Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
Speaker 1: there's Chuck, and it's just the two of us, just
Speaker 1: a couple of a couple of hanchos, a couple of ombres,
Speaker 1: just doing our thing, rattling off facts in a superspeedy
Speaker 1: manner with a limited amount of time. So this is
Speaker 1: short stuff, so we don't want to waste time with
Speaker 1: long intros saying unnecessary thing right exactly? Uh so the
Speaker 1: po toaster. Huh is this the beginning of our spooky content? Yes,
Speaker 1: it is, if that's okay with you. Yeah, it's our
Speaker 1: favorite month. I love October, I love Halloween. I've been
Speaker 1: sitting on this one since last year. Actually, have you
Speaker 1: heard of this guy before? Now? And and obviously I
Speaker 1: didn't just ask Chuck everybody if he's sort of ed
Speaker 1: Growl and Poe. We're talking about a corollary to the
Speaker 1: po legend. Everybody knows about Poe, the master author, the
Speaker 1: creator of the short story um, believed to be the
Speaker 1: first person to ever write a genuine detective story, Ed
Speaker 1: Gralan Poe. Everybody knows about him. We're not talking about
Speaker 1: just him, no, but we are talking about his dead body, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which Pope would love. Oh, he would totally love it
Speaker 1: he died, and he probably would even love dying under
Speaker 1: mysterious circumstance. There's no way he didn't. He was probably like,
Speaker 1: as they were dragging him out of the street, he
Speaker 1: was probably like, this so great. Well, he was forty
Speaker 1: years old. This was an eighty nine and he was
Speaker 1: buried in Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore, where he made
Speaker 1: his home. And it was kind of not a big
Speaker 1: deal at the time as far as you know, paying tribute.
Speaker 1: He had an unmarked gray for a while. Finally a
Speaker 1: relative stepped up and said, can we at least get
Speaker 1: you know, his name carved into something. He just showed
Speaker 1: up with a stick and carved it in the dirt.
Speaker 1: It he may have, yeah, but yeah, it was. He
Speaker 1: was still fairly obscure enough that he yeah, he was
Speaker 1: able to first be buried in the on Mark grave.
Speaker 1: But some local academics started to recognize the man's genius
Speaker 1: and they actually held like an early go fund me
Speaker 1: to to create a monument for pose Um grave actually,
Speaker 1: and they were successful finally in eighteen seventy five, that's right,
Speaker 1: So they had a monument carved it was Um. He
Speaker 1: was actually moved. It was dedicated on a on a
Speaker 1: space a little more befitting one of the great authors
Speaker 1: of his time. And they, you know, they exhumed him,
Speaker 1: moved the body, and about ten years after that his
Speaker 1: wife and his mother in law were buried along with him,
Speaker 1: which is sort of key in this story. And hopefully
Speaker 1: he wasn't like a Fred Flintstone type where that would
Speaker 1: have really bothered him to have his mother in law
Speaker 1: so close by for eternity. Instead, I have the feeling
Speaker 1: that it was a very sweet gesture, sure so that
Speaker 1: you would think, well, that's it there there, That's the
Speaker 1: most you could possibly say about pose remains laying in
Speaker 1: the ground at a grave. Not true. That was the
Speaker 1: case from about eight to eighteen forty or nineteen forty nine,
Speaker 1: i should say. And then allegedly on that year, the
Speaker 1: centennial of his death, UM, he was visited by somebody
Speaker 1: who came to be known as the Poe Toaster, a
Speaker 1: mysterious stranger who showed up at his grave on his
Speaker 1: birthday January nine every year, dressed in an all black suit,
Speaker 1: a white scarf, and a big black, wide brimmed hat
Speaker 1: to cover his face. And created this ritual out of
Speaker 1: whole cloth that eventually attracted the notice of people in Baltimore. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what would happen is this man presumably would show
Speaker 1: up with a bottle of cognac and literally toast po
Speaker 1: and leave three red roses along with that bottle. Uh,
Speaker 1: they are not. And this would happen sometime between usually
Speaker 1: midnight and six am. So it was even led more
Speaker 1: to the creepiness of the whole thing. Yea, and no
Speaker 1: one did anything about it. No one said, hey, grab
Speaker 1: that guy and let's see who it is, get his
Speaker 1: rip off that hat and expose him. Right, it's Roy Kane.
Speaker 1: But um, so what happened was, well, first of all,
Speaker 1: we should address the cognac. No one was exactly sure
Speaker 1: why he toasted with kognac, even though I read very
Speaker 1: quickly on the Internet that Poe loved kognac. Wasn't in
Speaker 1: his stories. Yeah, he supposedly loved it, but couldn't afford
Speaker 1: it unless someone else was buying, because you know, he
Speaker 1: didn't he didn't get rich, right, So yeah, a lot
Speaker 1: of people are like, well, he should be using a
Speaker 1: mantiato because obviously the cask of Amontiado is one of
Speaker 1: his great stories. I don't know why he would be
Speaker 1: using cognac. Apparently now we do know why. You just
Speaker 1: solve that mystery for me, Chuck, Thank you. What about
Speaker 1: those roses? So he would leave three roses on the grave,
Speaker 1: like you said, and they've people have come to believe
Speaker 1: that that's a gesture to to Um to give a
Speaker 1: rose to each of the people who are buried beneath
Speaker 1: that monument, Poe, his wife, Virginia, and his mother in
Speaker 1: law Maria. UM. So that one's probably the likeliest explanation
Speaker 1: of that. Should we take a break? I think we should, Um,
Speaker 1: but first will reveal the identity of the po Toaster
Speaker 1: after this. How's that for a cliffhanger? Pretty great? So
Speaker 1: I totally lied on the cliffhanger. Um. No one knows
Speaker 1: who the Poe Toaster is as far as we can tell,
Speaker 1: and we certainly don't, so there will be no revealing.
Speaker 1: We just wanted to keep you tuned in. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: there is one guy who claims he was the Poe Toaster,
Speaker 1: and two thousand seven, a ninety two year old man
Speaker 1: named Sam Porpora claimed it was him. He was a
Speaker 1: former ad executive and he in nineteen sixty was made
Speaker 1: history in Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was apparently in disrepair
Speaker 1: at the time and kind of just full of people
Speaker 1: getting drunk and you know, uh, not treating the graves
Speaker 1: with respect. So he claims he did it as a
Speaker 1: promotional thing to sort of raise money in publicity, and
Speaker 1: it was he and his tour guides. Uh, this gentleman
Speaker 1: Jeff Jerome, who was the curator of the Poe Museum.
Speaker 1: I think his quote was there are holes big enough
Speaker 1: in his story you could drive a mack truck through.
Speaker 1: So I couldn't find those holes. I couldn't, Like, I
Speaker 1: looked everywhere and I couldn't find him specifically saying why
Speaker 1: he did not think it was him. Well, so Jeff
Speaker 1: Jerome has kind of become like the de facto historian
Speaker 1: of the Poe Toaster because he ran the po Historical
Speaker 1: Society for a while or the Poem Museum. I'm sorry, um,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people put a lot of weight
Speaker 1: into what he says. He claims that he had worked
Speaker 1: out a um signal with the po Toaster so that
Speaker 1: the po Toaster would signal him and let him know
Speaker 1: that he was the real deal, because over the years,
Speaker 1: there were right, there were, um, there were what are
Speaker 1: known as photoasters who people who pretended to be the
Speaker 1: Poe Toaster after the thing be kind kind of became
Speaker 1: a big deal, um starting in the seventies. Um, so
Speaker 1: that Jeff Jerome at least would know it was the
Speaker 1: real article. Um. But he swears up and down and
Speaker 1: most people believe him that he has no idea the
Speaker 1: actual identity of the Poe Toaster. The only interaction he'd
Speaker 1: had with the po Toasters at was grave on these
Speaker 1: specific nights over the years. Yeah. And I wonder why
Speaker 1: Sam Porpora would come forward and claim to be such
Speaker 1: so late in life. And they even asked him that
Speaker 1: in this article, and he said, like why he came
Speaker 1: forward and he went, I don't know. Uh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: not a very good Yeah that that's a big hole
Speaker 1: in your story right there. To not have a motivation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you're somebody who who starts out and here's the
Speaker 1: thing like this, This whole Poe Toaster thing became a
Speaker 1: kind of a cause celeb in in Baltimore and places
Speaker 1: outside of Baltimore. People would show up and there'd be
Speaker 1: little groups of onlookers who would watched this thing every year. Um,
Speaker 1: and like you said, very coolly, never tried to find
Speaker 1: out who it was. They just respected it from and
Speaker 1: watched from a distance. Um. So it kind of became
Speaker 1: like this this cool thing. But this guy was doing
Speaker 1: this for decades before it became a cool thing. So
Speaker 1: of course there's some sort of motivation behind all this,
Speaker 1: And people who do stuff like they have a motivation
Speaker 1: behind everything they're doing. There's some larger meaning or some
Speaker 1: something to what they're doing. So, yeah, he would I
Speaker 1: don't believe the poet Toaster would have come forward just
Speaker 1: for I don't know. Well, I mean, he said he
Speaker 1: said why he did it. He didn't say why he
Speaker 1: came forward and invited that he was the Poe Toaster. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't buy that kind story. Who knows I buy it.
Speaker 1: I think it makes sense as a former ad guy.
Speaker 1: But at any rate, the and he was on the
Speaker 1: scene as well as the historian of the church, so anyway,
Speaker 1: I think it's Uh. I think there's a lot of
Speaker 1: credence there. But at any rate, the the gentleman, whoever
Speaker 1: it was, would leave these notes occasionally, and one note
Speaker 1: in said the torch will be passed it to be
Speaker 1: read in creepy Vincent Price voice when read out loud. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then there was one that said the toaster had died,
Speaker 1: and there was a theory, and I think Jeff Jerome
Speaker 1: buys the theory that, um, the torch was passed to
Speaker 1: his sons because they kind of did a uh they
Speaker 1: were sort of lackadaisical about how spirited they were with
Speaker 1: their efforts. Let's just say that was that was a
Speaker 1: really diplomatic way to put it. Yeah. Sometimes they would
Speaker 1: show up in street clothes, and from what I've gathered,
Speaker 1: like the the minimum criteria for being the Poe toaster
Speaker 1: is that all black suit, white scarf and a huge hat.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, there's a certain amount of dapperness that needs
Speaker 1: to be brought to this. And showing up in like
Speaker 1: jeans and vans and like a you know, Counting Crow's
Speaker 1: T shirt, that doesn't cut it, buddy, Although the Crows,
Speaker 1: Counting Ravens maybe Baltimore maybe maybe. Uh So. One of
Speaker 1: these notes though that supposedly was left by one of
Speaker 1: the sons, if you buy that theory, was a prediction
Speaker 1: of the Super Bowl in two thousand one, that the
Speaker 1: giants would beat the ravens. So if if it was
Speaker 1: his sons, then I totally see how Jeff to Rome
Speaker 1: would be like, they're not doing a great job exactly. So. Um.
Speaker 1: So finally, in two thousand nine, I guess that's twenty years.
Speaker 1: Ten years, yes, ten um, ten years after the torch
Speaker 1: was passed, After the original Poe Toaster died allegedly, Um,
Speaker 1: they just stopped showing up all together. And they didn't
Speaker 1: show up in two thousand and ten eleven, and then
Speaker 1: finally in two thousand twelve, when they didn't show one
Speaker 1: more time. Um, Jeff Jerome said, well, I guess I
Speaker 1: have as much cloud as anybody. Being the curator of
Speaker 1: the Poem Museum, I'm gonna officially declare this tradition ended forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but not so, because he turned on his heels four
Speaker 1: years later and in said, you know what, let's just
Speaker 1: throw a big party. Uh, we're gonna audition Poe Toasters.
Speaker 1: And this is where the story really like. It's disappointing
Speaker 1: to me. I wish they would have just let it die.
Speaker 1: It's this mysterious weird thing, is it the raffle. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they have a raffle. They have a po themed cake
Speaker 1: that you can win, um, you know, hundreds of people.
Speaker 1: They toast apple cider, and I don't mind them honoring Poe,
Speaker 1: but it just I think they could have just divided
Speaker 1: it and not made it part of the Poe toasting
Speaker 1: thing that came and went yeah, yeah, I have to
Speaker 1: I have to agree. I like that it's a I
Speaker 1: like the idea of what they're doing. I like the
Speaker 1: toast with apple cider like, but I think, yeah, maybe
Speaker 1: hold it at the local library or something, because it
Speaker 1: really smacks of like the kind of event you would
Speaker 1: hold at a local library. Yeah, and it's during the daytime.
Speaker 1: I don't think we mentioned which I mean, if it's
Speaker 1: not between midnight and six am, then just get out
Speaker 1: of here with that. True, But it does give the
Speaker 1: Poe Toaster an excuse to do some day drinking of
Speaker 1: cognac once a year at least or apple cider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: supposedly the po Toaster does does drink yex still a tradition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I don't. Did you say that they held auditions
Speaker 1: for the new pot toaster. I did, And the new
Speaker 1: pot Toaster plays the violin, though added a little extra flare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe you know what's gonna happen is they're going to
Speaker 1: hear about this and then make us honorary po toasters,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna be way into it. Yeah right exactly.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wear a Counting Crow's T shirt and I
Speaker 1: learned to play the violin, all right, So that's it,
Speaker 1: everybody the pot toaster. This is one of those legends
Speaker 1: where I hope we never ever find out who it was,
Speaker 1: because I think that's wildly appropriate in this case. Okay,
Speaker 1: ad executive, Well, since Chuck said ad executive, that's the
Speaker 1: secret word for short stuff to be out. Stuff you
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