Speaker 1: Hey guys, exciting news. I'm really really stoked about this.
Speaker 1: On March seventh, at noon Pacific Standard time. Team Sideways
Speaker 1: is going to host an a m A on the
Speaker 1: Unresolved Mysteries subreddit on Reddit. Pretty exciting. Yeah yeah, so
Speaker 1: the mods will post an announcement a week prior, so
Speaker 1: if you can't join us at that time, at that date,
Speaker 1: you can post your questions there. Um, please don't email
Speaker 1: us questions will lose them and forget them. Let's try
Speaker 1: and contain this just to Reddit. But we're super excited
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, so if you can join us. Sorry,
Speaker 1: just in case somebody you know, five years from now
Speaker 1: was listening to this episode not two thousand seventeen. This
Speaker 1: is not true yourself two thousand seventeen. Sorry, okay, a
Speaker 1: mystery short stories of things we simply don't know the
Speaker 1: answers to, Hey, guys, things Side with podcast is Devin,
Speaker 1: joined as per usual by Steve Joe. That's the team
Speaker 1: Jeems Sideways, as we've been calling ourselves as of late.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another short episode, bonus bonus if you will.
Speaker 1: Not so long ago, we talked about the somehow still
Speaker 1: mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. If you haven't listened
Speaker 1: to it already, go listen to it. I'll wait. Okay,
Speaker 1: I think they've listened to Welcome Back Today. We're going
Speaker 1: to talk about another somehow still mystery surrounding Poe. Uh,
Speaker 1: and that is the Poe toaster. Is that like the
Speaker 1: one that I have in my house? Because I've never
Speaker 1: seen the Poe brand of toaster. I'm really trying hard.
Speaker 1: It's not working. The Poe Toaster is the name the
Speaker 1: media has given to somebody who's probably a man, and
Speaker 1: actually probably at least two men, maybe three, who for
Speaker 1: at least I'm going to say more than fifty years,
Speaker 1: maybe more like seventy five. It's hard to tell. It's conflicting.
Speaker 1: Some people say it started in nineteen thirties. Yeah, on
Speaker 1: the eve of pose birthday, which is January nineteen, had
Speaker 1: a tradition most curious to post curious to post speak
Speaker 1: it up starting sometime maybe in the nineteen thirties, as
Speaker 1: Joe said, or maybe the nineteen forties, but definitely by
Speaker 1: the centennial of post birth in ninety nine. A shadowy
Speaker 1: figure dressed in all black with a wide brim hat
Speaker 1: and a white scarf carrying a silver tipped cane, would
Speaker 1: pour himself a glass of Martel Konnac and raise a
Speaker 1: toast in pose memory Martell French pricey French bucks a bottle. No,
Speaker 1: I think it's more than that. Yeah, the lore is
Speaker 1: that it's a really nice whiskey. I are, and I'll
Speaker 1: be honest with you. I did not go look it up,
Speaker 1: so I can't tell you for sure. But that important anyway,
Speaker 1: do you think about it? Yeah, the figure placed three
Speaker 1: roses in quote a distinctive pattern. Although what that pattern is,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. There are no pictures of it. And
Speaker 1: I think I saw a picture somewhere when I was
Speaker 1: doing this, but I can't remember. I didn't see anything
Speaker 1: pretty particularly. Probably what you saw was the picture of
Speaker 1: the faux Yeah, the impostor toasters. What on his Yeah,
Speaker 1: on his actual grave? That happened. And again, well you know,
Speaker 1: and this is not his actual grave, No, this was
Speaker 1: on the marker of his original burial spot. He the
Speaker 1: po toaster would then place the unfinished bottle of kognac
Speaker 1: on the marker of poser original grave, as just said,
Speaker 1: and then could quote vanish into the night. Um and
Speaker 1: people people did start to take notice of this and
Speaker 1: would gather to view and sometimes try to detain the
Speaker 1: toaster and kind of take part in this odd tradition. Well,
Speaker 1: you do think they were detaining because they wanted to say, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: who are you? What's going on? It was one year
Speaker 1: that they did try to detain him, and it was
Speaker 1: I think it seems that the group just thought they
Speaker 1: would figure out who this person was, because nobody knows
Speaker 1: who this person was eluded their grasp. He did. Did
Speaker 1: you vanish into thin air? Yesof of smoke, it sounds like. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen nineties, the toaster began to leave notes.
Speaker 1: At first, it was just kind of simple, almost like
Speaker 1: love letters that you know, things like Edgar, I haven't
Speaker 1: forgotten you, Just kind of lovely little sentiments to Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe. In n ninety three, the note that was
Speaker 1: left said the torch will be passed, and observers claimed
Speaker 1: that the toaster looked much younger, although you can never
Speaker 1: see his face, so I have to assume that it
Speaker 1: was a change in body language. Perhaps. Yeah, obviously an
Speaker 1: old man is going to move a lot differently than
Speaker 1: a young man. Yeah. The notes since then have touched
Speaker 1: on sports in more recent years. In two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: it referenced an NFL playoff game the Baltimore Ravens and
Speaker 1: I can't remember what the other team was, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: pushed by the way reading this story, I'd never I'd
Speaker 1: never put two and two together on the Ravens. I
Speaker 1: didn't know that they were named after posts pose poem, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is kind of awesome. It is super In two
Speaker 1: thousand four, the note that was left kind of referenced
Speaker 1: some current events that apparently the Toaster was not super
Speaker 1: happy about, specifically France's refusal to join the war in Iraq.
Speaker 1: And it seemed like since the there was that switch
Speaker 1: in where it became the younger person passing of the torch,
Speaker 1: if you will, And the notes left prior to nineteen
Speaker 1: nine had been kind of reverent and loving, and then
Speaker 1: the new Toaster, which was quote a son, It said
Speaker 1: in one of the notes that it was a son
Speaker 1: and I don't know what you want for me, decided
Speaker 1: that I guess they decided that the attention that they
Speaker 1: got as the Toaster was going to be a good
Speaker 1: platform to just gonna be crazy, yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 1: In fact, the at that time curator of the Poe
Speaker 1: House and Museum was so dismayed with one of the
Speaker 1: notes that was left sometime between two thousand five and
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. He never specified when, which exact year. Uh,
Speaker 1: he just said, oh no, there was no note left
Speaker 1: this year. He just lied and so he this was
Speaker 1: this was something that didn't quite good. So he told
Speaker 1: the public. No, no, no, it was left to sear.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yes, so this guy, but he never
Speaker 1: kept it. But he must have passed up at some
Speaker 1: point that he did it right, that he didn't that
Speaker 1: he actually got a note and then lied about he did.
Speaker 1: He was kind of the guy who would validate that
Speaker 1: it was the real toaster because there was a specific
Speaker 1: hand signal I guess that the toaster did every year
Speaker 1: that only this guy knew about. That validated this person
Speaker 1: as the original toaster. It seemed like the new toaster,
Speaker 1: the post the millennial toaster, if you will. What wasn't
Speaker 1: really doing it for a love of ed Garland Poe,
Speaker 1: but morequest his death father's death bed request or something
Speaker 1: his father and in two thousand ten, in fact, it
Speaker 1: seems that the tradition did in fact end. In fairness,
Speaker 1: it seems kind of a logical conclusion that two thousand
Speaker 1: nine would have been the last year two the toaster
Speaker 1: did not show up. Poe died in eighteen nine, so
Speaker 1: it would have been his It's been a hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty years after sixty. No, never mind, it doesn't make sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's all based around the year of his death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not his birth. I think did I say his birth earlier?
Speaker 1: You guys, I'm really good at messing stories. No, it's
Speaker 1: his death. Sorry, I just think that they're probably better times.
Speaker 1: But hey, I guess since they were toasting to his
Speaker 1: death birth death. Since they were toasting to his death,
Speaker 1: sure they could have vented it whenever on the round
Speaker 1: times number? Really good? Yea. Since this tradition has been
Speaker 1: so mysterious and pretty well documented, the act itself has
Speaker 1: become someone of an event. As I kind of mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: onlookers start to gather to view this event, mostly mostly
Speaker 1: with respect. People kind of just wanted to watch the
Speaker 1: toaster do his thing and let him be. However, in
Speaker 1: two thousands six, a group of onlookers decided, as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: that they would solve the mystery of who the toaster
Speaker 1: was and tried to apprehend the toaster, but he managed
Speaker 1: to escape. Didn't they have guns? Thankfully? Thankfully. I'm glad
Speaker 1: honestly that they didn't apprehend. I think it's probably better
Speaker 1: left a mystery. Well, that probably explains why this guy decided,
Speaker 1: you just quite in this traditions crazies cheesing me every year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that is a good reason there. It might just
Speaker 1: be that you get sick of the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: also possible if there wasn't a deep connection for him,
Speaker 1: it was his father's thing. Yeah, maybe the case. There
Speaker 1: are a few theories out there about this story and
Speaker 1: the identity of the toaster. It seems that you remember,
Speaker 1: if you listen to the story, which I hope you did,
Speaker 1: you will remember that Poe may not have actually been
Speaker 1: so much of a drinker. So apparently it wasn't at all.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's hard to you know, I don't think we
Speaker 1: ever landed on. But so there's somewhat of a disconnect
Speaker 1: between Poe and Kognak. Right, he wouldn't really necessarily be toasted.
Speaker 1: But apparently in some of the notes it alludes to
Speaker 1: the Kognak being a familial tradition of the toaster more
Speaker 1: than a tradition based around poe. Oh okay, well that
Speaker 1: would explain. That's better than Hey, you were drunk, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna have a drink to you. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: a man by the name of Sam pro poor Pora
Speaker 1: Porpora Porpora, who had been a historian at the Baltimore
Speaker 1: Westminster Church Church, claimed that he had invented the toaster
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties as a publicity stint. It doesn't
Speaker 1: make sense to me for a lot of reasons. He
Speaker 1: said that he had created the stunt to quote, reinvigorate
Speaker 1: the church and congregation. I'm not totally sure how that work.
Speaker 1: The other huge problem with this is that there are
Speaker 1: actual documentations of the toaster much prior to the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: There you can find newspaper clippings from nineteen nine and
Speaker 1: the early nineteen fifties that document the toaster. So uh,
Speaker 1: Sam said, oh, well, yeah, I just told everybody that
Speaker 1: it started in nineteen but that obviously doesn't work because
Speaker 1: there are actual newspaper clippings from that time, so it
Speaker 1: did actually start that early at least. Yeah, he's jumping
Speaker 1: on a coattails. I even understand how this reinvigorates the congregation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know either. He never officially redacted his statement,
Speaker 1: however retracted. Yeah, he didn't black it out. He never
Speaker 1: retracted his statement. Sorry. But just prior to his death,
Speaker 1: he apparently did admit that he had not been the
Speaker 1: one making the annual visits, but that somebody had taken
Speaker 1: his idea, but he didn't know who it was. I
Speaker 1: don't know that before he ever told anybody about you know,
Speaker 1: twenty years before he ever told me about it, they
Speaker 1: were like, I know this man, if you going to
Speaker 1: have an idea to reinvigorate the church and congregation, and
Speaker 1: I will just do that for him. Not only mine
Speaker 1: probed him, but he did it for twenty years in
Speaker 1: the past. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. So there's also some
Speaker 1: speculation that Jeff Jerome, who is the aforementioned prior curator
Speaker 1: of the Poem House and Museum, which, as a side note,
Speaker 1: if you were interested in going to that, good luck,
Speaker 1: because it's been close to the public since two thousand twelve,
Speaker 1: people thought that maybe he was the toaster makes sense.
Speaker 1: He has vehemently denied that. I'm given to believe him,
Speaker 1: but there are some little bits of hink nous as
Speaker 1: we were talking about. He was the one who would
Speaker 1: view it every year. And if the toaster didn't do
Speaker 1: us in hand gesture, he was like, oh, that's not
Speaker 1: the toaster, it's not the real one. So obviously he
Speaker 1: had if he was not the toaster, then he at
Speaker 1: least had some communication with the toaster, and he was
Speaker 1: the one who would go. Everybody would just leave the
Speaker 1: bottle of kognac and notes and flowers there, and he
Speaker 1: would be the one to go to retrieve those things.
Speaker 1: So he was the one taking the notes, and he
Speaker 1: was the one who would collect the bottles and clean
Speaker 1: off the grave. So okay, okay, here's the thing is
Speaker 1: that this hand gesture we're inferring, or at least a
Speaker 1: lot of the articles inferring that the hand gesture was
Speaker 1: made at Jerome, but not necessary. No. I guess for me,
Speaker 1: it could have just been a certain way that he toasted, right,
Speaker 1: It could have been a certain way that he placed
Speaker 1: the flowers. Yeah, I think the way he toast for
Speaker 1: the way he did, I think that's fine. But I
Speaker 1: do also think that for you to be the person
Speaker 1: who is in charge of clearly loves po history a
Speaker 1: lot who's in charge of a museum, who also just
Speaker 1: happens to be the only person who can say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the Poe toaster. It's a little suspicious. It's a
Speaker 1: little suspicious. But at the same time, he was in
Speaker 1: the crowds. People saw him in the crowd That's not
Speaker 1: like there was There was that one one year when
Speaker 1: they hid him the catacombs of the church to wait
Speaker 1: for the Poe toaster to come, as he and several
Speaker 1: other people waiting down there, and they they he was there.
Speaker 1: He was there. He was there in the catacombs and
Speaker 1: the toaster games, so he must he may well have known,
Speaker 1: actually the identity of the toaster. I almost wonder if
Speaker 1: it's just because he's he watched the toaster from Afar,
Speaker 1: by the way, saying the toaster over and over, such
Speaker 1: a weird thing. But he may have watched the toaster
Speaker 1: from Afar for a number of years and realized the
Speaker 1: same thing was happening every time, and that's all it was.
Speaker 1: I I don't think that we have to infer that
Speaker 1: there was a familiarity between them other than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven, for impostor immediately dubbed phoetasters. Photoasters
Speaker 1: is so much better. Phoetasters were identified by Jerome for
Speaker 1: many reasons. There were four of them. They were not secretive,
Speaker 1: they didn't try and creep, they just walked in broad view.
Speaker 1: They didn't have do the little signal or whatever that
Speaker 1: Jerome said. And then this event actually sparked some debate
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of people who are onlookers
Speaker 1: or lovers of Poe or whatever, who said this tradition
Speaker 1: should be continued even if it's not by the original
Speaker 1: family of the po toasters. Since two thousand nine was
Speaker 1: the last year that the official toaster showed up, and
Speaker 1: this has held true since then, the official toaster has
Speaker 1: never come back. Some people say this tradition is so good,
Speaker 1: we should just keep doing it, even if it's by imposters.
Speaker 1: I am of the other camp. I think that that
Speaker 1: was a wonderful tradition that some people had out of
Speaker 1: a deep love and respect for a girl and Po
Speaker 1: and it should just remain that way. And if you
Speaker 1: love ed girl and Po and you live in Baltimore
Speaker 1: and you want to do something to remember him, come
Speaker 1: up with your own tradition, you know, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: just doing something over just to maintain the tradition without
Speaker 1: the reason behind. I think that. I think they clearly
Speaker 1: had a reason for that ritual, and it meant something
Speaker 1: personal to them. The placement of the flowers meant something
Speaker 1: personal to them, probably the cognac, but even the brand.
Speaker 1: It was the same brand every year. That meant something
Speaker 1: to them, and it can't ever mean that to anybody else.
Speaker 1: So if I don't think that there's a point in
Speaker 1: continuing that tradition just for traditions sake, but yeah, think
Speaker 1: you can do something else. You can show up with
Speaker 1: a bottle of cheap wine and toast him and leave that,
Speaker 1: I mean, and pass out after one glass because you're
Speaker 1: so wasted. Yeah that's excellent. Yeah, So now it's time
Speaker 1: to solve the mystery. What happened to the toaster? Why
Speaker 1: did he stop? Well, Baltimore, as it happens, has one
Speaker 1: of the highest murder rates in the country. So yeah,
Speaker 1: if the toaster was unplugged, oh yeah, yeah, I'm yeah,
Speaker 1: please do Yeah, the toaster got taken too the good
Speaker 1: will anyways, that's it there. We I don't think we'll
Speaker 1: ever know who the identity of the toaster was. But
Speaker 1: I thought this would be a nice little short to
Speaker 1: accompany the mysterious death of Edgar and Poe. It's a
Speaker 1: little little nugget of a mystery. Yeah, by the way,
Speaker 1: did die too young? Too young? Forty years old? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sad. Yeah, So if you are the Toaster, if
Speaker 1: if you're Poe, you can send us an email Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. You can listen to
Speaker 1: our shows on our website, Thinking Sideways podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: You can leave us a comment there as well. You
Speaker 1: might be listening to us on iTunes if you are
Speaker 1: comment and rate, that'd be great. Subscribe to if you
Speaker 1: haven't already. Um, you might be streaming us if you
Speaker 1: are cool awesome. I don't know where, but that's awesomewhere
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Speaker 1: Joe says, Twitter, thinking the Twitter, Thinking Sideways, not podcast
Speaker 1: or anything. It's just Thinking Sideways. Also merch. We got
Speaker 1: it now. It's been a while in the making. Yeah. Shirts, uh,
Speaker 1: phone covers, I think a mug even Yeah, because I
Speaker 1: love coffee. Because Steve is a weirdo. There's a link
Speaker 1: on our website to find that stuff too. That having
Speaker 1: been said, does We're gonna go ahead and get out
Speaker 1: of here, everybody. Bye guys, Cheers everyone,