WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:16.439 Thinking sideways. I don't understand. You've never known stories of things. 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:22.560 We simply don't know the answer. Too deep into the darkness, 0:00:22.640 --> 0:00:26.760 peering long, I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams. 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:30.600 No mortal ever dared to dream before? Hey, guys, was 0:00:30.640 --> 0:00:35.520 that singing Sideways? The podcast I Am Devin, joined as 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:41.360 always by Joe and Steve. Tonight we're talking about the 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:46.360 somehow still mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. You didn't 0:00:46.400 --> 0:00:49.640 know his death was an unsolved mystery, did you? Yeah? 0:00:49.640 --> 0:00:52.800 I did, no. Well, I saw that really terrible John 0:00:52.880 --> 0:00:58.160 Qusack movie The Raven years ago. I didn't see it, 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.760 so I would high recommend that you don't. Okay, okay, okay. 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.959 It starts with a letter that reads, there, sir, there's 0:01:07.000 --> 0:01:10.160 a gentleman rather the worse for wear at Ryan's fourth 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:14.039 Ward Poles, who goes under the cogniment of Edgar A Poe, 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.520 and who appears to being great distress. And he says 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:20.039 he is acquainted with you. He is in need of 0:01:20.040 --> 0:01:26.479 immediate assistance, yours in haste, Joseph W. Walker to Dr J. E. Snodgrass. 0:01:26.600 --> 0:01:29.080 So the story goes. Poe was found either in the 0:01:29.120 --> 0:01:33.800 street or in the tavern room of public house tavern 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:39.160 also pulling station. It was voting time. Yeah, they don't. 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:43.560 They multitasks back in those days. That's how you got 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.840 people to vote. Was, Yeah, you're like, drink and then 0:01:46.880 --> 0:01:49.440 go vote. Well, no, it's the other way around. Vote 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:51.960 and we'll give you a drink. We should do that again. 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:58.360 I think they're still doing that. He was described as delirious, 0:01:58.680 --> 0:02:04.040 with his appearance being quote repulsive unquote. His hair was unkempt, 0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:07.720 he seemed unwashed and unshaven. His clothes were all ragged 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:11.000 and torn, which was very atypical of po He was 0:02:11.160 --> 0:02:14.320 very well dressed, known for being well dressed on almost 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:19.200 all times. It's worth mentioning probably also that the clothes 0:02:19.240 --> 0:02:22.639 that he was wearing were later discovered that they weren't his. 0:02:23.160 --> 0:02:25.760 He'd for some reason, been wearing someone else's clothes. When 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.679 he was found, he was taken to a local hospital. 0:02:28.840 --> 0:02:33.280 He spent four days and fairly incoherent stupor before dying 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:39.000 on October seven. In those four days, uh Poe was 0:02:39.080 --> 0:02:44.960 never coherent enough or couldn't remember what had caused him 0:02:45.000 --> 0:02:46.560 to be in the state that he was in. And 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:48.880 that this we're going to talk about in a minute. 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:53.639 But this just comes from some fairly maybe unreliable sources. 0:02:53.720 --> 0:02:56.360 So it's hard to tell if it was that he 0:02:56.400 --> 0:02:59.760 was so incoherent the whole time that he couldn't actually 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.800 tell people what had happened to him, or if he 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:05.840 just couldn't remember what had happened to him, or if 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.680 it didn't get recorded. Yeah. Yeah, the doctor who was 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:13.880 taken care of him actually, who has submitted some fairly 0:03:14.160 --> 0:03:16.760 inconsistent accounts of the whole thing. Yeah, and we're gonna 0:03:16.800 --> 0:03:18.480 we're going to talk about that. I wouldn't let other 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:21.000 people in. So maybe co maybe Pe was torobably coherent 0:03:21.080 --> 0:03:23.120 the whole time and the doctor just gassed him and 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:25.280 killed him. Yeah, I know it is. I mean, that's 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.760 it's a for all we know, that's what happened. I, 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.160 as Joe kind of mentioned or alluded to to, wasn't 0:03:32.160 --> 0:03:35.520 allowed visitors while he was in the hospital. He was 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:38.440 kept in what's described as a prison like cell. It 0:03:38.680 --> 0:03:42.080 even had bars on the windows. It was often reserved 0:03:42.080 --> 0:03:45.200 for drunks, you know, sleep it off. The dunk tank, 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:49.760 basically hospital the hospital drunk tank. Yeah, as I said, 0:03:49.800 --> 0:03:55.840 he didn't have any visitors. The attending physician's name was 0:03:56.080 --> 0:03:59.520 doctor John Joseph Moran, and a lot of people had 0:03:59.600 --> 0:04:03.480 been saying that Poe was found drunk and that's why 0:04:03.560 --> 0:04:07.000 he was in this stupor, but Moran said, no, Poe 0:04:07.120 --> 0:04:09.840 wasn't drunk. He was totally sober. But then again, as 0:04:09.840 --> 0:04:12.920 we already mentioned a little bit, it's hard to tell. 0:04:13.080 --> 0:04:15.400 We just have the one account, so who knows what 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:20.200 was true and what was not true. Apparently Poe told 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.920 Moran when Moran said, oh, soon you're going to have 0:04:24.279 --> 0:04:26.880 friends being able to come visit you, post said the 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:29.239 best thing that his friends could do for him would 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.520 be to blow out his brains with a pistol. Well 0:04:31.560 --> 0:04:35.279 that's not well, it's not like Poe was known for 0:04:35.400 --> 0:04:38.880 not being more. I mean, it wasn't he wasn't all sunshine. 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:45.120 That wasn't so much Poe. Mrs Harring tried to visit him, 0:04:45.200 --> 0:04:48.280 but we later find out through letters that it was 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.400 in fact Mr Harrying, which was his uncle in law. 0:04:52.480 --> 0:04:54.200 Oh so it was his uncle that was trying to 0:04:54.279 --> 0:04:57.479 come see him, and not a woman. Okay, that it 0:04:57.560 --> 0:05:00.559 was recorded as a missus, but again it was Moran 0:05:00.680 --> 0:05:04.280 who recorded it. So, and we don't know how late, 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.559 how far after Poe died that he wrote it down, 0:05:07.720 --> 0:05:10.560 So why his account might be a little mixed exactly. 0:05:11.200 --> 0:05:14.000 Poe was said to have called out Reynolds repeatedly on 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.560 the night of his death. This is a huge, unexplained mystery. 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:20.159 There's a lot of speculation about who Reynolds might be. 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.480 There's a lot of Reynolds is a fairly common last 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:26.200 name in that area at that time. Could be Reynolds, 0:05:26.240 --> 0:05:29.080 trap he just wanted something. He just wanted some foil man. 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.359 But it even occurred to me that possibly I was. 0:05:33.400 --> 0:05:35.599 I did did a little research and couldn't find anything else, 0:05:35.640 --> 0:05:37.839 but occurred to me that maybe Reynolds there was a 0:05:37.839 --> 0:05:41.280 brand of laudanum or some other drug that was produced 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:45.520 by the realms. Yeah, it's always possible. He also spoke 0:05:45.880 --> 0:05:49.479 about a wife that he had in Richmond, but more 0:05:49.480 --> 0:05:52.559 on this later because oh, by the way, Podon actually 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.320 have a wife at the time at all, particularly not 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:59.279 in Richmond. He did live in Richmond. He was probably 0:05:59.400 --> 0:06:02.840 confused not what was going on, although in which way 0:06:02.880 --> 0:06:06.080 he was confused it remains to be seen. Maybe he is, 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:08.720 he was talking about his ex wife who had died 0:06:08.760 --> 0:06:13.800 two years before. She died more than two years Yeah, 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:16.200 and he also had a fiance that lived in Richmond. 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.760 So it's as I said, well, we're going to delve 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.440 into the whole PO history a little more in a minute. Here. 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:25.160 This is just kind of the brief synopsis overviews, super brief, right, 0:06:25.279 --> 0:06:29.599 it's just ten minutes, have the warm up. This is 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:35.640 me dribbling the ball around. I also, so let's let's 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:40.359 talk about quickly the whole problem with Moran. Doctor the doctor, 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:44.440 doctor John Joseph Moran, the only witness to pose final 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:48.280 four days because he denied all visitors who tried to come. 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:49.760 And it turns out there were a couple of people 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.760 who tried to come visit PO. Family members and such 0:06:53.200 --> 0:06:56.800 who heard about his condition and tried to visit him, 0:06:56.839 --> 0:07:00.520 and Dr Moran said no, no, he's not well enough. Yeah. 0:07:00.760 --> 0:07:03.200 They said he said it was excitable and violent or 0:07:03.240 --> 0:07:06.880 something like that that. I'm not really clear on this either. 0:07:07.000 --> 0:07:10.520 Did were there any nurses that attended Poe in those 0:07:10.520 --> 0:07:13.880 four days? It sounds like it was just Miran. I 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:18.360 seem to remember something about a nurse, but it was 0:07:18.520 --> 0:07:22.080 very vague. And I think again, the problem is that 0:07:22.480 --> 0:07:26.840 their accounts were not recorded. Moran is the only one 0:07:26.880 --> 0:07:29.240 who wrote this stuff down, and as we're going to 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:33.640 talk about, talked at length about it. But I think 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:37.520 that there was probably nurses, but they just right, well, who, yeah, 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:40.360 who writes the records down at that time, right now, nurses. 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:45.520 Everything's tracked, Yeah, but not in these days, not in 0:07:45.640 --> 0:07:51.520 the mid eighteen hundreds. Miran, it turns out, changed his 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:56.000 story more than a few times, and very drastically. Some 0:07:56.360 --> 0:08:01.320 say that, you know, Poe was famous, the death was unexplained. 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:04.280 It was he was just trying to kind of add 0:08:04.400 --> 0:08:09.720 some romantic drama to the whole situation. For example, one 0:08:09.720 --> 0:08:12.640 of the great examples of that is that it's generally 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.600 accepted that pose very last words where Lord helped this 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:19.240 poor soul, or help my poor soul. But later Moran 0:08:19.400 --> 0:08:21.880 claimed that his last words were he took a deep 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:25.040 breath in and then said, the arched heavens encompassed me, 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:28.280 and God has his decree legibly written upon the front 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:32.720 lists of frontlets of every created human being and demons 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.840 incarnate their goals will be the seething waves of blank despair. 0:08:37.080 --> 0:08:41.040 And then died, so as you can see somebody that 0:08:41.080 --> 0:08:46.240 was incoherent for days. Yeah, so it's it's worrying that 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:49.120 he changed all of that stuff. And yeah, I think 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:52.200 for you can a little bit say, yes, he was 0:08:52.240 --> 0:08:55.520 trying to make the story sound so much more romantic. 0:08:55.960 --> 0:08:59.680 But on the other hand, he also changed pose admittance 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:03.720 state four different times, and that prose style does not 0:09:04.000 --> 0:09:07.880 sound like POSE. So I because I I have issues 0:09:07.920 --> 0:09:10.240 with it, just because he changes his stuff so much 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:14.240 and that just doesn't sound like the things that we know. 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:18.319 The the cadence in the style of all the writings 0:09:18.320 --> 0:09:21.280 of PO that doesn't really match it. I know he 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:22.959 was feeling a little bit under the weather, though, and 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:28.679 that always throws up. Yeah, your style drastically changes what 0:09:28.720 --> 0:09:32.079 was I thinking. I don't know. Moran also lied about 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:36.880 having tried to contact pose aunt slash mother in law. Listen, 0:09:36.920 --> 0:09:39.400 it's it's complicated, and again we'll talk about this later, 0:09:39.440 --> 0:09:41.400 but yes, his aunt and mother in law were the 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.080 same person. And most troubling for me, of course, is 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:47.640 that there's no records or death certificate for PO, which 0:09:47.720 --> 0:09:50.000 of course means that we don't have a cause of 0:09:50.040 --> 0:09:55.320 death officially. Officially, there are some theories out there, which 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:58.400 we shall speak of in the theory section, but I 0:09:58.440 --> 0:10:03.480 want to talk about pose super tragic life first. Ready, Yeah, 0:10:03.760 --> 0:10:08.600 let's do this, Okay. Edgar Allan Poe born January nineteenth, 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:14.559 eighteen o nine, in Boston to two actors. His father 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:16.880 abandoned the family when he was a year old, and 0:10:16.920 --> 0:10:20.000 then his mom died when he was two years old. 0:10:20.720 --> 0:10:24.360 And I don't know how he got connected to John 0:10:24.400 --> 0:10:28.000 and Francis Allen of Richmond, but they took poor little 0:10:28.120 --> 0:10:31.200 Edgar in for pretty much the rest of his life. 0:10:30.640 --> 0:10:34.800 I don't have a clear recollection, but I think that 0:10:34.880 --> 0:10:37.200 they were either friends of the family or they were 0:10:37.640 --> 0:10:40.800 some kind of relative aunt, uncle, something like that, and 0:10:40.880 --> 0:10:44.600 that's how they took him in. It wasn't just some 0:10:44.800 --> 0:10:49.160 random couple that said, will take this poor orphan boy. Sure, 0:10:49.200 --> 0:10:51.120 I'm sure, I mean, surely there was a connection, but 0:10:51.480 --> 0:10:53.280 I don't know what There was a family connection. I'm 0:10:53.280 --> 0:10:57.280 almost positive of that. I don't think they were relatives. Okay, Again, 0:10:57.320 --> 0:10:59.080 I'm a little fuzzy on that because I've read this 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:01.040 so many times. I've kind of glossed over there. Yeah, 0:11:01.080 --> 0:11:03.320 there's and there's you know, and then more family comes 0:11:03.320 --> 0:11:05.959 in later, and it's just yeah, I think I think 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:08.199 that kind of arrangement was pretty common in those days 0:11:08.200 --> 0:11:10.040 because people died like flies, and so there are a 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:13.800 lot of kids left orphans. Yeah. Yeah, So the Alan's 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:19.320 never formally adopted Edgar, but he did live with them 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.760 and they did support him for pretty much like well 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:31.320 into his twenties. Yes. Uh, the father, John Allan was 0:11:31.440 --> 0:11:36.520 kind of a jerk. He reports are that he fluctuated 0:11:36.559 --> 0:11:41.800 between just spoiling the crap out of Edgar and being abusive, 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.920 both emotionally and physically. So is that like pendulum swing? 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:48.359 And so they fought a lot, as you can imagine, 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:54.080 and Edgar joined the army under a pseudonym. I'd have 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.679 to look it up, Captain James T. Kert. Nothing like that. 0:11:57.840 --> 0:12:01.400 Nothing so awesome is that, I know, But I don't 0:12:01.400 --> 0:12:04.120 think it really matters that much. But you know, through 0:12:04.160 --> 0:12:07.479 his life, Poe did have a penchant for using pseudonyms. 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:11.439 He did it a lot, So I can only imagine 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.480 that this was, you know, his early stages of doing that, 0:12:14.559 --> 0:12:16.240 and then he just continued that on through his life 0:12:16.240 --> 0:12:19.319 because it worked for it, because well, you remember we 0:12:19.520 --> 0:12:23.320 see early eighteen hundreds. There's no way to verify who 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:28.720 you are, Jeff Papers, No, I lost him. Okay, I 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.800 guess you're you're that guy, ye, easy enough. Yeah, he 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.120 lied about his age. He was eighteen. He said he 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:38.880 was twenty one, and then he used the money that 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:40.800 he made in the army to kind of start his 0:12:41.280 --> 0:12:45.360 publishing career as an author. His adopted mother died in 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:50.360 eighteen twenty nine and John that caused John Allen and 0:12:50.960 --> 0:12:54.960 Edgar to kind of reconcile. It was that, among a 0:12:55.000 --> 0:12:58.560 lot of other things. It's very involved story. Wikipedia will 0:12:58.679 --> 0:13:01.439 be a friend if you actually hair to know well. 0:13:01.480 --> 0:13:04.400 And there's all kinds of histories on po out there 0:13:04.480 --> 0:13:07.880 that are in not necessarily Internet form, but printed from 0:13:09.000 --> 0:13:11.600 a litany of books about the guys. I can pick 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:15.040 up any of them. Yeah. So, after Poe got out 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:19.280 of the army, he moved in with his widowed actual 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:23.000 aunt like blood relative aunt and her daughter, Virginia Clem. 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:27.160 Virginia was fourteen years younger than Poe, but that didn't 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:33.040 stop him from marrying her at the young age of thirteen. Sorry, 0:13:33.320 --> 0:13:39.640 having a momentary. This practice is so weird that I 0:13:39.760 --> 0:13:44.240 understand that it wasn't uncommon, but it still doesn't stop 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:48.520 me from being skeeved out. But there's actually there's a 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:51.280 bit of speculation around this. There's some kind of mystery 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:57.880 around this marriage as well, because since the aunt was widowed, 0:13:58.360 --> 0:14:03.600 she didn't have any income. The only soul income maker died. 0:14:03.720 --> 0:14:06.439 Pretty much everybody in that family died and it was 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:10.320 just Virginia and her mom, and Poe wasn't making a 0:14:10.360 --> 0:14:12.600 lot of money, but he was making money and he 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:17.120 lived with these people, and it's speculated that the relationship 0:14:17.240 --> 0:14:21.120 with Virginia could have been more of like a sister relationship, 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:23.960 and that he saw a way to be able to 0:14:24.040 --> 0:14:27.920 provide for them by marrying Virginia. On the other hand, 0:14:28.200 --> 0:14:30.520 there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that says actually they 0:14:30.520 --> 0:14:33.480 were like crazy in love. He once wrote to a friend, 0:14:33.600 --> 0:14:36.080 I see no one among the living as beautiful as 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:45.120 my little wife. Okay, right that just okay, I'm ignoring that. Yeah, no, 0:14:45.200 --> 0:14:48.120 you should, because Poe had a couple of scandals with 0:14:48.320 --> 0:14:53.480 other poets of the time, lady poets. But Virginia and 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.120 Poe were married for eleven years. She got cholera and 0:14:56.240 --> 0:15:02.280 died at twenty four. That's three very important women to 0:15:02.400 --> 0:15:05.160 po dead. And you know before he was forty, man, 0:15:05.200 --> 0:15:08.000 no wonder he was depressed his mother's stepmother and his wife. 0:15:08.080 --> 0:15:12.480 Yeah that's that's yeah, that's but I thinks Joe pointed 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:15.760 out this is actually not uncommon at the time. Edgar 0:15:15.800 --> 0:15:17.920 Allen to Post seems to have been a little more 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.680 sensitive to it than I think a lot of dudes. 0:15:21.720 --> 0:15:24.320 I'm not saying people in general, but dudes of the 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:28.560 time were about that kind of stuff at that time, 0:15:29.120 --> 0:15:31.360 A few years after she had died. I believe I 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:33.680 don't have the actual dates in front of me because 0:15:34.360 --> 0:15:37.240 I don't know why, because I don't know why I 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:41.040 didn't write them down. But he po reconnected with a 0:15:41.160 --> 0:15:45.040 childhood friend named Sarah Royster, who he may or may 0:15:45.080 --> 0:15:47.400 not have actually been engaged to before he left for 0:15:47.400 --> 0:15:50.200 the army. They were friends when he was living with 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:53.440 Alan's and she had accepted his proposal. I think within 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:58.280 a month of his death. Something around that. Can I 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:01.560 ask a question, because I know I've speculation about this 0:16:01.720 --> 0:16:08.240 is that when pose adopted mother died and then his 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:13.120 father eventually died, he had expected to get an inheritance 0:16:13.200 --> 0:16:18.120 from his father, but his father had remarried, and after 0:16:18.200 --> 0:16:20.920 he'd remarried, written him out of the will. So I 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:24.800 know that there was stuff about, well, I've I'm really 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:27.880 broke and this is really hard, and I've heard some 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:35.440 stuff that said that his engagement to her, to Sarah 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.800 was some ploy to get him back into money. We'll 0:16:39.840 --> 0:16:42.760 actually talk about that. There's some stuff about that in 0:16:42.760 --> 0:16:46.240 the theory section. Yeah, but it is worth mentioning that 0:16:46.320 --> 0:16:49.640 Poe in his entire life, was paid nine dollars for 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:52.760 the Raven. Like that's the total sum of the money 0:16:52.760 --> 0:16:55.160 he made off of that, which, granted, that's the equivalent 0:16:55.200 --> 0:17:00.280 of two million dollars today, granted it is more right 0:17:00.400 --> 0:17:02.440 then we think of it would buy you more than 0:17:02.480 --> 0:17:06.000 just a meal. That maybe it was a couple of 0:17:06.040 --> 0:17:08.600 months pay back in those days, but that's like, that's 0:17:08.640 --> 0:17:12.679 incredible to me. The Raven. You guys, just like pause 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:15.560 the podcast for a second, take a moment to think 0:17:15.600 --> 0:17:21.200 about that. Okay, you back, Yeah, have you thought about it? Okay. 0:17:21.359 --> 0:17:24.760 I mentioned that Poe was found on October three outside 0:17:24.760 --> 0:17:28.480 a polling station which was sometimes called Gunner's Hall but 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:34.120 usually called Ryan's Tavern. Just again in the eighteen hundreds, 0:17:34.480 --> 0:17:36.280 you just kind of call stuff what you call stuff. 0:17:36.400 --> 0:17:39.080 That's true. I mean, that's how a lot of places 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:43.280 got named. Oh that's uh, that's Billy's Canyon over there, 0:17:43.280 --> 0:17:46.520 because Billy lives in that canyon, and then years later 0:17:46.520 --> 0:17:50.240 it's called Billy's Canon. It's just how it happens. This 0:17:51.320 --> 0:17:54.920 his discovery on the third was actually after about a 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:58.200 week of totally unaccounted for time. It's one of the 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:00.800 other things that makes this such a big mystery. Nobody 0:18:00.840 --> 0:18:05.680 knows at all where Poe was for that week at all. 0:18:05.840 --> 0:18:11.360 They're literally, well, we'll talk about that in theories. Poe 0:18:11.400 --> 0:18:14.840 had left his home in Richmond, Virginia on September a 0:18:14.880 --> 0:18:19.120 week prior. Pose fiance Sarah remarked that he looked ill, 0:18:19.440 --> 0:18:21.560 so he visited a doctor who was also his friend, 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:26.600 named John Carter. Carter advised Poe that he should not 0:18:26.760 --> 0:18:30.560 travel on in his condition. This was, in fact the 0:18:30.640 --> 0:18:33.680 day before. He actually visited Carter the day before he left. 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.440 So Carter said, hey, don't travel, and Poet said, I'm 0:18:36.960 --> 0:18:41.879 gonna I'm leaving bye. What do you remember? What was? 0:18:42.880 --> 0:18:45.160 What was it was that the heart condition? He said, 0:18:45.520 --> 0:18:47.639 had a heart condition? He didn't. He said he had 0:18:47.640 --> 0:18:52.320 a condition and that had recently suffered an attack and 0:18:52.359 --> 0:18:54.800 if he had another such attack, it would kill him. 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.440 He didn't never define what it was or anything. They're 0:18:58.760 --> 0:19:01.040 so vague about that kind of stuff. Back in those days, 0:19:01.800 --> 0:19:05.240 an attack of you know, the hebbs or something like that, 0:19:05.240 --> 0:19:08.959 that would have been an official it would have this 0:19:09.000 --> 0:19:14.000 is these are the days of lady vibrators for you know, hysteria. Yeah, 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:17.879 but I do. I do know that there is. There's 0:19:18.240 --> 0:19:23.320 letters from Poe that talk about having been ill before 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.720 this trip, and he said something, I think I have 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:30.360 the cholera or the spasms, and he had evidently been 0:19:30.400 --> 0:19:36.040 taking medication for cholera. So it's it is evident that 0:19:36.119 --> 0:19:40.080 there was something not right some what it is I 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:43.120 don't know, but he did have something going on exactly, 0:19:43.160 --> 0:19:45.399 So this isn't just out of the blue one guy's 0:19:45.480 --> 0:19:49.200 diagnosis of note, just to bring it back to Carter 0:19:49.280 --> 0:19:54.800 here is that when Poe left Carter's house, he who 0:19:55.160 --> 0:19:59.399 buy a mistake air quotes included, took Carter's walking stick 0:19:59.560 --> 0:20:04.240 walking Hayne in place of his own. Carter's walking stick 0:20:04.359 --> 0:20:10.600 had a sword concealed in it. That's so cool. There's 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:13.840 a letter from Carter about this whole incident, and it 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.480 says Poe was just standing there playing with it, the cane, 0:20:17.960 --> 0:20:20.200 and just kind of looks at Carter and says, I'm 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:21.800 just gonna go down to the tavern for a minute. 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:24.200 I'll be right back, and just like walks out with 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:30.400 the cane, never to return, but not to be kind 0:20:30.400 --> 0:20:32.840 of absent minded. And he had brought his own walking stick, 0:20:32.880 --> 0:20:37.000 and he had actually remarked on he had said, oh, 0:20:37.040 --> 0:20:40.760 this is really nice, had remarked on it. Carter had 0:20:40.760 --> 0:20:42.679 been like, yeah, I'm super proud of it. But they 0:20:42.680 --> 0:20:44.520 had a conversation about it, and Poe just kind of 0:20:44.520 --> 0:20:50.080 looked at it and said, I'll be back. It seems 0:20:50.480 --> 0:20:54.320 The thing that I want to make apparent to people 0:20:54.359 --> 0:20:57.000 is that it seems from the accounts that this was 0:20:57.040 --> 0:21:00.520 an intentional thing that Poe did not necessarily that he thought, oh, 0:21:00.560 --> 0:21:04.480 this is my walking stick, I'll take it. He looked 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:06.920 at Carter's and said, I will have that, thank you. 0:21:07.320 --> 0:21:09.400 This is very cool, and I will take it now, 0:21:09.480 --> 0:21:13.159 thank you. Obviously, his life was on his threat. And 0:21:13.200 --> 0:21:19.480 we'll talk about there's some dispute, like we talked about earlier, 0:21:19.520 --> 0:21:22.680 about what Carter told Poe was wrong with him. Some 0:21:22.720 --> 0:21:25.400 people say that it was a brain tumor. Some people 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:27.440 say it was a heart thing. Some people say it 0:21:27.480 --> 0:21:30.840 was the cholera. If I remember correctly, the cholera had 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:37.120 been resolved a month or so prior so recent. But 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:39.760 because there's there's a span of time and his letters 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.080 to people where he says I'm so ill, I can 0:21:42.119 --> 0:21:46.080 barely hold a pen or the quill, and then there's 0:21:46.160 --> 0:21:49.879 letters after that which you're dated weeks later. I feel 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.600 so much better. I'm a different man. So yeah, there's 0:21:53.600 --> 0:21:57.520 definitely some time. Yeah. He also apparently had an irregular heartbeat, 0:21:57.680 --> 0:22:02.520 which it is not always problematic. I have any regular heartbeat, 0:22:03.280 --> 0:22:07.400 my doctor says, and it's fine. Yeah, And so it depends. 0:22:08.200 --> 0:22:12.879 I don't know. Uh. He also Poe fun fact, and 0:22:12.960 --> 0:22:15.520 pretty much everything you've heard about Poe being a drunk 0:22:16.440 --> 0:22:20.280 came from his rival writing about how drunk he was 0:22:20.320 --> 0:22:24.000 all the time after his death. Wasn't that Clark? Yeah, Poe, 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:28.360 Actually it wasn't Clark. Almost all of the accounts from 0:22:28.359 --> 0:22:32.080 the time Paul was actually part of the Tembrance movement, 0:22:32.280 --> 0:22:37.480 like he death. At the time of death, he had 0:22:37.640 --> 0:22:41.040 had about of drinking years and years and years and 0:22:41.119 --> 0:22:43.440 years and in his very early life. And it turns 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:47.080 out that when Poe drank, he was taken by terrible 0:22:47.160 --> 0:22:51.600 bout bouts of insanity. He was such a lightweight that 0:22:52.000 --> 0:22:55.400 one glass of wine would just do him totally in. 0:22:55.920 --> 0:22:58.520 He was just smashed after one glass of wine, apparently. 0:22:59.480 --> 0:23:03.760 I I do want to raise that I didn't really 0:23:03.920 --> 0:23:09.800 find any accounting of that other than from all of 0:23:09.800 --> 0:23:13.240 this official stuff from his rival, so I have to 0:23:13.359 --> 0:23:16.600 question that. Yeah, there was I can't remember the guy's name. Now, 0:23:16.600 --> 0:23:18.560 I should have written this down. I was researching this, 0:23:18.640 --> 0:23:21.200 so somebody else who knew him, not for many years. 0:23:21.200 --> 0:23:24.280 He said that they would occasionally drink together and there 0:23:24.359 --> 0:23:27.399 was nothing bizarre or anything like that. They'd get drunk. 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:29.760 But that's because he sat around and drink brandy for 0:23:29.800 --> 0:23:33.440 an hour. Yeah, but distance, Yeah, nothing nothing about and 0:23:33.440 --> 0:23:35.480 and and awesome. But they also did not appear to 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:37.640 be an alcoholic, because he would go for months without 0:23:37.640 --> 0:23:41.560 a drink. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, as far as 0:23:41.600 --> 0:23:44.680 I can tell from the accounts, there is some evidence 0:23:44.720 --> 0:23:47.320 to suggest that he was a lightweight, that he couldn't 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:50.919 really handles alcohol. His sister had the same thing, so 0:23:51.560 --> 0:23:53.800 we'll talk about that a little bit in theories as well. 0:23:54.760 --> 0:23:57.320 I brought that up to mention that the night that 0:23:57.359 --> 0:24:00.359 he visited Carter, where he said he was going was 0:24:00.440 --> 0:24:03.760 down to a tavern, a local tavern, and the tavern 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:08.440 owner reports that Poe left totally sobering, in high spirits 0:24:08.480 --> 0:24:11.920 and seemed totally fine. That does not explain why Poe 0:24:12.119 --> 0:24:15.000 left his luggage in his rented room and said tavern, 0:24:16.160 --> 0:24:20.919 but that's fine. This actually caused some controversy during the 0:24:21.000 --> 0:24:24.040 time because when Poe was found, he obviously wasn't coherent 0:24:24.119 --> 0:24:26.080 enough to say like where his luggage was or anything, 0:24:26.119 --> 0:24:28.120 and it turned out that it was still in Richmond 0:24:28.160 --> 0:24:33.639 in this tavern. His nephew went to Baltimore once he 0:24:33.680 --> 0:24:36.760 found out, yeah, once where where Poe was found. Once 0:24:36.760 --> 0:24:41.879 he found out about po and he and harrigr Harring, 0:24:42.160 --> 0:24:46.680 Sorry I don't know why I keep saying harrogast started 0:24:46.720 --> 0:24:51.760 they started searching for the luggage as you would, you know, 0:24:51.800 --> 0:24:53.639 if somebody said, well, I don't know where my luggage is, 0:24:53.760 --> 0:24:56.159 he would go looking for it. And he wrote in 0:24:56.200 --> 0:24:59.200