Frightful Treats and Treasures in the Season of Trick-or-Treat, or a Visit to the Home of a Talented but Tragic and Mysterious Author

By Catherine J. Barrier

The time has come again when our culture focuses anew on ghosts and goblins, haunted houses, and the supernatural.  Halloween preparations are underway, and more parties and publicity focus on the scary, the mysterious, the horrific.  In the Philadelphia area, October is also a month when many choose to visit one specific place in the city that reminds them of the Halloween themes and preparations: the National Park Service’s Edgar Allan Poe Historical Site.

Edgar Allan Poe
Painted by Oscar Halling in the 1860s

Edgar Allan Poe, one of the earliest American short-story writers and one of the first well-known American writers to try to live off of his writing, was mostly known as a literary critic during his lifetime and was one of the first American writers to become more popular in Europe than in the United States.  He greatly influenced both the mystery and the horror genres in literature and has been referred to as both the “Master of Horror Fiction” and the “Father of the Detective Whodunit”, but Poe, who lived in Philadelphia from 1838 to 1844, lived a life that was, like so many of his works, both tragic and mysterious.

Edgar Allan Poe was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 19, 1809 to theatrical parents who both died before he was 3.  Poe was then raised by John and Frances Allan of Richmond, Virginia.  Although they never formally adopted him, he took their name as his middle name.  Poe had a sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster, before attending the University of Virginia in 1826 for one semester—to study languages, but things did not work out for them, and in 1827, Poe was doing odd jobs as a clerk and working as a newspaper writer in Boston.   Having “fallen out” with his foster father and not having much money, on May 27, 1827, Poe enlisted in the Army, where he eventually received the highest rank of any non-commissioned officer, that of Sargent Major, but tragedy soon struck in his life again, with the death of his foster mother on February 28, 1829.

By 1831, Poe had his third collection of poems, entitled Poems, released with the financial help of some of his friends.  He then began to write short stories to try to support himself through his writing.  This was difficult since there were no international copyright laws and publishers normally pirated the works of British writers and did not pay for new works by American writers.  Poe found some work, but like other American writers at the time was often paid sporadically or not at all.

To get extra money, Poe entered a writing contest at the Baltimore Saturday Visiter [sic] in October 1833 and won—for his short story, “MS. Found in a Bottle”.  As a result, Poe got a job as assistant editor for the periodical Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond in August 1835, but soon got fired for drunkenness.  In the end, he got his job back and stayed there until 1837.

Arguably, the 6 years Poe lived in Philadelphia were the most creative years of his life.  By the time he moved to the area, he had already married his young cousin, Virginia Eliza Clemm—in 1836, when she was only 13.  He then had to support not only himself and his wife but also his aunt, or mother-in-law, Maria Clemm. 

Gothic fiction was in demand in Poe’s time, and its elements included both psychological and physical terror, the supernatural, ghosts, haunted houses, death, decay, madness, secrets, and even the Devil.  Poe reinterpreted Gothic fiction using some of the same elements, but for him the real terror was the “terror of the soul”.  Poe’s recurring themes focused on questions of death, resurrection, mourning, being buried alive, the decomposition of the body, and the physical signs of death.  And Poe believed that a work should be brief and focus on a single effect.

“Poe was more stably employed while he lived in Philadelphia,” said Helen McKenna, a site Ranger at the Edgar Allan Poe house, who has been with the National Park Service for 15 years.  “He was not drinking anymore, which meant [he had] much better creativity.”  It was during Poe’s residence in Philadelphia that he wrote some of his best-known short stories, among them “The Tell-Tale Heart”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, which explores the “terrors of the soul” and includes the themes of aristocratic decay, death, and madness, and the “Murders in the Rue Morgue”.  Poe’s poem “The Raven” was most likely written in the house, too, as well as his short story “The Black Cat”, which was inspired by the basement in the home.

Poe developed the urban detective story with his works, such as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841) and “The Mystery of Marie Roget” (1842), which both offered vivid images of the horrors of living in a decaying, large city, where the people were impoverished and all kinds of “dark”, mysterious things took place.  In his works, Poe used a new kind of character, a detached observer of the urban life around him, someone able to see and “read” the things around him as others could not—and solve problems others could not.  Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin could interpret these terrors of the urban environment.

“Arthur Conan Doyle often gave Poe credit for the mystery story,” said McKenna.  “Poe’s detective, C. Auguste Dupin, is the prototype for Sherlock Holmes.”

Edgar Allan Poe has also greatly influenced other well-known artists, namely the French author Jules Verne, the film director Alfred Hitchcock, and horror-books author Stephen King.

The Edgar Allan Poe Historical Site is located at 532 North Seventh Street(near 7^th & Spring Garden Streets), in Philadelphia.  It is open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.  Admission is FREE, and visitors may choose from either a self-guided or a Ranger-led tour.  The standard tour is 45 minutes long.  For more information, check the Website at www.nps.gov/edal or call (215) 597-8780.

“Our primary exhibit is the Edgar Allan Poe house, the house he lived in,” said Ranger Helen McKenna.  “We don’t have the house furnished; we don’t know what he had in the house, but we ask people to use their imaginations and call it a ‘testimony to human creativity’.”  City directories from the period and a letter addressed to Poe at that address indicate that this was his residence.  “Poe moved into this house, the only one that is still standing of the 5 homes Poe lived in during his 6 years in Philadelphia—and the only one considered a National Historical Site—sometime in December 1842.  He moved out on April 6, 1844.”



Edgar Allan Poe's Ideal Room - the Reading Room
at the Edgar Allan Poe Historical Site in Philadelphia


The Edgar Allan Poe House contains a Reading Room, which is furnished according to Poe’s preferred aesthetic for interior decorating, as outlined in his essay “The Philosophy of Furniture”, published in May 1840.  In this work, Poe celebrates English interior decorating above that of other cultures and indicates that he believed decorating a room was a form of art that required that all the elements in the room should work well together.

His complete works are in the Reading Room in book form, and there are CD’s of his works that visitors can listen to.  “It’s a great opportunity for people to sit down and relax and get more familiar with Poe on their own terms,” said McKenna.  “My favorites [of the CD’s] are those recorded by Vincent Price, Basil Rathbone, and Christopher Walken.”

“We have a very nice exhibition on Poe’s life and his literary legacy,” said Helen McKenna.  “And there’s an 8-minute audio-visual presentation.”

There are several specific activities for children at the site.  Youngsters can try on 19^th-century clothing, solve puzzles, or try to find hidden clues throughout Poe’s home.

The National Park Service acquired the Edgar Allan Poe house in 1978 from Richard Gimbel, whose family owned Gimbel’s Department Store in Philadelphia.  Gimbel had purchased the house in a Sheriff’s Sale in 1933 and made it into a museum, highlighting the fact that Poe’s poem “The Raven” was most likely written there. Gimbel installed a Professor Frayne, from the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, and his family, as the curator of the home, and the Frayne family resided there for 30 years.

When Richard Gimbel died in 1970, he left the house to the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia.  The Library welcomed the manuscripts and the written works but asked the National Park Service (NPS) if it wanted the house.  After some extensive research, the NPS acquired the property and opened it as the Edgar Allan Poe Historical Site in 1980.

“Poe was America’s first full-time literary critic,” said McKenna.  “He stepped on a lot of toes.  His critics called him ‘Tomahawk Man’ because of what they considered his very rigid criticism, but Poe felt that if American literature was going to [survive, develop into something better], it needed more rigorous criticism.”

While living in Philadelphia, Poe was editing and contributing articles, stories, and reviews to William Burton’s Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine.  He only worked there for about a year.

“Burton had told Poe it would be a part-time job and would take him about 2 hours a week, but Poe was spending many hours laboring over it, wasn’t getting compensated, and was getting angry about it,” said McKenna.  Later Burton sold his magazine to George Graham and it became Graham’s Magazine.  Poe became its editor in February 1841.

“[Graham’s Magazine] became the most successful magazine in the county at the time,” said McKenna, “and as the editor, Poe had a lot of influence.”

”Murders in the Rue Morgue”, first published in Graham’s Magazine, where Poe was still working as an editor in 1841, is considered by many to be the first detective tale.  It was well received, and after this, Poe wrote “The Mystery of Marie Roget”, a “true crime” set in Paris featuring his fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin.  The story is based on the real-life murder of Mary Rogers in New York City.  Rogers had been found dead in the Hudson River in 1841, and in Poe’s story, he presented his solution to what had happened to her.

Poe wanted to see the development of better American literature, and his dream was to establish his own literary journal.  He was on the verge of doing so but postponed his plans to go to work for Graham and never realized this ambition.

Tragedy had already struck again in Poe’s life by 1842.  His wife Virginia became ill, was sick for 5 years, and finally died in 1847.  Poe began to drink even more heavily during her illness. 

Poe’s poem, “The Raven was published in the Evening Mirror in New York in January 1845.  It secured Poe as a national success despite the fact that he only received $9 for its publication.  Graham, at Graham’s Magazine, had turned down publishing it because he didn’t like the poem.

After his wife’s death, Poe became somewhat unstable, but eventually returned to Richmond, where he resumed a relationship with his childhood sweetheart, Sarah Elmira Royster.

In the summer of 1849, Poe gave a series of lectures in Richmond, Virginia featuring his poetry and fiction and critiquing and analyzing other works.  On September 27, 1849, Poe had stopped drinking, was engaged to be married to Royster, had completed his successful summer lecture tour, and according to friends, was in good spirits as he left Richmond, heading by boat for Baltimore, with plans to continue on to an appointment in Philadelphia.  Mysteriously, he never showed up for that appointment.

On October 3, Poe was found in an apparent delirious, drunken state, on a street in Baltimore, and taken unconscious to Washington Hospital.  He soon had tremors in his limbs, went into delirium, and was pale and perspiring,   He could not be calmed.  Poe called out “Reynolds” repeatedly on his deathbed, but no one has ever learned who Reynolds was.  Poe died there on October 7, 1849, and the actual cause of his death remains uncertain.  He was only 40 years old.  Poe had a problem with alcohol off and on throughout his life, and initially alcoholism was blamed for his death, but some were convinced that he had been murdered.

Also mysterious is the fact that every January 19, the anniversary of Poe’s birth, since 1949, a hooded man enters the cemetery where Poe’s now buried—near his wife and mother-in-law—in the dead of night, and places 3 roses and a small cognac on Poe’s grave (surprisingly, this did not happen in 2010).  And all Poe’s medical records, and even his death certificate, have been lost.

Griswold, who detested Poe and had succeeded him at Graham’s Magazine, tried to defame Poe’s character after the latter’s death.  He wrote about Poe, using Poe’s weakness for alcohol against him and even accused Poe of being a drug addict, which he was not, but, tragically, some readers believed the lies.

The Edgar Allan Poe House’s Website indicates that there are a number of surprises in Poe’s home, but it does not indicate what they are.

“[People] should come and find out for themselves,” said McKenna.

This month is an ideal time to check out these mysteries.

© 2010 by Catherine J. Barrier.  All rights reserved.