Fans of Edgar Allan Poe continue to visit the official Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia in the United States because they feel connected to the internationally influential author, poet, inventor of the detective story, and a pioneer of science fiction and horror.
“I think the magic of the Poe Museum is it’s the closest thing to meeting Poe in the flesh,” said Curator Chris Semtner. “You can see the things he owned and the places where he sat and slept. It really brings him alive in a new way.”
The museum opened in 1922 and is home to the world’s finest collection of Poe’s personal possessions, manuscripts, and memorabilia.
There’s a bust of Poe in the museum’s garden, Semtner noted. “People regularly kiss the bust, as if somehow they love him. They’ll leave him love letters, delicately folded and perfumed letters, or sometimes long-stemmed roses.”
Poe’s poems include The Raven and Annabel Lee, and his macabre stories include The Fall of the House of Usher and The Tell-Tale Heart.
Poe was born in 1809 and died in 1849.
His invention of the detective story is an often overlooked chapter of Poe’s life.
“People tend to focus on the horror stories, or the melancholy poetry and forget he actually wrote a lot of detective stories and comedies. Even though they’re not really funny, he thought he was funny. Some of his contemporaries thought he was amusing,” Semtner added. “He was making fun of his fellow writers and of the transcendentalists and trash talking philosophers of the day.”
Historically, Poe moved to Richmond, where he was orphaned at two years old. He grew up with foster parents.
“This is where he had a lot of his formative experiences,” noted Semtner.
In its collection, the museum has portraits of Poe’s foster parents and his childhood bed.
“You can see where little Eddie used to sleep growing up,” Semtner explained. “We have a whole section about the Poe family background. His mother and father were famous actors of the day.”
In the early days, Poe travelled to Scotland, which influenced some of his gothic tales, which are often set in European locales.
“This is a guy who really did go to Europe when he was a kid and spent five years after that in England,” Semtner added.
By the time Poe was 22 years old, he published three books of poetry. Unfortunately, none of them sold. He also made a living as a journalist.
“We have the chair in which he sat in his office while he was writing those early horror stories and writing his first book reviews,” said Semtner. “Then personal items like Poe’s watch he had with him when he wrote The Tell-Tale Heart. We know this because shortly after it was published, he didn’t get paid very much for it, and he was desperate to pay off his debts. He had to file bankruptcy, and he gave his watch to one of his creditors.”
Another room in the museum is full of Poe and pop culture with Poe bobbleheads, comic books with Poe as a character, including Batman with Poe in it and Scooby-Doo.
Poe also wrote scientific writings, including a book about seashells.
“He was very proud of his book about the universe, which he proposed his alternate theory of the origin of the universe,” Semtner shared.
Another building at the museum is all about Poe’s mysterious death, with artifacts from the last few weeks of his life, which includes clothing, a lock of hair, and a piece of his coffin.
“After Poe died, they moved him because people had crowdfunded a monument for his grave. As they were moving him, his coffin fell apart,” Semtner noted.
The museum offers 26 different published theories about what could have caused Poe’s death from diabetic coma to rabies.
“We also have some of the results of the testing of his hair. One was for heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and mercury, to find out what his levels were like. The other told us what his diet was like and what was going on the last few weeks of his life,” Semtner explained. “There were some interesting results. He had very high mercury levels, which increased significantly from the older end of the hair to the newer end of the hair. That coincides with Poe being prescribed pills by his doctor, so he did have high mercury levels.”
“His lead levels actually decreased at about the time he joined a temperance society and pledged off of alcohol. But the doctor said Poe died of phrenitis, which means inflammation of the brain. It’s kind of a catch all but sounds like meningitis. So that partially explains Poe’s death,” said Semtner.
The problem is it doesn’t explain why Poe was found semi-conscious and dressed in someone else’s clothes at a polling place on Election Day.
“And the most likely culprit is a political gang,” Semtner noted. “He was probably drugged and used as a repeat voter, as a practice they used to call it ‘cooping,’ where they’d find people from out of town that nobody recognized. They’d coop them up all together in a basement until Election Day and drag them to the polls.”
“Coopers” would allegedly bribe or threaten an election judge to let repeat voters drop their ballots, leave the polling station, switch their clothes, and vote repeatedly.
“That might explain where Poe was and how he ended up wearing somebody else’s clothes,” said Semtner.
On his deathbed, Poe screamed the name “Reynolds” over and over again, Semtner added. “There actually was an election judge at the polling place where Poe was found by the name of Reynolds, so he could have been in on the whole scheme.”
