Edgar Allan Poe is called the first master of "horror literature." He has created many scary stories, including ghost stories. They say that the writer himself after his death became a ghost …
Orphan story
Edgar Poe (1809-1849) was born in Boston, his parents David Poe Jr. and Elizabeth Arnold Hopkins Poe were actors. When the boy was one year old, his father left the family. Mother died after a while of consumption. Little Edgar was brought up by a childless family of a wealthy merchant from Richmond, John Allan. In 1826 the young man entered the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. However, after the end of the first academic year, he was forced to leave the university due to the accumulated card debts.
Having ruined his relationship with John Allan and left without funds, Poe moved to Norfolk, and then to Boston, where his literary career began. His first poetry collection, Tamerlane, was published in Boston. But poetry almost did not bring earnings, and Po decided to go to serve in the army.
Soon the future writer realized that in the army, he was only wasting his time. After the death of his adoptive mother, Francis Allan, he made peace with his adoptive father and, after demobilization, entered the West Point military academy in Washington. Prior to that, he lived in Baltimore, in the family of his paternal aunt Maria Klemm, who raised his brother Henry Leonard. Edgar's grandmother, Elizabeth Poe, lived with them. There Edgar met his cousin Virginia, who later became his wife.
Relations with John Allan soured again after Poe's letter fell into his hands, in which he spoke unflatteringly about his guardian. Allan married for the second time and did not intend to assign the legal right to inheritance to his adopted son. Meanwhile, studying at a military institution tired of Edgar, he stopped attending classes and in February 1831 was expelled.
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Path to literature
Going to New York, the poet published several collections of poetry. But lack of money forced him to return to Baltimore, to his relatives. In August 1834 he began to work with the monthly Southern Literary Messenger, published in Richmond, and then was invited there to be an assistant editor. But the young journalist’s depression and frequent binges led to his dismissal.
However, Maria Klemm agreed to give him the hand of her daughter Virginia. Poe returned to the Southern Literary Messenger where he successfully took up literary criticism. Life was getting better … On May 16, 1836, Edgar and Virginia were married.
In May 1837, an economic crisis erupted in America. Edgar Poe was temporarily unemployed. True, it was during this period that the famous short stories Ligeia, The Devil on the Bell Tower, The Fall of the House of Usher, and William Wilson came out from under his pen.
The following years were filled with searches for literary earnings, endless wanderings in publishing houses and magazines … In 1842, Poe's wife, Virginia, fell ill with tuberculosis, and he had to take care of her. The stories "The Well and the Pendulum" and "The Telling Heart" are connected with her illness.
Alas, the earnings were not constant, they often had to live in debt, and once Poe was even declared bankrupt. Although the story The Golden Beetle, published in 1843, was a huge success, the writer again became addicted to alcohol and this spoiled his career. The family, with the exception of rare gaps when Po had a job, continued to be poor. Virginia died in January 1847. Soon, the writer made a marriage proposal to Sarah Helen Whitman, with whom he had previously known in absentia. She accepted the offer, but due to Poe's renewed drunkenness, the engagement was canceled.
Failed wedding
Back in Richmond, Poe attempted to remarry again, this time with his childhood friend Sarah Elmira Royster (married to Shelton), a widow who had a decent fortune from her late husband. Poe gave up drinking and even joined the Sons of Temperance Society of Temperance. However, he never lived to get married.
On September 27, 1849, the writer went to New York to put his affairs in order. On October 3, he was found lying on a street bench in Baltimore near Ryan's 4th Ward Polls in a state of delirium and taken to Church Home and Hospital, where he died on October 7. Poe never regained consciousness.
There are different versions explaining the cause of the death of the writer. These are alcohol poisoning, infectious disease, suicide and, finally, murder. Poe died as mysteriously as some of his characters …
Haunted house
In Baltimore, on Northern Army Street, in a poor neighborhood, there is a narrow brick two-story house at number 23. Poe lived there in the 30s of the last century. Today the building houses a museum.
In 1968, the police received a burglary call. Arriving at the scene, the police noticed a dim light in the windows of the first floor of the building, slowly rising up. Soon the light flashed on the second floor, then "ascended" to the attic … Law enforcement officers examined the house, but it turned out to be empty …
In one of the rooms of the house-museum there is a portrait of the writer's wife, Virginia. The woman is depicted lying in a coffin. Visitors sometimes think that the gaze of the deceased is following them …
At a table in a second-floor room, a ghostly figure, apparently Poe himself, was once seen bending over a manuscript. Although he had a habit of working in the attic …
According to the museum curator, mostly mysterious phenomena take place in the former bedroom of the writer's grandmother. There, as if by themselves, doors and windows open and close, someone's voices are heard, and from time to time someone invisible slaps on the shoulder of visitors … And some even saw a phantom of a plump gray-haired lady in old-fashioned clothes, smoothly gliding through the rooms …
What's so surprising? Could the author of such scary stories have gone without a trace, without leaving behind a mysterious and eerie memory?
