Speaker 1: Thinking sideways. I don't understand. You've never known stories of things.
Speaker 1: We simply don't know the answer. Too deep into the darkness,
Speaker 1: peering long, I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams.
Speaker 1: No mortal ever dared to dream before? Hey, guys, was
Speaker 1: that singing Sideways? The podcast I Am Devin, joined as
Speaker 1: always by Joe and Steve. Tonight we're talking about the
Speaker 1: somehow still mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. You didn't
Speaker 1: know his death was an unsolved mystery, did you? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I did, no. Well, I saw that really terrible John
Speaker 1: Qusack movie The Raven years ago. I didn't see it,
Speaker 1: so I would high recommend that you don't. Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: It starts with a letter that reads, there, sir, there's
Speaker 1: a gentleman rather the worse for wear at Ryan's fourth
Speaker 1: Ward Poles, who goes under the cogniment of Edgar A Poe,
Speaker 1: and who appears to being great distress. And he says
Speaker 1: he is acquainted with you. He is in need of
Speaker 1: immediate assistance, yours in haste, Joseph W. Walker to Dr J. E. Snodgrass.
Speaker 1: So the story goes. Poe was found either in the
Speaker 1: street or in the tavern room of public house tavern
Speaker 1: also pulling station. It was voting time. Yeah, they don't.
Speaker 1: They multitasks back in those days. That's how you got
Speaker 1: people to vote. Was, Yeah, you're like, drink and then
Speaker 1: go vote. Well, no, it's the other way around. Vote
Speaker 1: and we'll give you a drink. We should do that again.
Speaker 1: I think they're still doing that. He was described as delirious,
Speaker 1: with his appearance being quote repulsive unquote. His hair was unkempt,
Speaker 1: he seemed unwashed and unshaven. His clothes were all ragged
Speaker 1: and torn, which was very atypical of po He was
Speaker 1: very well dressed, known for being well dressed on almost
Speaker 1: all times. It's worth mentioning probably also that the clothes
Speaker 1: that he was wearing were later discovered that they weren't his.
Speaker 1: He'd for some reason, been wearing someone else's clothes. When
Speaker 1: he was found, he was taken to a local hospital.
Speaker 1: He spent four days and fairly incoherent stupor before dying
Speaker 1: on October seven. In those four days, uh Poe was
Speaker 1: never coherent enough or couldn't remember what had caused him
Speaker 1: to be in the state that he was in. And
Speaker 1: that this we're going to talk about in a minute.
Speaker 1: But this just comes from some fairly maybe unreliable sources.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to tell if it was that he
Speaker 1: was so incoherent the whole time that he couldn't actually
Speaker 1: tell people what had happened to him, or if he
Speaker 1: just couldn't remember what had happened to him, or if
Speaker 1: it didn't get recorded. Yeah. Yeah, the doctor who was
Speaker 1: taken care of him actually, who has submitted some fairly
Speaker 1: inconsistent accounts of the whole thing. Yeah, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about that. I wouldn't let other
Speaker 1: people in. So maybe co maybe Pe was torobably coherent
Speaker 1: the whole time and the doctor just gassed him and
Speaker 1: killed him. Yeah, I know it is. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: it's a for all we know, that's what happened. I,
Speaker 1: as Joe kind of mentioned or alluded to to, wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed visitors while he was in the hospital. He was
Speaker 1: kept in what's described as a prison like cell. It
Speaker 1: even had bars on the windows. It was often reserved
Speaker 1: for drunks, you know, sleep it off. The dunk tank,
Speaker 1: basically hospital the hospital drunk tank. Yeah, as I said,
Speaker 1: he didn't have any visitors. The attending physician's name was
Speaker 1: doctor John Joseph Moran, and a lot of people had
Speaker 1: been saying that Poe was found drunk and that's why
Speaker 1: he was in this stupor, but Moran said, no, Poe
Speaker 1: wasn't drunk. He was totally sober. But then again, as
Speaker 1: we already mentioned a little bit, it's hard to tell.
Speaker 1: We just have the one account, so who knows what
Speaker 1: was true and what was not true. Apparently Poe told
Speaker 1: Moran when Moran said, oh, soon you're going to have
Speaker 1: friends being able to come visit you, post said the
Speaker 1: best thing that his friends could do for him would
Speaker 1: be to blow out his brains with a pistol. Well
Speaker 1: that's not well, it's not like Poe was known for
Speaker 1: not being more. I mean, it wasn't he wasn't all sunshine.
Speaker 1: That wasn't so much Poe. Mrs Harring tried to visit him,
Speaker 1: but we later find out through letters that it was
Speaker 1: in fact Mr Harrying, which was his uncle in law.
Speaker 1: Oh so it was his uncle that was trying to
Speaker 1: come see him, and not a woman. Okay, that it
Speaker 1: was recorded as a missus, but again it was Moran
Speaker 1: who recorded it. So, and we don't know how late,
Speaker 1: how far after Poe died that he wrote it down,
Speaker 1: So why his account might be a little mixed exactly.
Speaker 1: Poe was said to have called out Reynolds repeatedly on
Speaker 1: the night of his death. This is a huge, unexplained mystery.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of speculation about who Reynolds might be.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of Reynolds is a fairly common last
Speaker 1: name in that area at that time. Could be Reynolds,
Speaker 1: trap he just wanted something. He just wanted some foil man.
Speaker 1: But it even occurred to me that possibly I was.
Speaker 1: I did did a little research and couldn't find anything else,
Speaker 1: but occurred to me that maybe Reynolds there was a
Speaker 1: brand of laudanum or some other drug that was produced
Speaker 1: by the realms. Yeah, it's always possible. He also spoke
Speaker 1: about a wife that he had in Richmond, but more
Speaker 1: on this later because oh, by the way, Podon actually
Speaker 1: have a wife at the time at all, particularly not
Speaker 1: in Richmond. He did live in Richmond. He was probably
Speaker 1: confused not what was going on, although in which way
Speaker 1: he was confused it remains to be seen. Maybe he is,
Speaker 1: he was talking about his ex wife who had died
Speaker 1: two years before. She died more than two years Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he also had a fiance that lived in Richmond.
Speaker 1: So it's as I said, well, we're going to delve
Speaker 1: into the whole PO history a little more in a minute. Here.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of the brief synopsis overviews, super brief, right,
Speaker 1: it's just ten minutes, have the warm up. This is
Speaker 1: me dribbling the ball around. I also, so let's let's
Speaker 1: talk about quickly the whole problem with Moran. Doctor the doctor,
Speaker 1: doctor John Joseph Moran, the only witness to pose final
Speaker 1: four days because he denied all visitors who tried to come.
Speaker 1: And it turns out there were a couple of people
Speaker 1: who tried to come visit PO. Family members and such
Speaker 1: who heard about his condition and tried to visit him,
Speaker 1: and Dr Moran said no, no, he's not well enough. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They said he said it was excitable and violent or
Speaker 1: something like that that. I'm not really clear on this either.
Speaker 1: Did were there any nurses that attended Poe in those
Speaker 1: four days? It sounds like it was just Miran. I
Speaker 1: seem to remember something about a nurse, but it was
Speaker 1: very vague. And I think again, the problem is that
Speaker 1: their accounts were not recorded. Moran is the only one
Speaker 1: who wrote this stuff down, and as we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about, talked at length about it. But I think
Speaker 1: that there was probably nurses, but they just right, well, who, yeah,
Speaker 1: who writes the records down at that time, right now, nurses.
Speaker 1: Everything's tracked, Yeah, but not in these days, not in
Speaker 1: the mid eighteen hundreds. Miran, it turns out, changed his
Speaker 1: story more than a few times, and very drastically. Some
Speaker 1: say that, you know, Poe was famous, the death was unexplained.
Speaker 1: It was he was just trying to kind of add
Speaker 1: some romantic drama to the whole situation. For example, one
Speaker 1: of the great examples of that is that it's generally
Speaker 1: accepted that pose very last words where Lord helped this
Speaker 1: poor soul, or help my poor soul. But later Moran
Speaker 1: claimed that his last words were he took a deep
Speaker 1: breath in and then said, the arched heavens encompassed me,
Speaker 1: and God has his decree legibly written upon the front
Speaker 1: lists of frontlets of every created human being and demons
Speaker 1: incarnate their goals will be the seething waves of blank despair.
Speaker 1: And then died, so as you can see somebody that
Speaker 1: was incoherent for days. Yeah, so it's it's worrying that
Speaker 1: he changed all of that stuff. And yeah, I think
Speaker 1: for you can a little bit say, yes, he was
Speaker 1: trying to make the story sound so much more romantic.
Speaker 1: But on the other hand, he also changed pose admittance
Speaker 1: state four different times, and that prose style does not
Speaker 1: sound like POSE. So I because I I have issues
Speaker 1: with it, just because he changes his stuff so much
Speaker 1: and that just doesn't sound like the things that we know.
Speaker 1: The the cadence in the style of all the writings
Speaker 1: of PO that doesn't really match it. I know he
Speaker 1: was feeling a little bit under the weather, though, and
Speaker 1: that always throws up. Yeah, your style drastically changes what
Speaker 1: was I thinking. I don't know. Moran also lied about
Speaker 1: having tried to contact pose aunt slash mother in law. Listen,
Speaker 1: it's it's complicated, and again we'll talk about this later,
Speaker 1: but yes, his aunt and mother in law were the
Speaker 1: same person. And most troubling for me, of course, is
Speaker 1: that there's no records or death certificate for PO, which
Speaker 1: of course means that we don't have a cause of
Speaker 1: death officially. Officially, there are some theories out there, which
Speaker 1: we shall speak of in the theory section, but I
Speaker 1: want to talk about pose super tragic life first. Ready, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's do this, Okay. Edgar Allan Poe born January nineteenth,
Speaker 1: eighteen o nine, in Boston to two actors. His father
Speaker 1: abandoned the family when he was a year old, and
Speaker 1: then his mom died when he was two years old.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how he got connected to John
Speaker 1: and Francis Allen of Richmond, but they took poor little
Speaker 1: Edgar in for pretty much the rest of his life.
Speaker 1: I don't have a clear recollection, but I think that
Speaker 1: they were either friends of the family or they were
Speaker 1: some kind of relative aunt, uncle, something like that, and
Speaker 1: that's how they took him in. It wasn't just some
Speaker 1: random couple that said, will take this poor orphan boy. Sure,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, I mean, surely there was a connection, but
Speaker 1: I don't know what There was a family connection. I'm
Speaker 1: almost positive of that. I don't think they were relatives. Okay, Again,
Speaker 1: I'm a little fuzzy on that because I've read this
Speaker 1: so many times. I've kind of glossed over there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's and there's you know, and then more family comes
Speaker 1: in later, and it's just yeah, I think I think
Speaker 1: that kind of arrangement was pretty common in those days
Speaker 1: because people died like flies, and so there are a
Speaker 1: lot of kids left orphans. Yeah. Yeah, So the Alan's
Speaker 1: never formally adopted Edgar, but he did live with them
Speaker 1: and they did support him for pretty much like well
Speaker 1: into his twenties. Yes. Uh, the father, John Allan was
Speaker 1: kind of a jerk. He reports are that he fluctuated
Speaker 1: between just spoiling the crap out of Edgar and being abusive,
Speaker 1: both emotionally and physically. So is that like pendulum swing?
Speaker 1: And so they fought a lot, as you can imagine,
Speaker 1: and Edgar joined the army under a pseudonym. I'd have
Speaker 1: to look it up, Captain James T. Kert. Nothing like that.
Speaker 1: Nothing so awesome is that, I know, But I don't
Speaker 1: think it really matters that much. But you know, through
Speaker 1: his life, Poe did have a penchant for using pseudonyms.
Speaker 1: He did it a lot, So I can only imagine
Speaker 1: that this was, you know, his early stages of doing that,
Speaker 1: and then he just continued that on through his life
Speaker 1: because it worked for it, because well, you remember we
Speaker 1: see early eighteen hundreds. There's no way to verify who
Speaker 1: you are, Jeff Papers, No, I lost him. Okay, I
Speaker 1: guess you're you're that guy, ye, easy enough. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: lied about his age. He was eighteen. He said he
Speaker 1: was twenty one, and then he used the money that
Speaker 1: he made in the army to kind of start his
Speaker 1: publishing career as an author. His adopted mother died in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty nine and John that caused John Allen and
Speaker 1: Edgar to kind of reconcile. It was that, among a
Speaker 1: lot of other things. It's very involved story. Wikipedia will
Speaker 1: be a friend if you actually hair to know well.
Speaker 1: And there's all kinds of histories on po out there
Speaker 1: that are in not necessarily Internet form, but printed from
Speaker 1: a litany of books about the guys. I can pick
Speaker 1: up any of them. Yeah. So, after Poe got out
Speaker 1: of the army, he moved in with his widowed actual
Speaker 1: aunt like blood relative aunt and her daughter, Virginia Clem.
Speaker 1: Virginia was fourteen years younger than Poe, but that didn't
Speaker 1: stop him from marrying her at the young age of thirteen. Sorry,
Speaker 1: having a momentary. This practice is so weird that I
Speaker 1: understand that it wasn't uncommon, but it still doesn't stop
Speaker 1: me from being skeeved out. But there's actually there's a
Speaker 1: bit of speculation around this. There's some kind of mystery
Speaker 1: around this marriage as well, because since the aunt was widowed,
Speaker 1: she didn't have any income. The only soul income maker died.
Speaker 1: Pretty much everybody in that family died and it was
Speaker 1: just Virginia and her mom, and Poe wasn't making a
Speaker 1: lot of money, but he was making money and he
Speaker 1: lived with these people, and it's speculated that the relationship
Speaker 1: with Virginia could have been more of like a sister relationship,
Speaker 1: and that he saw a way to be able to
Speaker 1: provide for them by marrying Virginia. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that says actually they
Speaker 1: were like crazy in love. He once wrote to a friend,
Speaker 1: I see no one among the living as beautiful as
Speaker 1: my little wife. Okay, right that just okay, I'm ignoring that. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you should, because Poe had a couple of scandals with
Speaker 1: other poets of the time, lady poets. But Virginia and
Speaker 1: Poe were married for eleven years. She got cholera and
Speaker 1: died at twenty four. That's three very important women to
Speaker 1: po dead. And you know before he was forty, man,
Speaker 1: no wonder he was depressed his mother's stepmother and his wife.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's that's yeah, that's but I thinks Joe pointed
Speaker 1: out this is actually not uncommon at the time. Edgar
Speaker 1: Allen to Post seems to have been a little more
Speaker 1: sensitive to it than I think a lot of dudes.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying people in general, but dudes of the
Speaker 1: time were about that kind of stuff at that time,
Speaker 1: A few years after she had died. I believe I
Speaker 1: don't have the actual dates in front of me because
Speaker 1: I don't know why, because I don't know why I
Speaker 1: didn't write them down. But he po reconnected with a
Speaker 1: childhood friend named Sarah Royster, who he may or may
Speaker 1: not have actually been engaged to before he left for
Speaker 1: the army. They were friends when he was living with
Speaker 1: Alan's and she had accepted his proposal. I think within
Speaker 1: a month of his death. Something around that. Can I
Speaker 1: ask a question, because I know I've speculation about this
Speaker 1: is that when pose adopted mother died and then his
Speaker 1: father eventually died, he had expected to get an inheritance
Speaker 1: from his father, but his father had remarried, and after
Speaker 1: he'd remarried, written him out of the will. So I
Speaker 1: know that there was stuff about, well, I've I'm really
Speaker 1: broke and this is really hard, and I've heard some
Speaker 1: stuff that said that his engagement to her, to Sarah
Speaker 1: was some ploy to get him back into money. We'll
Speaker 1: actually talk about that. There's some stuff about that in
Speaker 1: the theory section. Yeah, but it is worth mentioning that
Speaker 1: Poe in his entire life, was paid nine dollars for
Speaker 1: the Raven. Like that's the total sum of the money
Speaker 1: he made off of that, which, granted, that's the equivalent
Speaker 1: of two million dollars today, granted it is more right
Speaker 1: then we think of it would buy you more than
Speaker 1: just a meal. That maybe it was a couple of
Speaker 1: months pay back in those days, but that's like, that's
Speaker 1: incredible to me. The Raven. You guys, just like pause
Speaker 1: the podcast for a second, take a moment to think
Speaker 1: about that. Okay, you back, Yeah, have you thought about it? Okay.
Speaker 1: I mentioned that Poe was found on October three outside
Speaker 1: a polling station which was sometimes called Gunner's Hall but
Speaker 1: usually called Ryan's Tavern. Just again in the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: you just kind of call stuff what you call stuff.
Speaker 1: That's true. I mean, that's how a lot of places
Speaker 1: got named. Oh that's uh, that's Billy's Canyon over there,
Speaker 1: because Billy lives in that canyon, and then years later
Speaker 1: it's called Billy's Canon. It's just how it happens. This
Speaker 1: his discovery on the third was actually after about a
Speaker 1: week of totally unaccounted for time. It's one of the
Speaker 1: other things that makes this such a big mystery. Nobody
Speaker 1: knows at all where Poe was for that week at all.
Speaker 1: They're literally, well, we'll talk about that in theories. Poe
Speaker 1: had left his home in Richmond, Virginia on September a
Speaker 1: week prior. Pose fiance Sarah remarked that he looked ill,
Speaker 1: so he visited a doctor who was also his friend,
Speaker 1: named John Carter. Carter advised Poe that he should not
Speaker 1: travel on in his condition. This was, in fact the
Speaker 1: day before. He actually visited Carter the day before he left.
Speaker 1: So Carter said, hey, don't travel, and Poet said, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm leaving bye. What do you remember? What was?
Speaker 1: What was it was that the heart condition? He said,
Speaker 1: had a heart condition? He didn't. He said he had
Speaker 1: a condition and that had recently suffered an attack and
Speaker 1: if he had another such attack, it would kill him.
Speaker 1: He didn't never define what it was or anything. They're
Speaker 1: so vague about that kind of stuff. Back in those days,
Speaker 1: an attack of you know, the hebbs or something like that,
Speaker 1: that would have been an official it would have this
Speaker 1: is these are the days of lady vibrators for you know, hysteria. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I do. I do know that there is. There's
Speaker 1: letters from Poe that talk about having been ill before
Speaker 1: this trip, and he said something, I think I have
Speaker 1: the cholera or the spasms, and he had evidently been
Speaker 1: taking medication for cholera. So it's it is evident that
Speaker 1: there was something not right some what it is I
Speaker 1: don't know, but he did have something going on exactly,
Speaker 1: So this isn't just out of the blue one guy's
Speaker 1: diagnosis of note, just to bring it back to Carter
Speaker 1: here is that when Poe left Carter's house, he who
Speaker 1: buy a mistake air quotes included, took Carter's walking stick
Speaker 1: walking Hayne in place of his own. Carter's walking stick
Speaker 1: had a sword concealed in it. That's so cool. There's
Speaker 1: a letter from Carter about this whole incident, and it
Speaker 1: says Poe was just standing there playing with it, the cane,
Speaker 1: and just kind of looks at Carter and says, I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna go down to the tavern for a minute.
Speaker 1: I'll be right back, and just like walks out with
Speaker 1: the cane, never to return, but not to be kind
Speaker 1: of absent minded. And he had brought his own walking stick,
Speaker 1: and he had actually remarked on he had said, oh,
Speaker 1: this is really nice, had remarked on it. Carter had
Speaker 1: been like, yeah, I'm super proud of it. But they
Speaker 1: had a conversation about it, and Poe just kind of
Speaker 1: looked at it and said, I'll be back. It seems
Speaker 1: The thing that I want to make apparent to people
Speaker 1: is that it seems from the accounts that this was
Speaker 1: an intentional thing that Poe did not necessarily that he thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this is my walking stick, I'll take it. He looked
Speaker 1: at Carter's and said, I will have that, thank you.
Speaker 1: This is very cool, and I will take it now,
Speaker 1: thank you. Obviously, his life was on his threat. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about there's some dispute, like we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: about what Carter told Poe was wrong with him. Some
Speaker 1: people say that it was a brain tumor. Some people
Speaker 1: say it was a heart thing. Some people say it
Speaker 1: was the cholera. If I remember correctly, the cholera had
Speaker 1: been resolved a month or so prior so recent. But
Speaker 1: because there's there's a span of time and his letters
Speaker 1: to people where he says I'm so ill, I can
Speaker 1: barely hold a pen or the quill, and then there's
Speaker 1: letters after that which you're dated weeks later. I feel
Speaker 1: so much better. I'm a different man. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: definitely some time. Yeah. He also apparently had an irregular heartbeat,
Speaker 1: which it is not always problematic. I have any regular heartbeat,
Speaker 1: my doctor says, and it's fine. Yeah, And so it depends.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Uh. He also Poe fun fact, and
Speaker 1: pretty much everything you've heard about Poe being a drunk
Speaker 1: came from his rival writing about how drunk he was
Speaker 1: all the time after his death. Wasn't that Clark? Yeah, Poe,
Speaker 1: Actually it wasn't Clark. Almost all of the accounts from
Speaker 1: the time Paul was actually part of the Tembrance movement,
Speaker 1: like he death. At the time of death, he had
Speaker 1: had about of drinking years and years and years and
Speaker 1: years and in his very early life. And it turns
Speaker 1: out that when Poe drank, he was taken by terrible
Speaker 1: bout bouts of insanity. He was such a lightweight that
Speaker 1: one glass of wine would just do him totally in.
Speaker 1: He was just smashed after one glass of wine, apparently.
Speaker 1: I I do want to raise that I didn't really
Speaker 1: find any accounting of that other than from all of
Speaker 1: this official stuff from his rival, so I have to
Speaker 1: question that. Yeah, there was I can't remember the guy's name. Now,
Speaker 1: I should have written this down. I was researching this,
Speaker 1: so somebody else who knew him, not for many years.
Speaker 1: He said that they would occasionally drink together and there
Speaker 1: was nothing bizarre or anything like that. They'd get drunk.
Speaker 1: But that's because he sat around and drink brandy for
Speaker 1: an hour. Yeah, but distance, Yeah, nothing nothing about and
Speaker 1: and and awesome. But they also did not appear to
Speaker 1: be an alcoholic, because he would go for months without
Speaker 1: a drink. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, as far as
Speaker 1: I can tell from the accounts, there is some evidence
Speaker 1: to suggest that he was a lightweight, that he couldn't
Speaker 1: really handles alcohol. His sister had the same thing, so
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that a little bit in theories as well.
Speaker 1: I brought that up to mention that the night that
Speaker 1: he visited Carter, where he said he was going was
Speaker 1: down to a tavern, a local tavern, and the tavern
Speaker 1: owner reports that Poe left totally sobering, in high spirits
Speaker 1: and seemed totally fine. That does not explain why Poe
Speaker 1: left his luggage in his rented room and said tavern,
Speaker 1: but that's fine. This actually caused some controversy during the
Speaker 1: time because when Poe was found, he obviously wasn't coherent
Speaker 1: enough to say like where his luggage was or anything,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that it was still in Richmond
Speaker 1: in this tavern. His nephew went to Baltimore once he
Speaker 1: found out, yeah, once where where Poe was found. Once
Speaker 1: he found out about po and he and harrigr Harring,
Speaker 1: Sorry I don't know why I keep saying harrogast started
Speaker 1: they started searching for the luggage as you would, you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody said, well, I don't know where my luggage is,
Speaker 1: he would go looking for it. And he wrote in
Speaker 1: a letter at the time he arrived in this city,
Speaker 1: where he spent the time he was here or under
Speaker 1: what circumstances I have been unable to ascertain. It appears
Speaker 1: that on Wednesday he was seen and recognized at one
Speaker 1: of the places of election in Old Town, and that
Speaker 1: his condition was such as to render it necessary to
Speaker 1: send him to the college, where he was tenderly nursed
Speaker 1: until the time of his death. Mr. Harring and myself
Speaker 1: have sought in vain for the trunk of the end
Speaker 1: clothes of Edgar. There is reason to believe that he
Speaker 1: was robbed of them well, in such a condition as
Speaker 1: to render him insensible of his loss. But it turns
Speaker 1: out it was always in Richmond. He just didn't take
Speaker 1: it with him. He just didn't take it with him,
Speaker 1: which is random, Yeah, a great sign or by accidents,
Speaker 1: who knows. And again then there's literally nothing known about
Speaker 1: that week in between between when he left Richmond and
Speaker 1: the third when he appeared in Baltimore. So there's there
Speaker 1: is stuff out there talking that this trip that he took.
Speaker 1: I believe it was his final destination was New York,
Speaker 1: Is that right? Because he had a book to edit
Speaker 1: for somebody, and then he and the woman who had
Speaker 1: written that book, we're going to come back and it
Speaker 1: might not be New York. I'm trying to remember what
Speaker 1: city it was. Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: The trip was what you're talking about. I can't. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to remember where he was going, Okay, But but
Speaker 1: the point is is that he could have been in
Speaker 1: any city. So that's an important thing for people to understand.
Speaker 1: Is it's not that he went from Richmond to Baltimore.
Speaker 1: Baltimore for five days, it's possible, but he also could
Speaker 1: have been anywhere else. I'm not sure actually how long
Speaker 1: it took to travel from in those days from Richmond
Speaker 1: to Baltimore. I mean that I could easily see that
Speaker 1: being a couple of days back in those days. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I could see that being a train. Yeah, yeah, Because
Speaker 1: there's there's talk about people saying, well, maybe he meant
Speaker 1: to get on one train and was confused and got
Speaker 1: on the other, an accident backtracked, and some of this
Speaker 1: is in different theories, but so it's it was. He
Speaker 1: was definitely traveling by trade, so I know that for
Speaker 1: a fact, but he could have been wherever the stinking
Speaker 1: rail routes went. Yeah. I could have stopped off or
Speaker 1: got off the train for a couple of days here
Speaker 1: there or whatever it could have done all kinds of stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and as mentioned, the reliable list reports that his nemesis
Speaker 1: released after his death said, well, he was on a
Speaker 1: drunken vendor, but no nobody really believed that. Nobody thinks
Speaker 1: that that. Well, that's not true. Some people do think that,
Speaker 1: but it's likely that that was just made up to
Speaker 1: slander his name after his death. I think. So, you
Speaker 1: know what the biggest tragedy is for Poe after he died,
Speaker 1: is that his rival and what was the guy's name again?
Speaker 1: The last name. His last name was Griswald. Okay, what
Speaker 1: Griswald did? I don't know if you guys saw this
Speaker 1: in the red is. I don't know how he convinced
Speaker 1: pose family to do this, if they were in need
Speaker 1: of cash or what. But he bought from them all
Speaker 1: of his papers and all of his writings and all
Speaker 1: these letters, and so he was essentially the executor of
Speaker 1: all of this stuff from Poe. So he had an
Speaker 1: iron grip on what came out after the fact, which
Speaker 1: is just clever and just cruel. But I don't understand how.
Speaker 1: I guess the family must not have been aware that
Speaker 1: this guy was kind of a and it's not not
Speaker 1: a friend and an enemy of that Groland post. I
Speaker 1: I have a feeling that they may not have realized
Speaker 1: the level of venom that was between them somehow, because
Speaker 1: it was pretty public, but he may not have realized
Speaker 1: how bad. They may not have known, and so they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: he's being very nice and very very considerate, and so
Speaker 1: we need a couple of bucks. Okay, I mean, I
Speaker 1: I don't get it. I don't know. But then again,
Speaker 1: a hundred, a hundred, fifty years later, it's very easy
Speaker 1: to see the value of those documents. But at the
Speaker 1: time they may have had. Yeah. The one I like
Speaker 1: to kind of compare it to is Van Gogh, right,
Speaker 1: who was a drunk and literally trying to give his
Speaker 1: paintings away to have alcohol, and people would say, no, dude,
Speaker 1: your paintings are pretty bad. I don't want to, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not worth a beer to me. So why would
Speaker 1: buy that guy a case of booty at the time?
Speaker 1: I'll take that. Yeah, after the time, as his style
Speaker 1: was a little out there, though, I mean, we all
Speaker 1: recognize it today is brilliant. Yeah, yeah, right, But exactly
Speaker 1: that sort of phenomenon that happens pretty frequently it was not. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe Poe was not well. He was actually pretty highly regarded,
Speaker 1: I guess even at the time. But it's not. But
Speaker 1: but now he's, like, you know, one of the great
Speaker 1: American authors of all time. But does this mean, though,
Speaker 1: that because Grizzwold bought all this stuff, does that mean
Speaker 1: every time I buy a copy of The Raven than
Speaker 1: some descendantive Grizzwold guests the Royalty. I don't know that.
Speaker 1: That's an excellent question. We should do some research. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you guys want to talk about theories. Okay. The first
Speaker 1: theory is that it was voter fraud. Yeah, a k A. Cooping.
Speaker 1: I mentioned he was found outside or maybe in a
Speaker 1: polling station, and apparently it was pretty common at the
Speaker 1: time for people to find a mark like Poe, for instance,
Speaker 1: beat him, kidnap him, dress him in a variety of
Speaker 1: different disguises, and force him to vote for the same
Speaker 1: candidate multiple times. It would explain why he was wearing
Speaker 1: someone else's clothes, explain he was incoherent. It would explain
Speaker 1: why he was incoherent. It wouldn't It wouldn't explain you know,
Speaker 1: why he kept getting worse after he was hospitalized. Definitely not.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the sort of thing people recover
Speaker 1: from and can remember what happened. You don't agree with that.
Speaker 1: It's the other thing, of course, says that there and
Speaker 1: our records are shoddy, But there's no mention of him
Speaker 1: looking like he got beat up. Yeah, I know that's there.
Speaker 1: There are other other beating theories out there too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I don't I haven't heard anything. I haven't read
Speaker 1: anything that says that he was described as having even
Speaker 1: really any kind of cuts or bruises or anything exactly.
Speaker 1: Doctor probably would have mentioned as if he had. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but there is there is recordings of the fact that
Speaker 1: there are people who when they were victims of these
Speaker 1: cooping schemes, and they would be locked away and they
Speaker 1: would be drugged, and there are accounts of people who
Speaker 1: were overdosed with whatever it was. And of course when
Speaker 1: you voted, they gave you a drink, and then you
Speaker 1: were hauled to the next place and you voted again,
Speaker 1: and you've got another drink. So if you're chucked full
Speaker 1: of drugs, whatever it might be, because lord knows what
Speaker 1: kind of concoction they're using to make you doscile, that
Speaker 1: that can have a negative effect. That it did kill
Speaker 1: some people was infrequent. But the other problem with this
Speaker 1: theory is the police who monitored the polling stations that
Speaker 1: year said it was a very calm and dull day
Speaker 1: the cooping's these guys came out and kind of big groups,
Speaker 1: and it was pretty obvious when they were showing up
Speaker 1: because these people were in a cart. They had them
Speaker 1: all chucked in the back of a cart. So well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and there's another problem with this particular theory, which is
Speaker 1: that was actually fairly well known back in those days.
Speaker 1: So the description of him is that he looked so
Speaker 1: unlike himself that even his friends had a hard time
Speaker 1: recognizing him when they saw him. Somebody knew him recognized
Speaker 1: him finally at the bar and said, oh, hey, you're
Speaker 1: not just some random drunk yar head Garland Poe. Oh
Speaker 1: you don't look great. Let's get you some help. But
Speaker 1: it took a while for all we know. You know,
Speaker 1: it could have been that he just wasn't recognized as possible.
Speaker 1: But well, I don't like this theory. I'm not trying to.
Speaker 1: I don't think this theory is really any good. But
Speaker 1: because it sounds like it sounds like when they discovered him,
Speaker 1: the election took place on a single day. Correct, yes, right,
Speaker 1: It sounds like from the state that he was in,
Speaker 1: he had been um he had been going downhill sharply
Speaker 1: for more than just today, from the condition of his
Speaker 1: hair and his skin as closed, everything like that. But
Speaker 1: these cooping schemes would start to gather people days prior
Speaker 1: to an election and they would hold him in basements
Speaker 1: and locked up and all of that. So, I again,
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm not in bed with this theory at all,
Speaker 1: but it does the the evidence does show that if
Speaker 1: he was a victim of it, he could have been
Speaker 1: held for days on end. Why didn't they just bribe
Speaker 1: him like to do today, I don't know. Next up
Speaker 1: is Booze Whoo whoo, whoo whoo, who has previously mentioned.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of reports about this. Apparently Poe
Speaker 1: was the lightweight. We kind of talked about that and
Speaker 1: the validity of that. Who knows. The theory goes that
Speaker 1: his illness prior to traveling was brought on by drinking.
Speaker 1: Somebody had tempted him fall off the wagon, and that's
Speaker 1: what you know, the doctor was talking about. Dr Carter
Speaker 1: was talking about when he said, if you have another attack,
Speaker 1: you'll it'll kill you. There's some speculation that Poe had
Speaker 1: something that made it so that his body wouldn't process
Speaker 1: alcohol right way, or that it affected him a certain way.
Speaker 1: His sister was also a lightweight. As I mentioned, there's
Speaker 1: some speculation that that could have been caused by lesion
Speaker 1: on the brain. I think there are probably other things.
Speaker 1: There are other things that can cause that. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was because I do not like the theory that
Speaker 1: po drink himself to death, just because, as Joe pointed
Speaker 1: out and you've pointed out, there's not a whole lot
Speaker 1: of evidence that he was an alcoholic because people who
Speaker 1: love the sauce always drink the sauce. So that doesn't
Speaker 1: hold up to me. But you know, just to play
Speaker 1: devil's guy, and I started looking into what how does
Speaker 1: your body deal with alcohol? And your liver takes and
Speaker 1: processes somewhere between nine of all alcohol that you drink
Speaker 1: or that you absorb, and then breaks it down from
Speaker 1: there and that process how it does it is the
Speaker 1: liver first breaks alcohol into acid. Tall to hide, hide
Speaker 1: at the hide, that's how you say it. I'm struggling
Speaker 1: with that word for a day now um, which turns
Speaker 1: out is a pretty bad substance. But once it's once
Speaker 1: the body doesn't just leave it there. It then breaks
Speaker 1: it down into acetate, which is relatively inert in the body,
Speaker 1: and then and it can expel it. And it's so
Speaker 1: the whole thing is normally not a problem. But it
Speaker 1: got me thinking about what if he has some kind
Speaker 1: of condition and there are conditions where people can't handle liquor,
Speaker 1: and so it has a greater effect on him. If
Speaker 1: his body wasn't processing alcohol like it should have or
Speaker 1: breaking down these components and and expelling them the way
Speaker 1: that it was supposed to. That might account for some
Speaker 1: of it. Because the acetalde hide, it turns out, is
Speaker 1: a carcinogen, and it's people. This is something that you
Speaker 1: find in a chemical form because we know how to
Speaker 1: now make that If people get exposed to the right
Speaker 1: parts a million of it, they have delirium, they have hallucinations,
Speaker 1: loss of intelligence, all this stuff. It's actually been linked
Speaker 1: to for people who don't break it down correctly, they
Speaker 1: don't have the proper enzyme, or they don't create enough
Speaker 1: of the enzyme. It's linked to Alzheimer's, So there is
Speaker 1: a possibility that his body wasn't his liver specifically wasn't
Speaker 1: doing its job in the way that it should have
Speaker 1: for whatever reason. So he had a build up of
Speaker 1: this stuff in his system which may have caused this
Speaker 1: this condition that the doctor was saying, if this happens
Speaker 1: to you one more time, it's going to kill you.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that he necessarily did take a drink,
Speaker 1: but if he did and it he had built up
Speaker 1: enough of that in his system, that might have been
Speaker 1: what he was suffering from, because if you get enough
Speaker 1: of this chemical compound, it will kill you. Again. I'm
Speaker 1: just looking at this from the science perspective, if I
Speaker 1: just wanted to see what happens and how that works,
Speaker 1: and it's it's plausible. I don't buy it, but it's
Speaker 1: totally possible. And now the thing is, though, is that
Speaker 1: you have this. You have this when you drink alcohol
Speaker 1: and the stuff builds up and you get all horribly
Speaker 1: sick and everything. Then after you recover from that, then
Speaker 1: I assume your liver does manage to process it, at
Speaker 1: least in your body manages to get rid of it
Speaker 1: at least somewhat right, Yes, yeah, that's kind of that's
Speaker 1: that's part of what makes a hangover is your body
Speaker 1: is breaking down the alcohol into the acetel hyde and
Speaker 1: then into acetate and that's a noxious thing in your system.
Speaker 1: So that's part of what makes you sick. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: you think that if somebody suffered from a condition like that,
Speaker 1: then if they would draw, they would notice it every
Speaker 1: time they drink, they get horribly sick, they would not drink. Well,
Speaker 1: that might be why Poe, though he did drink occasionally,
Speaker 1: didn't drink often because it may have been man, I
Speaker 1: went out and I had two glasses of wine and
Speaker 1: I had a really fun time and I have felt
Speaker 1: like crap for three days. That that could explain why
Speaker 1: he was such an infrequent drinker and why he got
Speaker 1: on board with the temperance movement. That's why other issue
Speaker 1: with the booze himself to death. Okay, he had friends
Speaker 1: that were in the movement, so he jumped on board
Speaker 1: the bandwagon. But you know, they're just the evidence doesn't
Speaker 1: support it short of this one jerk who said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: Post was a total booze hound. Yeah. Well, also I
Speaker 1: think that um, even if he had had some alcohol,
Speaker 1: I don't think that they were. I don't think the
Speaker 1: doctor was feeding him alcohol in the hospital, so he
Speaker 1: should have recovered. Well, well, yeah, and correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong, Devon. When they picked him up, there are
Speaker 1: there's nothing in the writing that says, oh, and by
Speaker 1: the way, your buddy smells like a still, No, there's not.
Speaker 1: And as they said, Miran, for all his unaccountability, did say, no,
Speaker 1: Paul was not drunk. He said he did not smell
Speaker 1: of liquor. Yeah, he said he wasn't showing any signs
Speaker 1: of that. And I think, you know, the only thing
Speaker 1: that this kind of helps to explain is you get
Speaker 1: drunk and where someone else's clothes. I mean, you know
Speaker 1: that's yeah, we've all done it. No, we haven't theory
Speaker 1: poisoning of any kind, carbon monoxide and having metal poisoning meide. Now,
Speaker 1: there is something and I don't remember what the compound
Speaker 1: is in the medication that he would have been taking
Speaker 1: for cholera. There is a compound in it that if
Speaker 1: you get enough of it, it is really lethal. But
Speaker 1: he would have had to have been taking so much
Speaker 1: of that compound that it's obscene he would have been
Speaker 1: having to take. I don't remember what it was. Five
Speaker 1: to ten times the prescription for that to have made
Speaker 1: him go into the state that he was founded right
Speaker 1: back back in those days. That's a pretty questionable stuff.
Speaker 1: And some of the like mercury, Yeah, I think that
Speaker 1: might be what was it? It was mercury, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think yeah. Yeah. And so I maybe he did chug
Speaker 1: alog his bottle of loudon um. I don't know. But well,
Speaker 1: the other thing is that so pose hair became collector's
Speaker 1: item directly after his death, which is actually kind of fortunate. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it turns out it's fortunately because doctors have been able
Speaker 1: to since then take and test his hair and they've
Speaker 1: come up with nothing. There's nothing, there's nothing they can find.
Speaker 1: So no and no rabies. I'm actually kind of liking rabies,
Speaker 1: like brabies, thinking rabies makes a lot of sense. I've
Speaker 1: never liked rabies as a disease. I don't really care
Speaker 1: for it either. That's why you know what people go
Speaker 1: about to say, we're raising money for cancer. I say,
Speaker 1: good at hell, I'm not a favor of cancer. Apparently
Speaker 1: his symptoms match. I don't buy it. How he would
Speaker 1: have gotten it is unclear. There was no evidence to
Speaker 1: suggest that he gotten bit by anything. One of the biggest,
Speaker 1: most prevalent, almost every single time somebody has rabies fears
Speaker 1: things symptoms is the fear of water, and he did
Speaker 1: not have that. So yeah, that's the only that's the
Speaker 1: only problem with that is, I mean, they're probably other
Speaker 1: ways to get rabies besides just being bitten by a
Speaker 1: dog or a bat or a rat, but rabies isn't
Speaker 1: an immediate onset. Rabies has an incubation period of something
Speaker 1: on the order of, if I remember correctly, four to
Speaker 1: six weeks before you're really in the symptoms. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: you could have gotten a rat by it, for example,
Speaker 1: and that it had enough time to heal exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So while I again not on board with it, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to discount it because there was no bite wound. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I give it's the water thing for me. But you know,
Speaker 1: say I was good. I was gonna check into the
Speaker 1: the actual symptoms of hydrophobia because I know that hydrophobia
Speaker 1: you're afraid of water, and I know it was drank
Speaker 1: water while he was in the hospital, But I don't
Speaker 1: know if hydrophobia means that you're afraid of the water
Speaker 1: because you still have to drink water to stay alive, right,
Speaker 1: But that's part of the problem with brabies is that
Speaker 1: you're afraid of water and so you don't drink, and
Speaker 1: so you start to get dehydrated. So I mean, people
Speaker 1: won't drink. That's why they get all their fluids intervenously
Speaker 1: when they're being treated for brabies, is you know, when
Speaker 1: they're in the throes of it, because you can't say,
Speaker 1: would you like a glass of water, because they freak
Speaker 1: out and knock it out of your hand and it
Speaker 1: scares the holy living crap out of them. Okay, but
Speaker 1: again I don't I don't buy that one. I don't
Speaker 1: like any Next is an illness of some kind. It's
Speaker 1: not a tumor edition. It's speculated he could have had
Speaker 1: the flu or had another bout of collar um. There
Speaker 1: there's nothing to suggest the symptoms. He could have been hypoglycemic,
Speaker 1: which I don't get because I assumed they were feeding him.
Speaker 1: So if he had low blood sugar, you would think
Speaker 1: he could have had some unknown illness like the vapors,
Speaker 1: Like I don't know what he could have the vapors,
Speaker 1: and the vapors is just a term for for you know,
Speaker 1: like like when Victorian women would like be all offended
Speaker 1: and they act all faints and go oh my, oh
Speaker 1: my lords, you know when they go sit on the
Speaker 1: fainting couch, because you know that's the vapors. I think, Okay, yeah, sorry, Javin,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to interrupt. I just didn't get that
Speaker 1: could have had syphilis. I mean he could could um well,
Speaker 1: I know that there. I mean, syphilis does lead to
Speaker 1: insanity at the at the end, so it's entirely possible.
Speaker 1: It seems like it came on really quickly. It seems
Speaker 1: like he you would have been showing symptoms, although if
Speaker 1: he had been sick and not looking well, it does
Speaker 1: seem like it came on really quickly. Though. I if
Speaker 1: we're going to say that it's syphilis, because we've gone
Speaker 1: down this road, I would point have either of you
Speaker 1: ever done any research into al capone. But oh yeah
Speaker 1: he was a symphiletic idiot. Yeah he But but that
Speaker 1: lasted a long time time. It wasn't as if yeah,
Speaker 1: I've got syphilis. Oh I'm not treating. Yeah I got syphi. Listen,
Speaker 1: whoo screwy three days later. Yeah it doesn't work. No,
Speaker 1: you drag on for a long, long time brain. So exactly,
Speaker 1: it's it's not an immediate killer. Yeah, I'm not liking syphilis,
Speaker 1: don't like I don't like cephialis period. Yeah, really, why
Speaker 1: would you? Nobody should? He could have, I guess been
Speaker 1: epileptic as well. Explain that to me. I can't explain it.
Speaker 1: It's just something I saw on the internet. And I
Speaker 1: was going to scratch my head over that one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, we're kind of doing a
Speaker 1: list of things that aren't viable right now, aren't we
Speaker 1: Just to just to say it, that's what. Yeah, that's what.
Speaker 1: My mother had had epilepsy, and and she also had
Speaker 1: brain cancer. And eventually, after the surgery and all the
Speaker 1: radiation and everything and that they gave her, she had
Speaker 1: a massive seizure and she was out of her mind
Speaker 1: for several days. I mean literally, I mean it was
Speaker 1: it was crazy. She was I was, but she wasn't
Speaker 1: completely incoherent. I could still talk to her, but she
Speaker 1: wasn't perceiving reality quite correctly. I mean, like, for example,
Speaker 1: I talked I was talking to and and and she
Speaker 1: said that the people around here are acting so strangely
Speaker 1: because like the phone rings and I tell them that
Speaker 1: to the phone, and they said, the phone's not ringing.
Speaker 1: And I'm going too, you know, they're lying to me.
Speaker 1: And I was visiting the next time, I was visiting her.
Speaker 1: We're sitting there talking and and suddenly she says, there,
Speaker 1: do you hear it? And she's pointing at the phone
Speaker 1: and the phone was not ringing. Yeah. Yeah, and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. I mean, I can list a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of stuff. But she eventually recovered, though she didn't just
Speaker 1: like go down and down and down and then die
Speaker 1: because because at the see the athletics. Yeah, I mean yeah,
Speaker 1: she was kind of sort of out of her mind
Speaker 1: for a few days, and then it started getting better,
Speaker 1: and within three or four days she was she was
Speaker 1: okay again, you know. So yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so now it's illness of some kind. It's a tumor. Oh,
Speaker 1: this is the tumor edition. This is actually, uh not
Speaker 1: a bad one. This is the one that I'll get behind.
Speaker 1: These next two are my two favorite, saved the best
Speaker 1: for last. Apparently, a doctor once told Poe in his
Speaker 1: younger years, I think in his it was a doctor
Speaker 1: in New York, and it was in his he was
Speaker 1: in his twenties or something like that, said that he
Speaker 1: had a legion on his brain and that was the
Speaker 1: root of his booze problem. How did they figure that out?
Speaker 1: I don't know, Okay, than an X ray. Maybe I
Speaker 1: don't know what you can see and what you can't
Speaker 1: see anywhere. Yeah, if you have like scar tissue, that's
Speaker 1: differ I don't know. Yeah, I just don't know how
Speaker 1: they figure out you have a legion on the brain
Speaker 1: in eighteen thirty. So I'm just I'm just have no idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing, I'm kind of pulling a Devon
Speaker 1: on Devon is I'm googling as we're talking, and I
Speaker 1: knew I had heard something about this recently, which is
Speaker 1: X rays weren't used clinically until about eighteen nine, so
Speaker 1: it's eight it's still not something that they're doing. So
Speaker 1: I just okay, So I don't know why how that
Speaker 1: doctor knew. But let's just like take on faith with
Speaker 1: the doctor knew or said, hey, there's something wrong with
Speaker 1: your brain. It was the brain savant of something. Maybe
Speaker 1: there were there there are ways to deduce disorders and
Speaker 1: stuff like that from the behaviors. Sometimes you can tell
Speaker 1: but of course, back in those days, a lot of
Speaker 1: us still was like basically they were kind of witch doctors.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know if they were. They were
Speaker 1: still bleeding people in this at that time, were they.
Speaker 1: Some of it happened, but not nearly as much as
Speaker 1: it had. It wasn't that much that earlier. Like George Washington,
Speaker 1: for example, supposedly died of a cold turn in pneumonia,
Speaker 1: but he probably actually died from because they kept bleeding him,
Speaker 1: you know, otherwise he would have lived a lot longer.
Speaker 1: And that was not that long before. Yeah, that was
Speaker 1: still around, but I don't think it was quite as
Speaker 1: popular as it had once been. Can we start talking
Speaker 1: about my favorite theory again? Oh? Yeah, sorry, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: way out in the weeds, didn't we Yeah, we haven't.
Speaker 1: We haven't discussed yet that pose body was fairly unceremoniously
Speaker 1: dumped into a cheap coffin into an unmarked grave when
Speaker 1: he first died, Well wasn't. It wasn't quite dumped. They
Speaker 1: placed it in there. And yeah, he actually had a
Speaker 1: very brief funeral. I think it lasted three menace with
Speaker 1: seven people in attendance. Yeah, yeah, at least there's so
Speaker 1: many millions of people who love love him now well,
Speaker 1: and that's exactly a twenty six years later, his body
Speaker 1: was exhumed and moved to a more permanent location with
Speaker 1: this like huge statue or not statue, but monument. It's
Speaker 1: a beautiful monument. Yeah, that's really pretty. You should look
Speaker 1: up pictures if you'd like. It's the second one, you know,
Speaker 1: the first one that they were going to put down
Speaker 1: got destroyed by a train, right, which was crazy. Well everything, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a curse, and they did. Anyways, when
Speaker 1: the crew was exhuming his body, the coffin was in
Speaker 1: such disresp disrepair that when they went they had it
Speaker 1: connected to some mechanism to carry it, and the coffin
Speaker 1: just like fell apart. So Shelton obviously it was not
Speaker 1: the soil will do that. Yeah, it wasn't in a
Speaker 1: great shape. And one of the workers remarked, unsolicitedly remarked
Speaker 1: that there was an odd feature of the skull, and
Speaker 1: that was that it sounded like there was a ball
Speaker 1: rolling around in there. And the given that this was
Speaker 1: about the late eighteen hundreds, they said, oh, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just his brain. It troveled up in there. We now know,
Speaker 1: of course, that brains don't last that long real quick.
Speaker 1: But apparently a brain tumor can calcify after death and
Speaker 1: would account for the sound of a ball rolling around
Speaker 1: inside of a skull because it would be calcified, it
Speaker 1: would be harder, it would have lasted, it would have
Speaker 1: been in there, it would be in the skull without
Speaker 1: a fracture or anything like that. So that could account
Speaker 1: for that sound. It could account for a lot of
Speaker 1: his behavior, could account for his swift decline, his inability
Speaker 1: to be treated. I get I personally put a lot
Speaker 1: of stock into the idea that Poe had a brain
Speaker 1: cancer of some kind. I know Joe has briefly talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, having family that had brain cancer, and I've
Speaker 1: seen it too, and it's amazing how someone can operate
Speaker 1: and operate and operate and seem completely okay, and then
Speaker 1: just one day it you know that whatever the cancer
Speaker 1: maybe shorts the circuit, to put it kind of in
Speaker 1: a general phrase, and it just shuts everything down and
Speaker 1: send somebody downhill quite rapidly. Damn it. Actually, though, a
Speaker 1: tumor probably depending on what part of the brain it's in,
Speaker 1: I mean you'll feel the effects of it for a
Speaker 1: long time. I mean, and they'll continually build. But he
Speaker 1: may have been suffering, for it's possible that he had
Speaker 1: been suffering from years. You know, he he was having attacks,
Speaker 1: He wasn't a very well man. He had bouts of
Speaker 1: time where it was better and bouts of time that
Speaker 1: it was worse, which I think is typical of kind
Speaker 1: of a long term illness like that you kind of
Speaker 1: get better and you get worse, and you get better
Speaker 1: get worse. So I don't know, it's it's not as
Speaker 1: though we have any evidence to suggest that he wasn't
Speaker 1: suffering migraines and headaches and delusions and whatever else. The
Speaker 1: things that that I I really find horrifying in the
Speaker 1: whole story is of course, the lack of records of
Speaker 1: oh when he was in the hospital, because if there
Speaker 1: had been any kind of written accounting of his actions
Speaker 1: and his behaviors other than this kind of I'm going
Speaker 1: to use the word anecdotal recollections of the of Miran,
Speaker 1: then that might lead us to know a little more,
Speaker 1: have have better better ideas. I mean, there's there's things
Speaker 1: that people in that condition do. I don't know if
Speaker 1: you guys have ever heard of things like terminal agitation,
Speaker 1: which is it turns out kind of a related or
Speaker 1: a common thing with with can't of the brain, where
Speaker 1: somebody's just constantly moving and doing stuff. And so it's
Speaker 1: it's like, if we had that kind of record, we
Speaker 1: might be able to say, oh, yeah, we've seen that
Speaker 1: over the last hundred and fifty years and categorized it.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately I just don't have it. And the ball
Speaker 1: rolling around in his in his skull, can I just say,
Speaker 1: is not indicative to me of brain cancer. That sounds
Speaker 1: more like a clod of dirt. I'm I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: say it still is not going to roll around and rattle.
Speaker 1: It's going to disintegrate. But I don't care what it is.
Speaker 1: A chunk of earth of some sort is in the
Speaker 1: skull where I But I still I get behind the
Speaker 1: cancer theory because that's the one that explains to me
Speaker 1: why he switched so quick and went downhill. That's one
Speaker 1: of my favorite theories. The next to my favorite theories
Speaker 1: is murder. As we previously alluded to, it turns out Sarah,
Speaker 1: his at that point fiance, was quite wealthy, which we
Speaker 1: started talk about she also had three brothers. Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1: I think they were younger than her, because I think
Speaker 1: that she had all the money, she was in charge
Speaker 1: of all the money, and that they were in risk
Speaker 1: of using a lot of the money if she married
Speaker 1: Poe or something of that natural nature. The theory goes
Speaker 1: that Poe was threatened by the three brothers in Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: and he was so frightened that he disguised himself for
Speaker 1: a week and hidden Baltimore to throw them off the trail.
Speaker 1: It didn't work, of course, he was intercepted by the brothers.
Speaker 1: He was beaten or else wise incapacitated, forced to drink
Speaker 1: which they knew would kill him, and left for dead.
Speaker 1: Why didn't he use the sword cane? Well, that I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the other things. Is this
Speaker 1: is one of This is literally the only theory that
Speaker 1: addresses the fact that he seemingly purposefully took a weapon
Speaker 1: with him the night before he left on the train.
Speaker 1: So I think it's at least fun to think about.
Speaker 1: Maybe their brothers had threatened him just verbally before, so
Speaker 1: he thought, oh I need to protect myself. I'm going
Speaker 1: to take this cane with a sword in it wasn't.
Speaker 1: One of the only things that he still had on
Speaker 1: his person that was his was the cane. He still
Speaker 1: had the cane when they found him, so he ditched
Speaker 1: his fancy clothes. I was wearing the palm hat I
Speaker 1: think they called it in raggedy coat, like a straw
Speaker 1: hat and raggy coat. But he still had the sword cane. Ye, yeah,
Speaker 1: but why didn't you buy a gun? He was broke,
Speaker 1: he was super broke. I don't know. I think that's
Speaker 1: a fun theory. I don't know if it's the one
Speaker 1: that I necessarily to believe the most, but I definitely
Speaker 1: think it's fun. It's also possible that, you know, he
Speaker 1: was kept in communicado in the hospital, so there's another
Speaker 1: couple of ways to look at it. And maybe the
Speaker 1: brothers paid off paid off the doctor, and there, you know,
Speaker 1: then I've already even paid the doctor to poison him,
Speaker 1: overdose him, something like that on lauding him. It's always possible.
Speaker 1: And then uh, you know, and then just the doctor
Speaker 1: made up this whole story about even though he was
Speaker 1: completely loose, it doctor made up this huge story about
Speaker 1: how he was just out of his mind and raving
Speaker 1: the entire time when actually he wasn't right, It's possible,
Speaker 1: It's always possible. I I also wonder if, well, let's
Speaker 1: just not say necessarily that it was the Brothers that
Speaker 1: beat the holy crap out. I mean, but he he
Speaker 1: got clubbed by somebody or something. You could well, he
Speaker 1: could have been mugged, but I'm not. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: infer what caused the beating. But if it is possible
Speaker 1: to get whacked in the head hard enough to cause bleeding,
Speaker 1: that doesn't leave a giant crater in the skull. And yeah,
Speaker 1: and it may have been that, you know, the the
Speaker 1: Miran just didn't do a very thorough exam, or maybe
Speaker 1: it had been a day or two and so the
Speaker 1: swelling on the outside of his skull had gone down,
Speaker 1: So we just didn't know. I will lend credence to
Speaker 1: the beating of some sort I I don't think it
Speaker 1: was this the brothers that just it seems too convenient.
Speaker 1: Can we talk about how convenient pose life was, though,
Speaker 1: I mean, it was so tragic and it's like you
Speaker 1: can't make it up. It's so good anyways, that that
Speaker 1: would be the perfect end to an otherwise very tragic
Speaker 1: life of a man who's just obsessed with tragedy, so
Speaker 1: very at the very least it's nice and romantic and
Speaker 1: poetic ending to his life. Well, that he was beaten,
Speaker 1: senseless murdered over the woman. Yeah, or you know, but
Speaker 1: but that leads me to my just another theory I'm
Speaker 1: gonna throw out there, which is that perhaps Poe was
Speaker 1: feeling that he kind of the words on, he kind
Speaker 1: of shot his wad. Perhaps he was having writer's writer's block,
Speaker 1: Perhaps he felt his best days were behind him, and
Speaker 1: so after this episode and it sounds like he had
Speaker 1: these episodes. He winds up in the hospital where he
Speaker 1: spent several days with the doctor. He tells the doctor
Speaker 1: that he doesn't want visitors, and at the end of
Speaker 1: it all, he tells he asked the doctor to help
Speaker 1: him fake his desk, so they find an average substitute
Speaker 1: for his and he goes off and runs away and
Speaker 1: joins the circus and changes his name because he likes
Speaker 1: to change his name. So and that would explain, that
Speaker 1: would explain a lot of stuff. He just you know,
Speaker 1: he just left Grolan. Poe could have gone just gone
Speaker 1: out to somewhere. Maybe he went out west and he
Speaker 1: became a cowboy. Possible suicide is also possible, So I'm
Speaker 1: actually really liking Joe's theory. Edgar Allan, Edgar Allan, Poe
Speaker 1: rides off into the sunset. That's pretty awesome to me.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm going to get behind that one. We
Speaker 1: can end on that note. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then it eventually meets up with John Wayne and they
Speaker 1: shoot a lot of people and uh and they russell
Speaker 1: cattle or no excuse me, they shoot rustlers and they
Speaker 1: heard cattle. Okay, yeah, yeah, all right, girl on. Poe
Speaker 1: rides off into the sunset. All right, good, well, uh,
Speaker 1: you want to talk about aliens? No, okay, all right.
Speaker 1: You can find some links about this episode on our website.
Speaker 1: That website is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You might
Speaker 1: be listening to us there. Maybe you're probably not. You're
Speaker 1: probably listening to us on iTunes. If you are, please
Speaker 1: make sure you subscribe because you liked us, and leave
Speaker 1: us a comments and a rating, which you guys are
Speaker 1: really good at. Right now. We could also be streaming
Speaker 1: us on just so many different places. Stitcher is the
Speaker 1: one we always mentioned, but I know there are a
Speaker 1: bunch of other ones. Uh, and I guess Stitcher's back
Speaker 1: up and running, which is great. You can join a conversation.
Speaker 1: We have lots going on right now. On Facebook, we
Speaker 1: have the Facebook page and the Facebook group, so like us,
Speaker 1: find us, friend us. I'm sorry, friend us, find us,
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Speaker 1: also have a Twitter Thinking sideways. Uh. You can always
Speaker 1: send us an email if you'd like to talk about
Speaker 1: this or any other unsolved mystery, or you have suggestions,
Speaker 1: or you just want to say hey, Thinking Sideways podcast
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. With that having been said, as
Speaker 1: Steve says, I think we're gonna get out of here.
Speaker 1: Sounds good to me. Never more, never more, never more,