome to the house of six. I'm Jen.
[0:01:26] Jared: I'm Jared.
[0:01:28] Jenn: Happy Father's Day.
[0:01:29] Jared: Thank you.
[0:01:30] Jenn: What'd you do today?
[0:01:32] Jared: , Not a whole lot, which is really just kind of my mode of Father's Day, not doing anything.
[0:01:38] Yeah. I mean, you know, spent time with the oldest, the 22-year-old. But the one, uh, he went sim racing.
[0:01:48] Jenn: What did you say when you got home?
[0:01:50] Jared: Take all of my money.
[0:01:52] Jenn: You really want one?
[0:01:53] Jared: I need one.
[0:01:54] Jenn: Yeah. You've been wanting one for a long time, but it's probably the way you discuss it somewhat expensive. It's
[0:02:01] Jared: rather pricey.
[0:02:02] Jenn: What's, what's rather pricey?
[0:02:04] Jared: Uh, probably spend around eight to 10 K.
[0:02:08] Jenn: We're not getting that.
[0:02:09] Jared: Not right yet. Not, not yet.
[0:02:10] Jenn: No. No. We're gonna have to win the lottery or this podcast is gonna have to go
[0:02:15] Jared: Yeah.
[0:02:16] Jenn: To the top up there with Mr. Ballin.
[0:02:18] Jared: There you go.
[0:02:20] Jenn: That's my goal. That's the plan goals. Yep.
[0:02:23] Jared: It's my sim plan.
[0:02:24] Jenn: That's what we're calling it. Yep. Okay. It's the sim plan all. I'm never gonna say that again. All right, so today,, I'm switching things up again. We're going back to the 18 hundreds again. We, hopefully this will be interesting. I chose to do the, the life and death of Edgar Allen Poe.
[0:02:49] Jared: Okay. Didn't see that coming.
[0:02:52] Jenn: This is up there with, you know, my nerd Eness Sure. , And whatnot. So I, yeah. It's very interesting. I know that you are not much of a literary guy.
[0:03:10] Jared: Yeah. Probably makes me sound rather unintelligent.
[0:03:15] Jenn: No, I don't think so.
[0:03:16] Jared: Okay.
[0:03:17] Jenn: But what do you, what do you have to say about that? What does that mean when I say you're not literary?
[0:03:21] I
[0:03:21] Jared: don't love to read a book for enjoyment.
[0:03:24] Jenn: When was the last time you read a book?
[0:03:26] Jared: Um, it's been a bit.
[0:03:28] Jenn: I can remember I bought you a book.
[0:03:29] Jared: You did? And that was a long time ago. That was the first, uh, not the first, that was the last one. I've probably read cover to cover. I.
[0:03:35] Jenn: That's probably been 12 years
[0:03:36] Jared: ago.
[0:03:37] I, let's not talk about that.
[0:03:38] Jenn: What happened to the last book that I bought you?
[0:03:40] Jared: It's on the, uh, bedside table.
[0:03:43] Jenn: How many pages did you read?
[0:03:44] Jared: Probably about 40 or 50.
[0:03:48] Jenn: I am questioning that.
[0:03:49] Jared: Yeah.
[0:03:50] Jenn: I don't think it was that. I don't
[0:03:51] Jared: dislike to read it. I just don't do it for enjoyment. You get bored? Yeah, I get bored.
[0:03:58] Yeah. I'd rather go do something.
[0:03:59] Jenn: Yeah. How much do I read?
[0:04:01] Jared: Uh, more than anyone.
[0:04:05] Jenn: I read a lot.
[0:04:06] Jared: Yeah, you read a lot. You read Don Stop all the time. Yeah. Oh,
[0:04:09] Jenn: yep. So I, I would like to talk about Edgar Allen Poe, go through his life. Do you know any, what do you know about Edgar? No. Let's start. There's start there.
[0:04:18] No,
[0:04:18] Jared: I'm not going there. No. Do
[0:04:19] Jenn: you know anything about Edgar Allen
[0:04:21] Jared: Poe? He is a poet.
[0:04:22] Jenn: That is true. He was opposed. Do you know anything else about
[0:04:25] Jared: him? No. I'm just gonna leave it at that 'cause it would make me, again, back to the not so intelligent factor. Do
[0:04:30] Jenn: you know what genre he was in?
[0:04:32] Jared: Uh, no. I'm just gonna go with No.
[0:04:34] Okay.
[0:04:35] Jenn: He is the father of the modern detective story.
[0:04:39] Jared: Okay. See, I could not have said that.
[0:04:40] Jenn: Yeah. He was Stephen King before Stephen King existed.
[0:04:44] Jared: Awesome.
[0:04:45] Jenn: He is the father of horror, the father of detective stories., He's the guy.
[0:04:51] Jared: Okay.
[0:04:51] Jenn: He was emo before Emo he was all of the things you would expect the father of horror to be.
[0:04:59] , He wrote very emotional and evocative literature. He was kind of a dick.
[0:05:07] Jared: Okay.
[0:05:07] Jenn: He was a jerk. , He eviscerated other. Writers, , in his reviews. He was a very interesting dude, and he, strangely enough, died just as mysteriously as he wrote and lived.
[0:05:24] Jared: Oh, okay. I was gonna say he died as big a dick as he was in the beginning.
[0:05:28] Okay.
[0:05:30] Jenn: I don't know if he died that way.
[0:05:32] Jared: Okay.
[0:05:32] Jenn: He certainly lived that way, but I don't know if he died that way.
[0:05:35] Jared: Okay.
[0:05:35] Jenn: But, , really interesting dude.
[0:05:37] Jared: Okay. Yeah. Didn't see that coming. Yeah.
[0:05:39] Jenn: Yeah.
[0:05:40] Jared: You had asked me, , you've asked me the first two, what, what is today. Pretty sure that wouldn't be at the top of this.
[0:05:44] I'm trying to mix
[0:05:45] Jenn: it up every time. Yeah. Trying to do something different. I'm trying to keep the historical vibes going while also putting in some interesting mysteries. Trying to stay in the early year time periods. Right. Not, not breach the seventies too far. Okay. That's my goals.
[0:06:02] Jared: All right. Let's go for it.
[0:06:03] Jenn: All right. All right.
[0:06:05]
[0:06:10] Jenn: So let's get started. Who is Edgar Allen Pope? He was a writer, a critic, a poet. He had a very interesting life and was basically stitched together by loss, obsession, complete brilliance, uh, absolute brilliant writer. Even in his day, although I'll get to it, he invented the detective story.
[0:06:37] He reshaped horror, and made it into a genre that was interesting at the time. , And like I said, he died just as mysterious as the stories that he wrote. ,
[0:06:49] This whole episode is going to be a Victorian fever dream. Absolutely bonkers. We've got drinking, politics, brain swelling, maybe rabies.
[0:07:04] Jared: Okay.
[0:07:04] Jenn: , Potentially voter fraud. , Absolute mystery from beginning to end.
[0:07:11] , It's like a gothic mad lib this entire story. Okay. Totally bonkers.
[0:07:15] A little bit of historical and cultural context. , America 1849. The country was absolutely crying itself at this point. , The Gold Rush was sucking people west, , with promises of riches, probably tuberculosis. , Slavery was dividing the nation. We were about to go into a civil war. , There were 30 states at the time.
[0:07:43] , Manifest Destiny was all the rage and was being thrown around like it was the best thing that the country had ever seen. , Manifest Destiny was. , The belief that the United States was destined by God to expand across the entire North American continent. , White men were told by God to expand west Hmm.
[0:08:11] Jared: Gotcha. Yeah.
[0:08:12] Jenn: Yeah. From sea to shine. Sea. Yeah. It was great.
[0:08:17] This was used to justify everything from the American Mexican War, the annexation of Texas, the push into Oregon, California, and displacing indigenous people across the way at this point in time. Meanwhile, the cities were absolute chaos. They were disgusting and filled with filth and disease.
[0:08:41] , Nobody was washing their hands at this point in time. If you got sick, you were either bled or given mercury as medicinal purpose for medicinal purposes. It was fun times in medicine in this day and age. And the cure for being sad was lanu and cheerful vibes.
[0:09:06] Jared: Okay. Alcohol, I thought. Yeah.
[0:09:07] Jenn: Alcohol was self-induced.
[0:09:09] Right. Self-medicating, right? Yeah. Yeah. To that point, mental health did not exist. It was not a thing. , If you were, if you had a breakdown, you were considered weak, possessed, or an absolute moral failure at this point in time.
[0:09:27] This is funny to me 'cause people say that the average lifespan at this point in time was 38 years old, which is statistically correct, but it's somewhat misleading., The infant mortality rate at the time was 20 or 30%, so extremely high.
[0:09:41] Jared: Sure. So it skewed it.
[0:09:43] Jenn: Yeah. If you made it to the age of one, between the ages of one and five, you were still susceptible to cholera, diptheria, scarlet fever.
[0:09:53] And even drinking milk could kill you at a young age.
[0:09:56] Jared: Crazy.
[0:09:57] Jenn: So if you made it past the age of five, the chances of you making it into your sixties and seventies was completely viable. It was. It was possible. But you had to make it up until that point in time. Right. Good luck.
[0:10:09] Jared: Made it to five. Now you're turning 60.
[0:10:11] Okay. Yeah.
[0:10:13] Jenn: But you know, the, the water sources were contaminated. We only had one vaccine at the time, which was smallpox. Thank you for that. Appreciate not having smallpox. But otherwise, there's, there just weren't a whole lot of options for medicines at the time, which will eventually lead us into post final days.
[0:10:32] 'cause that's very important, understanding the medical, , prospects at this point. The fact of the matter is nobody knew what a germ was. The germ theory had not been even invented yet. , The medical world still believed in miasma, and this is the idea that disease came from bad smells.
[0:10:56] Jared: Okay?
[0:10:58] Jenn: If you got sick, it was because of fog.
[0:11:01] Maybe trash and moral corruption.
[0:11:04] Jared: Okay. I guess some diseases could cause bad smell, but I don't think it goes the other way.
[0:11:10] Jenn: No, not bad smell alone. Yeah. No, I think bacterias is right, but at this point in time, no. They don't know about bacteria. They do not know about viruses. Surgeons would just wipe their hands on their apron and then put, put 'em straight into your open wounds.
[0:11:26] Yeah, they, yeah.
[0:11:27] Jared: Yeah.
[0:11:27] Jenn: Gross.
[0:11:29] It wasn't until the 1850s and sixties when Louis Pastore proved that microorganisms were real and deadly, and that people started to accept the idea of invisible killers and started washing their hands in hospitals. It took that long to understand that that's probably why babies were dying. Yeah.
[0:11:47] During childhood.
[0:11:48] Jared: I, I am familiar with PEs tour, so bonus points.
[0:11:51] Jenn: How are you familiar with Luis? I've, you
[0:11:53] Jared: know, I just, I I recognized Did you write a report in the sixth grade? No, no. That was about Titanic. It was about Titanic. Yeah.
[0:12:03] Jenn: I actually knew about that. 'cause we talked about it last night. You did.
[0:12:06] You did. Lo and behold,
[0:12:07] to put Poses career into perspective, his career as a writer. Being an author in 1849 is not what you would call a power move. That would be like being an actor in the 15 hundreds. It was embarrassment and not lewd, but Hmm. Imagine today if somebody told you that they were a full-time poet, what would you think of that?
[0:12:34] Jared: Alright,
[0:12:36] Jenn: exactly.
[0:12:36] Jared: Sure.
[0:12:37] Jenn: Things haven't changed a whole lot, right? That is exact same. Uh, that that's exactly what Poe was working with as well. , Writing didn't pay. There were no agents, no book deals, no royalty checks. Copyright law was mm-hmm not real, sort of real. , Publishers paid flat fees if they paid at all.
[0:13:00] , Writers were expected to call together a living with side gigs, , like editing, teaching type setting. Selling organs, things like that. , The profession was seen as bohemian, , which meant that most of them were probably broke and drunk. There were a few riders that made it into polite society.
[0:13:23] Longfellow, Emerson, Hawthorne. We still know their names today, but they were by far and away the exceptions. They were well connected. They probably already had money. I didn't look into it, so I'm not gonna pretend to know, but they were well dressed, well groomed. They were what you would think of the high class respectable writer that you would think of today.
[0:13:47] Everyone else was mostly anonymous, , and probably barely getting by women. If a woman wanted to be a writer, most of them would either publish anonymously or under a pen name. That sounded like a man. Sure. Because. You could not be taken seriously as a writer and a woman. Not possible.
[0:14:06] So let's, let's kind of zoom out a little bit and talk about the literary world that Poe was involved in. This was the age of moral finger wagging, , emotional fluff in writing. , Writers were supposed to uplift the soul, support Christian values and make readers cry just enough, but not be uncomfortable about it.
[0:14:31] Poe absolutely hated. All of this. He thought it was fluff.
[0:14:35] He thought it was bullshit. , He didn't like heartwarming endings. , Literature was supposed to make you feel it was supposed to be deep and visceral and sometimes even existentially wrong. He called all the literary fluff. Metaphysical moonshine. That's a quote, , to him. , There should be no moral compass.
[0:15:00] There should be no silver linings. Writing should be just like life. It shouldn't be about happy endings and, and heartfelt, I don't even know what to call it.
[0:15:12] Jared: Dark. Dark. And he wanted it to be real more dark.
[0:15:15] Jenn: He wanted madness and mystery.
[0:15:17] Jared: Yeah.
[0:15:17] Jenn: And he also wrote about people buried alive on their wedding day.
[0:15:22] Jared: Hmm.
[0:15:23] Jenn: So.
[0:15:26] This is all getting to transcendentalism, and this is basically, I wrote down, this is a quote from me, a poetic hug in the woods.
[0:15:40] Jared: Okay,
[0:15:41] Jenn: I think I was going somewhere with that. But essentially it said, you don't need church of the government. Truth comes from within.
[0:15:48] Nature is God. The soul is the map, this is transcendentalism in a nutshell. Emotional, personal, optimistic. Trust your vibes. . So I wrote this down too, society is corrupt, but the pine needles understand me.
[0:16:07] Jared: Good grief.
[0:16:08] Jenn: I was having a moment.
[0:16:10] , And essentially this kicked off in the 1830s and forties in New England and stuck around for, a few decades. , Big names of Transcendentalism at this time were Ralph Waldo, Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Margaret Fuller, ,
[0:16:26] to be fair, transcendentalism was very progressive. , They backed abolition. They supported women's rights and they cared about education, but in their writing, it was all vibes over clarity. And Poe had zero patience for it. He thought it was absolute bullshit. To be fair, it was. Life isn't all happy.
[0:16:52] Happy endings. Yeah. , And he called it spiritual nonsense wrapped in flower language. Too lofty, too vague. Too full of himself. Too full of itself.
[0:17:06] Through this Poe made a ton of enemies. , I said earlier that he was a writer and a critic, and he wrote about writers. ,
[0:17:15] while other writers were crafting tales about industry and integrity, He was, for the time, he was way too dark, way too intense, and way too emotional.
[0:17:25] He was completely out of sync with the culture that was around him. The literary elite did not trust him, and the public could not get enough. Hmm. They didn't wanna admit that they loved him, but they, it's like watching a train wreck. You can't look away. Right. Right, right.
[0:17:40] And PO was never gonna be America's sweetheart. You, they couldn't admit that they loved him. They couldn't admit that they wanted to see and hear everything that they, that he had to say. He was America's first great literary outsider.
[0:17:54] Critics called him unstable. Other rioters called him cruel. They weren't wrong, and PO totally leaned into it,
[0:18:01] Jared: right?
[0:18:01] Jenn: He absolutely loved the image that he had created. He published Savage Reviews, mocked his rivals. Torched reputations and trashed. Every author he thought was a fraud, which was probably quite a few of them.
[0:18:17] By 1849, he was famous, controversial, and exhausted. He was lecturing, writing, trying to launch his own magazine, but he was also battling illness, grief, poverty, and he also had a reputation for being a little unhinged. And then in October of that year, he vanished for five days and turned up in somebody else's clothes in a doorway.
[0:18:43] So it begins, okay. Okay. We'll get there.
[0:18:47]
[0:18:52] Jenn: So let's brief timeline of his life. I'll keep it short and then we'll get to the juicy stuff. Okay. Poe was born in 1809 in Boston, Massachusetts to actor parents. His father immediately abandons the family. And his mother died of tuberculosis when Poe was two years old.
[0:19:14] Hmm. He was taken in by the Allens, which fostered him. They didn't adopt him. , They were a wealthy Richmond merchant. John Allen and his wife Francis. John was cold and controlling, and Francis was loving. But in pose teens, she dies. And all this emotional damage throughout his life pretty much stuck at that point.
[0:19:39] In 1826 PO enrolls in college, racks up a gambling debt, drops out within a year after his foster father refused to bail him out, and then they have a huge falling out, one of many to come.
[0:19:55] In 1827, Poe published his first book of poetry called Tamar Lane and other poems. He published it anonymously, complete and utter flop. The people hated it. He was broke in adrift, so he enlisted in the Army. That's what you always do. Yeah. When you don't know what to do with your life. Yeah. Go into the army under a fake name, , because of course he did, , served for two years.
[0:20:23] Did pretty well, was promoted to Sergeant Major, , which,, considering he mostly joined the army just to escape debt and humiliation. That's good job. Good job, dude. , In 1830, he gets into West Point with John Allen's help his foster father that he, he, he had a agro, he, he had a falling out with Groveled to get back in his good graces.
[0:20:49] Got his help to enroll into West Point. Hated it intentionally, gets court martialed to escape. , And then of course their relationship goes south again. The these two can't keep it together. 1835 post starts editing the southern literary messenger in Richmond and builds his reputation as a fierce literary critic.
[0:21:13] And around this time he gets married. Now we're gonna go through this, 'cause there's a lot to talk about here for a moment. 'cause this is about to get weird. I wanna say that there, you have to put this into historical context at the time, so just it's, it's 1835 ish. How old do you think PO's wife is?
[0:21:44] Jared: I'm gonna guess that she's way too young.
[0:21:47] Was she 13?
[0:21:49] Jenn: She's 13.
[0:21:50] Jared: Wow, that's a good guess.
[0:21:51] Jenn: She was 13, her name was Virginia Clem. And she and her mother, which was PO's aunt. We're living with him. That makes her, his cousin. Oh, okay. She was 13 and his cousin. Yeah. This was not illegal at the time. Right. , Technically at this time in most US states, including Virginia girls could marry young with parental consent.
[0:22:26] A cousin marriage totally fine.
[0:22:29] Jared: Yeah.
[0:22:30] Jenn: Uh, fairly common actually. Especially in smaller communities. I think it's illegal now. I'm hoping it's illegal now.
[0:22:37] Jared: Hoping it's illegal now. Yeah.
[0:22:38] Jenn: Um, I
[0:22:39] Jared: guess back then it was just hard to meet people.
[0:22:42] Jenn: I don't think so. I think people did it all the time. And in fact, even in 1830s, this was still a little dodgy.
[0:22:50] This was. Too young. 15, he probably could have skated. Mm-hmm. But 13, it really creeped people out. Yeah. In fact, the marriage certificate claimed that she was 21. Oh, so they knew. Yeah. They knew that this was skeevy, right? He was 27.
[0:23:05] Jared: Yeah. Yeah. That's pretty bad.
[0:23:08] Jenn: The thing about it is experts can't really agree to the nature of their actual relationship. It gets really murky here. Some scholars think that their marriage was more of a deep emotional bond, more than a conventional marriage, at least early on.
[0:23:25] , She was reportedly shy, childlike at 13 and frail, not a commanding presence. And he was extremely devoted, almost protective, sometimes even describing her in letters as sister, like,
[0:23:39] Jared: yeah, I was gonna say daughter, like,
[0:23:42] Jenn: yeah. It's hard to say. He most certainly loved her and was extremely devoted to her as wrong as their age gap is.
[0:23:52] He clearly loved her. So it's hard to make anything out of that because a, that's disgusting and wrong and gross. And even if it is the 1830s, don't do that. Ew. The flip side of it is, is that he absolutely worshiped her.
[0:24:15] The age gap is questionable. ,
[0:24:17] It's one of those facts that doesn't define PO's entire legacy. But it does shape how we view him even today.
[0:24:26] Jared: Definitely tarnishes it. Yeah,
[0:24:27] Jenn: it does a little bit. Yeah. I mean, he was brilliant. He was troubled, he was romantic and like his, the rest of his entire life he was a little bit off.
[0:24:37] Jared: Yeah. But of a creep, sir.
[0:24:39] Jenn: Something wrong with this guy. Certainly. , Between 1838 and 1844, he writes the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pi Deranged. , The fall of the house of Usher doomed the telltale heart, which was absolutely unhinged. , The murders in the Rue Morgue, which was in more of an analytical writing and others. , His macabre style starts to define American Gothic fiction around this time.
[0:25:09] But his fame still didn't pay the bills. , He was constantly broke. Absolutely. And it's not like his 13-year-old wife can bring in anything. Then 1845 hits, he writes The Raven. It is an absolute success, and he becomes a celebrity overnight. Okay? He is everywhere, lecturing, getting press, and still starting rivalries.
[0:25:35] , But he only earned about 10 to $15 for the poem that made him famous to this day.
[0:25:41] Jared: Hmm.
[0:25:42] Jenn: That's not much for that. And he was extremely proud of the Raven. , He engineered every single syllable and it was meant to be haunting. He also knew it would sort of put him peg, you know, peg him. , He tried to write dozens of other works, but he never really recreated the fame that he got with the Raven.
[0:26:05] , He did break new ground in poetry, horror and detective fiction, and yet we still only seem to remember. Quote, unquote, never more from the Raven. Now, in 1847, Virginia dies of tuberculosis at the age of 24. Poe is absolutely devastated, and he just unravels, , he spiraled into heavier drinking and depression even more so than he had in his earlier years.
[0:26:37] His writing got darker and he reportedly tried to court multiple women at once in her absence, and it was just weird , and not going well. So we're in the, this is now the final chapter of PO's life. It is September, 1849 PO is on the road again. He's lecturing, he's traveling, trying to stay sober.
[0:26:59] He had a lot of issues with drinking alcohol and reportedly even got downright stumbling drunk after one or two drinks. He couldn't hold his liquor. It's unclear. I mean, I understand that to a certain extent 'cause I have a hard time drinking. If I drink more than a couple drink, I don't get stumbling drunk.
[0:27:17] But I do, no, I don't think you
[0:27:18] Jared: do that.
[0:27:19] Jenn: I do have massive hangovers just from just from two drinks. Right. So maybe there's something there with his ability to metabolize, right? Metabolize, metabolize, metabolize. Maybe there's something there with his ability to metabolize alcohol or he has some sort of allergic reaction to it.
[0:27:38] , But he did have trouble with alcohol in the past and he knew that it was something very bad for him. And he would, he would try to get off the sauce, so to speak. And that's where he was in 1849. He was trying to stay sober. He was trying to get his life back, but it was seriously still. He was an absolute wreck.
[0:28:00] . His finances were a a nightmare. He was all over the place. He emotionally, he was going between hope and collapse. It's just a disaster.
[0:28:13] So he went on a solo lecture tour up and down the eastern seaboard. 'cause that's what you do when you're hopelessly and utterly er wrecked by your wife's death. Let's go on tour. Yeah, that's what I would do. He was starting to turn things around. He was starting to get it together. He reunited with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster back in Richmond.
[0:28:39] They had been engaged before and now they were allegedly engaged again. And he was talking about marriage, but he was also dating somebody else. Hm. Dodgy. I don't know if he had a plan. , But in late September, Poe was scheduled to travel from Richmond to New York with stops along the way. He was supposed to head to Philadelphia to edit a collection of poems for a friend, and then continue to New York to meet Sarah and finalize their engagement.
[0:29:10] He never made, it just falls off. The place of the pan of the planet falls off the place of the planet. Mm-hmm. The place of the planet,
[0:29:21] Jared: place of the planet
[0:29:24] Jenn: falls off the face of the planet. I did
[0:29:27] Jared: it. You did it.
[0:29:28] Jenn: Five days finished, but before that disappearance, here's what we know. The last confirmed sighting of Poe before things got weird was September 27th, 1849 in Richmond, Virginia.
[0:29:44] He left the Swan Tavern, said goodbye to some friends and bordered a steamer bound for Baltimore. Reportedly, at that time, he was sober, calm, and in good spirits. He had luggage, manuscripts and letters with him. He was wearing a decent black suit. He had plans, he had goals.
[0:30:03] He was a man with a plan. And then from there, there were no sightings, no letters and no confirmed location for five straight days.
[0:30:12]
[0:30:17] Jenn: October 3rd, 1849. He was supposed to be in New York by now, , planning a wedding, editing poetry. Instead, he's found collapsed outside of a polling station in Baltimore in a doorway. He was not just unwell, he was barely conscious wearing someone else's clothes. Ill-fitting clothes to that effect. The man who found him was Joseph W. Walker, and he was apprentice's apprentice, and he actually recognized Poe. He knew who he was on site, and realized that something was not quite right with this man. He noticed him slumped in the street, delirious, and immediately knew something was wrong.
[0:31:00] He described post-condition as in great distress, rambling, incoherent, unable to stand or explain what had happened. The clothes that he was wearing were ill-fitting cheap, and they were most certainly not his there. He normally wore a black wool suit, which was gone, and he was wearing a dirty, worn out coat and a shabby straw hat and trousers. Two sizes too big. This was obviously not just a case of drunkenness. Something had clearly gone wrong. So PO was rushed to Washington College Hospital where he was placed in a ward, typically reserved for drunks and indigenous.
[0:31:43] I had to look that up. Homeless people, 'cause I didn't know what that word was. That doesn't happen to me very often. He had no id, no luggage, none of his papers. Obviously something serious had happened. He was just a man with sunken eyes, splurge speech, and a single word he kept repeating was Reynolds.
[0:32:09] No context, no explanation. , Yeah, the weird thing about this entire thing is Reynolds has never been identified. Nobody knows who he was talking about. He never, , regained consciousness enough to explain what had happened to him. And nobody knew who Reynolds was. There was nobody in his life that could be,
[0:32:34] Jared: that's strange
[0:32:35] Jenn: related with that name.
[0:32:39] At the hospital, PO drifted in and out of consciousness. He was agitated, confused, and sometimes combative a few times. He called out for a friend Jo, Dr. Joseph Snodgrass. That's a name.
[0:32:55] Jared: It is. That's a
[0:32:55] Jenn: name. Uh, the man would later describe post-condition as the result of congestion of the brain. Do you know what that is?
[0:33:07] Jared: No. It's, nobody does, but no, nobody does. Okay. It
[0:33:11] Jenn: was a catchall for
[0:33:12] Jared: right. No idea. Too many things going on in his head because he's got congestive brain. Congestive
[0:33:19] Jenn: brain for the next four days. PO never fully regained coherence. Uh, during that time, no one came forward to explain that they had seen him, where he'd been, what happened to him, how he ended up in the gutter in somebody else's clothes.
[0:33:35] So bizarre.
[0:33:35] Jared: Yeah,
[0:33:36] Jenn: absolutely bizarre. His doctor, Dr. Moran, also reported other strange behavior. Poe would randomly shout out at unseen figures. He became combative when restrained fair. He had episodes of intense trembling, confusion and paranoia. At one point, he refused to drink water claiming it was poisoned.
[0:34:00] Hmm.
[0:34:04] Here's the kicker. No one treated him. Understandably. Medicine at this time was just a tossup of, you know, bleeding slugs, snails, maggots, right to eat, gangrene. I don't know. On the morning of October 7th, 1849, post-condition worsened, he reportedly shouted, Lord, help my poor soul. And then fell silent and died shortly after. He had no friends and family with him.
[0:34:38] And because 19th century medicine was so bad, no autopsy was performed. So there's no way of knowing. You know, you think if. He had this really strange, weird thing happen to him and they were like, oh my gosh, that's so weird. I wonder how he died. Oh, well it's just bizarre to me. Right. They didn't even try to look into it.
[0:35:05] Right. They didn't. Now, to be fair, they didn't have blood tests, so they couldn't have tested his blood alcohol level or anything like that. But wouldn't you have wanted to take a look inside something?
[0:35:15] Jared: Right.
[0:35:16] Jenn: Do something.
[0:35:18] Jared: Yeah.
[0:35:18] Jenn: Instead of autopsies existed
[0:35:19] Jared: instead of just congestive brain.
[0:35:23] Jenn: Yeah. Autopsy is were a thing.
[0:35:25] Jared: Yeah. Right
[0:35:26] Jenn: at the time. Right. They, they just, but they were like, nah, no thanks. Yeah. His official cause of death was congestion of the brain at the time. That could mean stroke, alcohol poisoning, meningitis, or fuck all. Wait on him anything.
[0:35:47] Jared: Right.
[0:35:47] Jenn: Good luck. So at 40 years old, Edgar Allen Poe was gone, dying just as mysteriously as he lived, down to his last breath.
[0:35:58] Friends, family and newspapers scrambled to figure out what had happened. , Some of them blamed alcohol, some whispered about syphilis, rabies drugs, brain fever, murder. , Dr. Moran, the physician who attended poe in his final days started giving wildly inconsistent accounts. In one version, Poe died peacefully in another.
[0:36:23] He was ranting and raving to the very end. And in some Moran claimed Poe called out for God. In others, he said Poe was lucid and calm. Yeah. Very strange behavior for a doctor. Yeah. Doctors are supposed to be, ma'am, your baby's fine, right? I dunno where I was going then.
[0:36:46] Enter Rufuss, Wilmont Griswold real name. He was a, I'm gonna call him a professional hater. , Griswold was a literary rival of Pope. Poe had previously mocked him publicly, , reviewed his work brutally and generally treated him like a human footnote. It was awful. , Naturally. Griswold offered to write Poe's obituary and why they took him up on this is questionable at best.
[0:37:20] Griswold's obituary of Poe was printed under a fake name. In it, he called Poe a drunkard, a madman, a man with no morals, and someone whose work were the product of a diseased mind. Then just to twist the knife, Griswold published a fake biography filled with outright lies about Poe.
[0:37:47] He forged letters exaggerated poe's instability, and framed him as a cautionary tale genius drowned by sin. It worked. This for a while. This reputation stuck. , The version of poe that we even know today is a drunk, hopeless, haunted. It's the same thing we think of today. Publishers ran with it. , This is the lead up, uh, uh, to what we call yellow journalism, where this is still a little bit early in the, the mid to late 18 hundreds.
[0:38:22] But leading up, you know, somewhere around the 1880s is when yellow journalism became huge in that two cell newspapers,, writers and publishers would just make sensational headlines just to sell. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So this is leading up to this and people were absolutely eating up all of these stories. .
[0:38:41] Poe was originally buried in an unmarked grave in the back corner of a churchyard in Baltimore. He had no headstone, no ceremony, no dignity at this point. Years later, a fan raised money for a monument, and in 1875, Poe was reburied with fanfare closer to the front of the cemetery, near his aunt and wife, Virginia.
[0:39:05] , But at that time, his reputation had already started to shift in death. Poe became exactly what he had never been in life. He was famous, he was celebrated. He was quoted writer, scholars and readers around the world began to see him for what he was, which was a visionary, a pioneer of horror, the father of the detective story and the patron saint of weird kids
[0:39:30] This is probably normal for creators and artists alike to be famous more in death than they are in life. It seems
[0:39:39] Jared: that's been the case. Yes.
[0:39:41] Jenn: Wonder why that
[0:39:41] Jared: is. Yeah, that is. I, yeah,
[0:39:44] Jenn: like somehow death makes people more interesting.
[0:39:47] Jared: Yeah. And I don't even know if it's that. I mean, I know what you're saying and it's, um, I don't know really. There's no good answers, things going through my head, but like, I don't know. And you're right. 'cause they can maybe the different generations that uncover the writings and or, or whatever the artistry was and it starts a new movement.
[0:40:11] I don't know. No. Yeah. Movement's not the right word, but,
[0:40:15] Jenn: and I have to wonder if an artist doesn't die, a weird death. If he had just lived out his life, would he still have been the father of the detective story? Yeah,
[0:40:26] Jared: I mean, yeah. Don't know, but seems like it should. Doesn't have to be because of the odd death.
[0:40:32] Jenn: I mean, I've read all of his writings. He was a literary genius, right? He's a beautiful poet.
[0:40:37] Jared: And that would probably be uncovered regardless at some point in time.
[0:40:42] Jenn: But you look at people like poets. I mean, if you look at Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, they both died weird. Virginia Wolf, they all died weird deaths and are incredibly famous female writers.
[0:40:55] Yeah. And I wonder if they had lived out their lives normally, would they have been as famous as they are today?
[0:41:05] Jared: I don't know.
[0:41:05] Jenn: Question for the agency? We're not
[0:41:06] Jared: gonna know. Yeah.
[0:41:07] Jenn: No, no.
[0:41:10]
[0:41:15] Jenn: All right. So we're gonna run down all the different theories, and this is just absolute bat shit from beginning to end.
[0:41:25] Jared: Okay.
[0:41:25] Jenn: It's absolute bad shit. Theory one, alcohol poisoning. It's the most obvious, I think, and this is the most popular theory. , For decades, Poe had a reputation for drinking and he had a reputation for being a bad drunk. He did not handle alcohol very well. , Some claim that he was found drunk and others say his symptoms resemble delirium, trimming that includes tremors, hallucinations, and confusion.
[0:41:59] But people close to him said he was not drinking at the time. In fact, he was solely against it. Mm-hmm. , Dr. Moran even denied the post smelled of alcohol when he first got to the hospital.
[0:42:12] Theory number two, cooping. Do you know what cooping
[0:42:17] Jared: is? I've heard the term, but no. It'd be safer to say I don't, but I have heard the term.
[0:42:22] Jenn: This one's absolute bat shit too. I just, okay. Cooping was a form of 19th century voter fraud. Gangs would kidnap random men, drug them, dress them up in different clothes and force them to vote at multiple polling stations.
[0:42:40] So they would force you to vote at a polling station, take you out back, switch out your clothes, put on a wig, maybe glasses and a fake mustache, and send you back into the same polling station. They would do this several times and then they'd go to the next polling station and that's do it over and over and over
[0:42:57] Jared: again.
[0:42:57] That's okay.
[0:42:59] Jenn: Yeah. So PO was found. It was election day, the day that he was found something outside a known cooping site wearing someone else's clothes.
[0:43:10] Jared: Okay. Yeah.
[0:43:12] Jenn: Could be a coincidence.
[0:43:13] Jared: Yep. That door, it might not be.
[0:43:15] Jenn: Might not be. Uh, he could have been drugged and shuffled between polling places. And remember, he was scared to drink water, afraid that it was poisoned.
[0:43:24] True at the time. Theory number three, rabies.
[0:43:31] Jared: Mm-hmm. It does make you crazy. Yeah, it does make you crazy.
[0:43:35] Jenn: This one comes from a medical paper,
[0:43:37] Jared: right?
[0:43:37] Jenn: In 1996, a doctor reexamined post symptoms and concluded he may have had undiagnosed rabies. He showed signs of delirium, sweating, and refusal to drink water, which is called hydrophobia, and he died in four days, which is consistent with untreated rabies.
[0:44:01] No animal bite was ever recorded, but in 1849 when they have been looking for animal bites,
[0:44:08] Jared: right?
[0:44:09] Jenn: Reportedly, rabies is one of the most horrific deaths you can death. Mm-hmm. It's awful.
[0:44:17] Jared: Yeah.
[0:44:17] Jenn: And unless you get, if you are bitten by a rabid animal and you are not treated within minutes, like not hours, I think it's within 30 minutes.
[0:44:29] If you don't get the shot for it and it's a very painful shot in the stomach, you will die. And there is nothing they can do about it. There is no cure and there is no relief of the suffering that you go through. Wonderful. When you die of rabies. Okay. Don't get bitten by a rabbit animal.
[0:44:47] Jared: Okay.
[0:44:49] Jenn: Cujo ruined me, that movie.
[0:44:51] Absolutely. I didn't even watch the very end because I had already found out what happened at the end and why I consented to watching it anyways, so I got scared and that mo terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. Una theory number four, brain tumor. In 1875, during po re burial, witnesses claimed that his skull rattled and assumed it was a calcified brain tumor.
[0:45:24] That is all we have for this theory.
[0:45:27] Jared: Okay. Alright.
[0:45:28] Jenn: His brain rattled. Sure. Therefore tumor.
[0:45:32] Jared: Yeah.
[0:45:35] Jenn: Critics of this theory say that, uh, as the decomposition occurred and his brain shrank and hardened, of course it would rattle. Right. This theory seems,
[0:45:47] Jared: yeah.
[0:45:48] Jenn: I think people are reaching here also. I don't think a brain tumor makes you afraid to drink water.
[0:45:55] Yeah. I could be wrong. I don't, I'm not a doctor. Theory number five, and this is just murder drugs or something weirder. , Some people think that Poe was robbed and assaulted. Others believed he was given laden, which was an opium without knowing it. And a few others point to political enemies, jilted lovers, his literary nemesis.
[0:46:20] Griswold, he agreed to write his obituary. Yeah. If he had killed him, he already, he may have already had it. Sure. Going at the time. Sure. Who knows?
[0:46:32] So those are the theories. , Every one of those, in my opinion, except for the brain tumor, I think that one's silly, but all of them seem like plausible theories to
[0:46:41] Jared: me. Yeah. Yeah.
[0:46:42] Jenn: They're very strange. I mean, it's, it's very, , haunted question mark. And I think that that's, I think Poe would've embraced this.
[0:46:50] I don't think he would want that. It was left at that.
[0:46:52] Jared: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:46:52] Jenn: To go out like a normal dude. I mean, he was your quintessential emo at the time. So I think that he would've appreciated his death a little bit
[0:47:03] Jared: out of the ordinary.
[0:47:04] Jenn: It is out of the ordinary with Poe. Nothing is simple. There you go. Not even death.
[0:47:10] Jared: Right? That down.
[0:47:14] Jenn: What do you think it is?
[0:47:20] Jared: I, I know this is hard. Tell me the second one again in detail.
[0:47:23] Jenn: Cooping.
[0:47:24] Jared: Thank you. I think there, yeah, that, yeah. I think there's seriously something to that
[0:47:30] Jenn: same,
[0:47:31] Jared: uh, that's odd, but I think there's something to that.
[0:47:34] Jenn: Yeah. I, I think that it's actually, in my opinion, I think it's a combination of. Theory one and theory two because theory one was alcohol poisoning.
[0:47:42] Right? Right. I think it is the result of cooping. Right? He was given drinks or forced to, yeah, take the drinks. And it's very strange that he showed up in somebody else's clothes. And Reynolds, there was a man by the name of Reynolds at one of the polling stations nearby.
[0:48:00] Jared: Okay. Yeah. Make it, yeah. Seems logical.
[0:48:04] Jenn: Now why it ended up killing him? I'm not sure. Maybe it was just the sheer amount of alcohol. Uh, maybe he did have an aversion to it in some way, shape or form, which would explain why he would get drunk after only one or two drinks, and maybe he had like nine, 10 drinks and it just
[0:48:24] Jared: alcohol poisoning of some type.
[0:48:25] Jenn: I think it's strange that he, he didn't die for four days though.
[0:48:31] Jared: Agreed.
[0:48:32] Jenn: That's a long time. I, I always thought that alcohol poisoning killed you. Like within a night.
[0:48:37] Jared: Right. You would recoup.
[0:48:39] Jenn: I would think so,
[0:48:40] Jared: yeah.
[0:48:44] Jenn: You'll never know. What do you think about the life and death of Edgar Allen Poe
[0:48:51] Jared: rather? Um, tragic.
[0:48:55] Jenn: It's depressing.
[0:48:56] Jared: De Yeah. Not just, yeah. Depressing and dark. Yeah.
[0:49:00] Jenn: So it was Pope.
[0:49:01] Jared: Exactly. So you know, if the shoe fits.
[0:49:04] Jenn: He lived like he died. He died like he lived.
[0:49:07] Jared: There you go.
[0:49:07] Jenn: Both.
[0:49:08] Jared: Both,
[0:49:09] Jenn: yeah. So, what do we do with a man like Edgar and Poe?
[0:49:14] He died, broke, alone, and misunderstood. His body was dumped in an unmarked grave. Now it was rescued later, but at the time, his reputation was dragged by his enemies, and he wasn't appreciated at the time. It was only later. , Today, Poe is absolutely everywhere. Like I said, he's credited with inventing the modern detective story, inspiring everyone from Sherlock Holmes to Batman.
[0:49:42] , He shaped horror and psychological fiction long before Stephen King ever came into the picture. He's the gothic godfather, patron saint of weird kids, sad poets, eyeliner probably I myself have an Edgar Allen PO head that goes on my shelf at Halloween.
[0:50:04] Jared: Yes, you do. I had not thought about that, but yes you do.
[0:50:07] Jenn: I will include a picture in the show notes. It is super cute. The head is oddly open at the top and I put flowers in it, so I've got a egg girl and PO head flowers.
[0:50:17] Jared: Yeah.
[0:50:19] Jenn: It's super cute. It is a cool little thing. It's a fun little thing. And I've got a, I've got a raven that goes next to it and, uh,
[0:50:28] Jared: yeah, timer, sand timer.
[0:50:32] Jenn: Sand timer. Is that what it's called? Called, it's
[0:50:34] Jared: called a timer in general. I don't know what's, it's just called a timer, but
[0:50:37] Jenn: Santa,
[0:50:40] Jared: an hourglass.
[0:50:41] Jenn: Hourglass. Wow. We're dumb. While America fumbled with him in life, other countries were getting it. France absolutely adored.
[0:50:55] Edgar Allen Poe, Charles Bole translated his works and called him a genius. Writers, artists, filmmakers, and scholars have been obsessed with him ever since. The Raven is quoted in everything from the Simpsons to the NFL. , His face is on t-shirts, mugs, tattoos. There's an annual po toast in Baltimore at his grave, sometimes by a mysterious stranger dressed in black.
[0:51:25] The second I read that, we have to go to that,
[0:51:30] Jared: right? That's what I figured was coming next. Yeah,
[0:51:34] Jenn: we have to go to that. I need the date and time.
[0:51:39] Jared: Staed. Boston's one of the few places, or not few, but one of the cities I've never been to, so, Hmm.
[0:51:48] Jenn: So excited.
[0:51:48] One could wonder if this is the legacy that Poe would have wanted. , No wealth, no comfort, but he was remembered. Whispered about, studied, imitated, and he became a story as much as a man. , He didn't just write about madness and death and mystery. He actually became one. , His life was a cautionary tale.
[0:52:12] His work was a revolution, and his name is absolutely eternal.
[0:52:17] Jared: Yeah, agreed.
[0:52:19] Jenn: Yep.
[0:52:23] Unlike some of the historical figures that we've covered and are going to cover, Paul was not a killer. He was not a dictator or a cult leader. Someone that hurt people in pursuit of power. He just a sad man that collapsed under his own mind. , So yeah. What do you think about the fact that he married his 13-year-old cousin?
[0:52:45] At the end of this? I want, I have to go back to this and talk about it because it wasn't illegal. Although it, it wasn't scandalous. It was more frowned upon.
[0:52:56] Jared: I, well, I mean, that's fine, but it's gross. I don't care if it's his cousin, his fifth cousin, ninth cousin. It has to do with the fact that she was not 13.
[0:53:04] It has nothing to do with, well, it has little to do with it being a cousin, so
[0:53:07] Jenn: still a pedophile.
[0:53:08] Jared: Uh, yeah.
[0:53:09] Jenn: Okay.
[0:53:10] Jared: Yeah,
[0:53:10] Jenn: that's a good answer.
[0:53:11] Jared: Yeah.
[0:53:11] Jenn: Because of, ew,
[0:53:12] Jared: that's No, ew.
[0:53:15] Jenn: Yeah.
[0:53:17] Jared: Like at that time, I could see, even though I think it's still bad, 16, 17, 18 was still like, you know, I mean, 16 was like, I'd heard stories around that, but 13.
[0:53:28] Whew. No.
[0:53:30] Jenn: Yeah.
[0:53:32] That is the end of today's episode. What'd you think?
[0:53:36] Jared: Yeah, it was, it was good.
[0:53:38] I like, you know, I like seeing you and this is why we're doing it, so, yeah, yeah,
[0:53:42] Jenn: yeah. Sorry, this is a little bit boring. I'll bring blunt guts next week.
[0:53:46] Jared: No, it's not about that. This is all about mysteries and things like that, so, yeah.
[0:53:51] Jenn: Yeah. Alright.
[0:53:53] Jared: I think it was creative.
[0:53:55] Jenn: Cool.
[0:53:55] Jared: Yeah.
[0:53:56] Jenn: All right.
[0:53:57] Jared: Until next time.
[0:53:58] Jenn: Until next time. Bye bye.
[0:54:00]
[0:54:00] Jenn: If you like what you heard, rate, review and subscribe.