Edgar Allan Poe | The Horror Writer Who Solved Mysteries (Ep 250)

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very spooky we're together first this is working take a deep breath everyone and out of course my nose starts running the second we do that gross okay mine runs every episode so this is our thankfully not our third time recording the entire episode but third time attempting to start the recording because it keeps now I'm second guessing all of my equipment I'm like oh my God is it working yes you double check it all it's all good we're good we're fine we're fine it's okay this is two girls one one ghost two

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girls one ghost and we are your

Life updates and banter

ghostesses that is Karen hello and I am Sabrina is your sweatshirt blue or black blue it's Navy navy blue ladies and tangents did you get a black one yeah cuz I got black and I thought we had gotten the same one and this is the first time I'm noticing it is navy blue I wanted the blue one cuz it reminded me for some reason of Princess Diana and so oh that's how I wear it you did change your recording location today your your us on our toes on your toes I'm in a new spot because here's what happened Brian and I had to call someone to come help us with our leaves where normally would never be people that like would pay for that not that there's anything wrong with paying for that but we just bought a house so we don't really have money to pay for that so we were like oh we have to do it ourselves so we have a leaf blower that his parents gave us for Christmas and they like preg gave it to us so we could use it it and then we

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bought some leaf bags and two rakes at the hardware store and we were working for hours sweating our asses off we got like not even a quarter of the yard into a pile and we're like there's no way we can do this it's too hard so I changed my recording location because there's a lot of activity going on outside people who know what they're doing people who keep up with yard work rather than wait for all the leaves to and then try to do it all in one go which do not do that I learned that this year to be fair you just moved in and you were on tour so you really just got into your house so don't be too hard on yourself are you Pro jumping in a pile of leaves I'm So Pro jumping in a pile of leaves but here's something I read online that has made me question every time I've ever jumped in a pile of leaves what apparently it's like a spider Fest in a pile of leaves

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and also in the Northeast now there's a really big tick problem with deer ticks and Lyme disease and I guess there's a lot of ticks in the leaf piles too so I'm like yeah will I jump in one probably but it's not going to be for a long time I'm not going to roll around it I'm not going to bury myself in it and as soon as I get out I'm going to have to do like the full spider and tick check yeah so it's like is it worth it got to weigh it right I feel like a once a year for the thrill and the fun of it it's worth it yeah got a [ __ ] ton of leaves so if you want to come next Fall if you get a puppy and a puppy and kids you it's like you have to that's the uh mandate Sabrina you were hearing me on tour for the last two weeks I had such bad puppy fever you did I was like that's because you're just ready to nest and you you're like how do I stay at home forever a puppy yeah what's my excuse yeah I had puppy fever and I came back and I was like Brian we should get a dog because before we had talked about us getting a dog once we have a child or

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are pregnant and that was kind of like the rule and I was like let's just get a dog and he's like actually I think maybe we should wait for even like a few years after kids to have a dog and I was like oh my God it's getting punted a few years now wow but I get it the house is really overwhelming we've got so much to do here so yeah no dog for me meanwhile I've been having dog fever I want like a big dog going to have to get a new apartment if you want a if you want a big ass dog cuz Leia's in two tight quarters to be with one I think Leia would suck it up I have to figure it out but I also almost you put Leia through so much she's like I hate fostering I'm not gonna want to share with a dog I was actually going to pick up a foster kitten last night but you were yeah I am going to probably do it again soon I just need to Leia has a little bit of a rash so I'm trying to help clear that up first and then yeah we'll do it poor

Book club and reading

baby so I was looking at haunted spots

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in Aruba for your honeymoon oh great thank you we've actually talked about one my dream honeymoon Brian's anti honeymoon well there's a place called Rose Hall which we talked about on the podcast which is in Aruba and it's like a beautiful wedding venue really but it's haunted I don't remember it what happened there I don't remember I just remember the name Okay so we've talked about one place this is really dark but what I was in Aruba when Natalie Holloway went missing oh that's a pivot okay or I guess I was I was in Aruba 5 hours after she went missing yeah this is really sad cuz she went missing around like 1: or 2:00 a.m. and we landed around 5:00 a.m. and so the entire time we were there the FBI was combing the beach there were just like guys dressed up in suits and helicopters going over the entire time so yeah I've been to rub twice and that

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the very first time I went was unfortunately when they had probably one of the biggest crimes that's ever happened there because it's a relatively safe Island so sad so sad not a haunting but well it's a haunting memory I guess for you it's a haunting memory for sure uh something a little bit more of a positive so K and I are doing quarterly book clubs on patreon for our only Phantoms and we have one this December if you would like to join we read the house across the lake which is a Riley Sager book and then we're going to discuss it you also don't have to have rdit you could just come and tell us about the books that you are reading and we can just chat about reading generally yeah and then we'll all together pick another book and have another book club the first quarter of next year great perfect love it love the Riley Sager

Poe's final years

book I feel like all of our book club books are going to be within the same vein of that one yes yeah crack open

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Alisa Jewel all the good stuff but I'm excited this will like get me back into reading because I go in really big swings I've never been consistent I'll like read 10 books in like six weeks and then I won't read again for seven months are you going to read on your honeymoon oh yeah because I'm not planning on using my phone at all so I'm going to crank through stuff what are you going to read well I'll tell you cuz I have a few books that I have I have them listed on my good reads but there's a few that I need to finish that I've either started or downloaded there's a lot okay I need to finish my sister's grave which I had started when we were on tour and still haven't gotten to I also have all the light we cannot see downloaded and then there were none by Agatha Christie it's a great one I also had that downloaded and Misery by Stephen King oh misery is so good you haven't read that have you seen the movie no I don't think I've read a single St Stephen King novel

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oh my gosh misery is a really good quick read yeah and then I have the great Alone by Kristen Hannah so those are the ones that I I have to go through they've been on my list forever and I'm like okay Now's the Time the great alone is super fascinating it's kind of a slower read but it's beautifully written and just a very interesting story about Alaska yeah I think I'll like it I like stuff like that I really liked it I love Chris and Hannah generally night and Gale yeah oh are you okay Le did you hear her she like burped or like choked no oh God is she going to vomit on the couch do you eat too fast little girl oh she was so cute last night she burrowed under the covers with me and was just like in my arms oh I love her so much cute little sweetie well this is a great transition because Edgar Alan Poe also really loved his cat his cat's name was Catarina Katarina wait that is so funny I've never heard that for a cat name

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before and it's so like you would think more people would do that that's clever yeah c a t t r i n a cat Terina Catarina and it was like a gray little tabby that he loved oh so much and this is going to be another long episode this is part two of Edgar Allen Poe and we call it Edgar alen Poe a man haunts a man haunts I'm going to begin this episode very similarly to how I started last episode and that is with a quote I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity that's a really interesting perspective that sanity is more horrible than Insanity yeah yeah I kind of agree yeah yeah to just like live in your own fantasy sometimes but I guess it really depends on what what you're experiencing but yeah sometimes life is scarier than anything you can

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imagine up yourself I also feel like lying between sanity and insanity is a bit thin it's I'm not sure how to tell the difference because sometimes when I think I'm the most sane is what drives me the most insane like in my sane mind I start to think like really existential things that make me feel insane yeah the line is thin if you go either way if you Teeter a little too far honestly I feel like it's all the same like what is even being a human we all a little bit of everything how do we even Define this stuff that's the question we ended part

Tragic final months

one with this perhaps the greatest mystery of Edgar alen Poe is his death because no one knows why or how the man died or what happened in the days leading up to his death what is known is strange and peculiar and that the master of the maab father of the detective story has left us with yet another

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mystery because as we ended in part one Edgar alen Po's beloved cousin wife wife/ cousin Virginia yes died of tuberculosis in January of 1847 in forom New York and after Virginia's death po descended into a deep depression turned once again to alcohol and was drinking his sorrows away he traveled quite a bit he was pretty successful with his writing at this time but again wasn't making much money like he was regarded as a great author or writer but was not reaping in any type of financial success and probably what success he did have was so inconsistent that it probably didn't amount to much even if he was paid a large sum at any point yeah so he was traveling a bit and ended up falling in love with this woman named Sarah Helen Whitman who was also a poet and she lived in Rhode Island and they like it seems like a very chaotic Rel relationship they were writing Love

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Letters to one another there's a famous poem called to Helen that is a poem from po to Helen Whitman sah Helen Whitman and he proposed to her but this was like a very short-lived engagement because it was like a very erratic chaotic relationship he was drinking a ton he promised he would become sober he kept drinking anyway during this relationship po also attempted to die by Suicide twice by drinking lethal amounts of lum Po and Sarah Helen call off the engagement and po made his way back home to Richmond Virginia I'm so curious what PO is like in a romantic relationship because he seemed so difficult to get to know and so difficult of a person to just consistently keep in your life if you're anybody else and so I wonder what side of him romantic Partners experienced well I mean I really do think there was a lot of like love bombing and but also think about his past he loved

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his mother and he all these women figures in his life were dying I think he so desperately wanted to hold on to women and like have that love I actually yeah book recommendation I'm reading the book attached and it's all about attachment Styles and theories in love and relationships it's so fascinating there's three different attachment Styles there's anxious secure and avoidant and it just talks about like different relationships and meeting each other's needs and everything highly recommend great read even if you just like want to understand humanity and relationships with with friends it's like it goes all kinds of ways and parents that's like I remember in one of my early psych classes in undergrad there's an entire month basically dedicated to attachment Styles when it comes to like childhood development yeah and so it's also really interesting to see how people interact with like Toddlers and their kids and how that forms their attachment style which they

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take with them and that's often times if they have an unhealthy attachment style to a parent it can often show itself in romantic relationships down the road and stuff like that so it is important if you parent to learn about that stuff now it definitely is and people's attachment Styles can change and they also are influenced by life experience but yes they're very heavily influenced by how you are brought up by your parents and that attachment style anyway in reading that and doing this research about po I'm like oh he's for sure like an anxious he's got an anxious attachment style like he probably wants to keep these relationships so deeply and strongly and then all these women are dying and he's he might have the like rarest kind which is anxious and avoidant attachment Styles I mean yeah he seemed like the thing about POS life is there's a lot of other people that probably had very similar life

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experiences as him at the time in terms of parents passing and just like the tuberculosis and the plague and like different things going on his reactions and and the way things affected him were very deep so he's clearly like a very deep feeling sensitive yeah person and deep feeling child yeah yeah anyway yeah so he it makes me think like especially with the way they write these Love Letters to one another and what I read it just seemed like a very up and down relationship with Sarah Helen they broke off their engagement and he went back to Richmond Virginia which if you remember that's where he was raised by the Allen Family he ended up having a lot of difficult relationships with them so Richmond did have some darker memories that were reminiscent at that town but he returns there and he ends up kind of settling down he's quiet having a moment of

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Solace he still technically lives in forom where his wife Virginia had passed away and his aunt slm mother-in-law Marie lives still but he's in Richmond for a little bit and he meets and rekindles a relationship so you remember in part one I told you about that story of Sarah Elmyra Shelton that he proposed to before going to University and then her dad was so against it that he ended up having her marry someone else yes so he rekindles with her his wow childhood sweetheart so had she been married before or is she W widowed divorced she's widowed yeah okay she's now widowed she has a couple children and Sarah and po rekindle apparently they were like the best of friends and a lot of people believe that Po's one like his heart was always going to be with Virginia but that his friendship with this woman Sarah El Myra was so strong

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and beautiful that like they just had this connection and po even gets sober wow yeah how old is he at this point he's uh almost 40 39 maybe good for him he vows and he had done this a lot where he vowed and promised he would get sober he would go through times where he would and then of course fell off but yeah easier said than done right at this time he does tell Sarah Myra that he is going to be sober he loves her they get engaged which they were excited about but Sarah's children were not very excited about and po knew the reputation he had he knew that he was trouble he knew that people didn't really like him but he was like I promise I'm going to become sober I'm going to turn over a new Leaf Let's Get Married they plan their wedding and Edgar's like okay we're going to get married and we're going to move to Richmond so he plans to go back to forom New York to go get his

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aunt SL mother-in-law Marie and move her to Richmond before the wedding mhm and on this journey he was going to make a couple of stops for work things and so now it is I believe it's September of 1849 PO says goodbye to his soon to be wife Sarah and takes a steamboat and as Sarah watches po depart she all of a sudden has this sinking feeling of dread like a premonition yeah she interesting was like I feel like something's wrong and little did she know this is actually the last time she would ever see Edgar alen Poe alive isn't that wild what our intuitions I know tell us I mean I feel like we we call it intuition so often but like it pretty much is a premonition like you just know something yeah is wrong and it's so strange that we know that because it's it's frustrating to

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think that we're being told something is wrong in this sort of category where it feels like what's about to happen is predetermined you know like you're you're picking up on the energy of the air like a wrinkle in time basically that is telling you what's going to happen in an hour from now or like 10 days from now I know that's the frustrating thing it's like but then it's also this is hard because it's like we're hearing about this so after the fact act like is that you know in her morning was like I knew something was wrong or was it really in the moment did she feel that it's hard to know because it's hundreds of years ago mhm but apparently she so she says goodbye to him and returns back to home and he was taking the steamboat September 27th getting into Baltimore Maryland on the 28th and she like had this sinking feeling that she like runs back to where the steamboat takes off and was hoping

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that he hadn't left yet but he had I can't imagine her anxiety just like running up it probably took so much for her too to like trust her gut there and to be like no I I actually need to take action yeah and how helpless she must have felt standing there realizing yeah it's very sad it was too late she couldn't tell him she couldn't say anything she couldn't appear quote unquote crazy and but still maybe have a chance to convince him not to get on the boat yeah that's sad so we don't know

The mysterious death

what happened so that was September 27th he arrives to Baltimore Maryland on September 28th 1849 and we have absolutely no idea what happened but a few days later on October 3rd Edgar Alan Poe is found wandering the streets of Baltimore Maryland it is late October 3rd 1849 when a man named Joseph Walker spots a strange Man look looking lost and confused outside of

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Gunner's Hall Tavern which is in Baltimore he like has to take a double take because this man is wearing like really like ragged clothes he's wearing an old Straw Hat he looks like he hasn't been washed or cleaned he almost looks like he is an unhoused man but then he realizes he recognizes this man it's Edgar alen Poe he had worked with him before on one of the magazines that PO had worked on PO was like a frequent visitor to Baltimore so he was welln but po was disheveled he was out of place he was confused and distressed and Joseph was like so confused like this is so unlike po especially the attire is really a strange thing because PO is known to wear like the long black trench coat and his hat so where did his clothes go we do not know and he approaches Edgar and asks if he's okay but po cannot string together a coherent sentence it looked like he had been a attacked and stripped of his personal items or traded his

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clothes with someone it's not clear if he was beat or anything but it looked like someone had taken his stuff Joseph helps Usher po into Gunner's Hall Tavern and they call for J E Snodgrass who is an acquaintance of pose who lives in the area and they're basically like let's get a doctor here to look at him Snodgrass arrives and he too is stunned by the state that is in but they're like you know what he maybe just fell off the wagon again and he's drinking but he is more incoherent than they've ever seen him so they sent him to Washington College Hospital he was taken into a ward for those who were ill due to intoxication and for the next few days po remained in this intoxicated state in and out of Consciousness for days so he was in and out of Consciousness so he wasn't able to say what happened to him or remember what happened to him when he was conscious he

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was unable to complete sentences or communicate what had happened to him doctors tried to help him but he remained in distress he was not allowed to have any visitors apparently he conversed with people like doctors would be watching him and he would be having conversations with people who weren't there like almost oh Spirits or something yeah like he was maybe kind of in and out of death too a little bit he was so close this continued for 4 days so he was admitted into the hospital October 3rd and very sadly on October 7th 1849 just before the sun rose Edgar alen pooe died at just 40 years old wow even more devastating his fiance Sarah was back in Richmond she was under the assumption that PO had made it to New York had gotten Mar and was on his way back she's opening a newspaper one

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morning and just flipping through reading through and then all of a sudden she sees the name Edgar Alan Po and she's like oh what is this she reads that he is dead and finds out that he has died by reading a newspaper oh my God that poor woman yeah I can't even imagine and also the confusion too because it's not like he died in New York which is where he was supposed to be he was somewhere completely different yes so to wonder what happened to him and how he got there and have no answers and to this day no one knows like we do not know what happened he arrived in Baltimore on the 28th of September he was not seen again until the evening of October 3rd no one knows what happened in those five days yeah that's a long time does anyone have any theories like are there no eyewitnesses there are theories which we are about to discuss

Theories and cover-ups

thank you for asking okay so over the years we've gathered the

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following in June of 1849 so before even going to Baltimore po had gone on a speaking tour to raise funds for that literary magazine that he'd always dreamed of making it was going to be called stylus it went really well he returned to Richmond he was planning his wedding with his childhood sweetheart Sarah he vowed to never take a sip of alcohol again and as far as everyone knew he was sober but it wasn't the first time he made that promise but everyone had believed that he was not drinking before he left on the steamboat on September 27th kind of prior to this he had gotten Chala during the Chala outbreak and had survived and so he had some lasting side effects from it that before going on this trip Sarah was like let's take you to the doctor just to like get a checkup and make sure you're okay he goes to the doctor pretty much he was fine so like there was no concerns it wasn't like don't travel you're not well right right right he leaves on a steamboat that was

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heading to Baltimore Maryland on September 27th and his plan was to then travel to New York to retrieve his mother-in-law Mary I believe he was planning to take the train so he arrives in Baltimore on September 28th and is not seen again until October 3rd as far as we know he never made it to New York as his aunt slm mother-in-law Marie never saw him otherwise nothing can be certain these are all just like assumption so that everything I just is what we know the rest is truly just assumptions and different theories and people have like kind of come out but many people believe that PO was drunk and died due to alcohol poisoning or complications from drinking it would be one thing for him to be found drunk but it's another for him to remain in this state for 4 days some people have tried to say it was withdrawal or just like he had reached a point where the poisoning was so bad like his his liver failed or something like that so I don't know we

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don't know his last words were supposedly Lord help my poor soul newspapers reported that he died from congestion of the brain or cerebral inflammation which were euphemisms at the time for death due to alcoholism or withdrawal so it might be possible but here's a major major mystery all of the documents and medical records from those four days that Edgar Alan po spent in the hospital gone missing what in the world I'm like racking my brain right now trying to even think of who like what could he have been involved in for someone to make that much effort to like steal the documents or potentially kill now I'm kind of like someone killed him like this was almost like a hit job sort of situation or kidnapped him but like what sort of information would he have we don't know there is one Theory where it was like an attack but it is just really weird even his death certificate is missing what is the theory behind

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that what's the excuse I mean it's the 1840s like possibly bad record keeping I don't know but even weirder is like I think because Po's reputation of being an alcoholic and drinking was just so known that people were like of course it was drinking so people didn't really question it it didn't feel like it was a big murder mystery so there was no real investigation there was only one reporter one who was like maybe we should like inquire and find out more details rather than just all of us continuously reporting the exact same thing that we read from someone else's newspaper yeah actually investigate a weird mysterious death yeah there were some people who were like well what about his luggage because when he left Richmond he had luggage where's that that's a good question where is it no one really looked for it or found it until the end of October so he dies October 7th I think they found it at the end of the month his luggage was found

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in a hotel next to the train station and so people were like well what's inside of it did it reveal any clues and sadly it did not there was like nothing special about it we assume he checked into the hotel was going to stay there for an evening before taking the train to New York right but some people were like he probably went and got a drink and then just went on this binge maybe that's what a lot of people say so then there's Apparently one of Po's cousins lived in Baltimore and had gone to visit po while he was there he was basically through the rumor mail told that PO was admitted to the hospital on October 3rd and so he went to go visit po but the doctor was like we're sorry we can't let you in there he's in really terrible condition we don't want to confuse him or excite him and so he kind of like looked in through the room sees that PO is in a really really bad condition and and then decides that the next morning he's just going to bring new clothes and

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linens for Po and when he does that the next day PO is in much better shape like he is certain that PO is going to get better wow okay and then two days later on Sunday morning he is informed that PO has died isn't this something that happens though isn't this I feel like anyone who works in hospice will probably see this I've heard that a few days before people die there usually is a big like Resurgence of energy and Consciousness and they're having conversations and it is almost like a little bit of false hope but yeah there's just maybe it's just like something in the soul or the body that's like give them the opportunity to have a couple last conversations I don't know but even then like he didn't he wasn't able to have conversations and I don't know if it was necessarily because he wasn't allowed visitors or what but anyway yeah he seemed like he was getting better and then he passed away okay and Po's cousin feels terrible because had he thought po was going to

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die he would have written to and tried to find a way to communicate to all of his family and loved ones right no one got to say goodbye to PO which is I mean I understand that the cousin was probably just confused and it's like hey your cousin's in the hospital go visit him and it's not like you can pick up a cell phone right EXA like make a easy phone call but I am a little surprised that there wasn't a letter written into his wife Po's wife well they weren't married yet so I don't know still I know his partner yeah anyway the communications are so strange Marie the aunt SL mother-in-law contacts the head Doctor Who was there during po death to learn more she writes him a letter and it's not until 5 weeks after POS death that the doctor responds to her letter and is like I swear I'm recalling information from my official notes and

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refused to write in the letter what the actual cause of death was so he's like talking around it he's like I'm sure you know of the cause of death it is sad to have lost a man like this like he doesn't say anything concrete H it does also make me wonder if maybe perhaps it was alcoholism because when someone has a certain I guess like celebrity like Po did at the time because he was relatively well known and especially in that area I do wonder if the doctors were making efforts or maybe were even paid off by certain people to not outwardly say what the cause of death was to try to I guess like hide it and maintain whatever reputation po had in his life but his reputation was of an alcoholic and then keep in mind Griswald who writes this who's one of his nemesis nemeses writes this horrible obituary

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basically just completely tearing apart Po's reputation and it's what everyone believes wait so he got to write the obituary and his biography yeah yeah that's wrong it is so wrong it's so wrong it's so wrong so he refuses to write in this letter what the official cause of death is and then his official notes that he says he's referencing are Mia like they don't exist so it's like what actually did happen is this a massive cover up did the hospital accidentally kill po did something else happen there are so many theories so the first that most people do accept is that he died of alcohol complications there are other theories that PO died of heart disease or epilepsy or syphilis because of like syphilis when you die of that like it does cause confusion so some people were like maybe that was it oh or that he had died rabies wait that is a theory really was about what I was about to say that's so funny yeah cuz I'm just

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thinking I mean rabies happens pretty quick and if someone gets bit like they the confusion happens and then they start rejecting water and they have like a fear of water and it's just past the point of any medical intervention being able to make this person survive and my next sentence is literally so like when people are in late stages of rapies they do end up getting better like and then all of a sudden getting worse like that is a common pattern which is what happened yeah PO for sure had rabies I'm I'm locking in that answer apparently he did have difficulty drinking water so it could have been rabies it could have been rabies could especially that could have also been a reason why they don't want to say how he died or they didn't even know how you know maybe they didn't have the diagnosis of that yet who knows and people act pretty scary when they have rabies too so I wonder if that was part of like the doctors saying oh we don't want him to be confused or too

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excited like rejecting all visitors because he was unpredictable in his behavior so maybe it was more of a safety concern right so that's very

Missing records and witnesses

possible but listen here's one major mystery that we don't understand why was he wearing someone else's clothes what had happened to his own clothes yeah that's true so there is one theory that there was something more Sinister and an attack at play here because on October 3rd the day that PO was found in Baltimore there was a big election happening in that Tavern that he was found outside of was being used as a polling place that day and during this time there was this like really kind of terrible thing called coping it was an unusual but somewhat common practice of electoral fraud basically what would happen is in an effort to sway electoral votes this group of people who were working for a specific politician would

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wait outside of polling places grab someone like an unwilling person attack them beat them and force them to vote repeatedly for the candidate that they wanted them to vote for victims would be beat forced to drink alcohol to make them comply and they would be given multiple disguises so that they could go in and vote multiple times I mean Jesus Christ it seems like a lot of effort with the world I know it seems like so much effort and because this did happen it wasn't it wasn't the most common thing but it had happened enough times where they're like okay let's put together these different Clues which is one he's wearing a different outfit that does not belong to him he's super confused he's right outside of the polling place those three things combined could equal that again the hospital records are gone so no one knows for sure if he was beaten and bruised or anything that impli died he had been beat up he could have had some internal Hammer Jing in in his

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brain or whatever too that could have right caused some confusion maybe temporary amount of time in the hospital alleviated some of the swelling and he was temporarily better and then it just quickly yeah downhill he died but it doesn't answer where he was for 5 days like no one knows where he was between September 28th and October 3rd there are no Witnesses no one has come forward being like Oh I saw him I spent time with him we don't know right and it's not like the hotel staff was like oh yeah he was coming and going and then I think Marie his aunt mother-in-law did try to find people who had come in contact with him and if you remember the man Joseph Walker who saw PO is the reason that he brought po into this tavern to get him help Joseph Walker she finds out that he's the one that found him she tries to reach out to him but guess what he dies of an accidental drowning before anyone can talk to him him this is reminding me of last episode when the one witness died after

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accidentally being shot by her son cleaning a gun it's again like this thing because he's such a notorious iconic human being and he is Infamous like and because he is the master of mystery like are we trying to make a mystery out of something that isn't a mystery or is there something bigger at play we don't know yeah and it's also like to death just kind of follow him and everyone who he was around and the stories that he was involved in and people who he knew succumbed to these unfortunate deaths maybe he was unlucky and whoever he touched kind of got a bit of that yeah or were people just dying left and right back then I think a combination of both this kind of seems wild that in his 40 years there would be two examples of someone who's an important witness in understanding a death dies suddenly tragically shortly after that that death yeah I mean it is

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sad but I don't think we will ever know for certain the answer what we do know

Burial and legacy

is that PO was buried in an unmarked grave at the Western burying grounds in his grandfather's plot because remember he has no money so he's buried in the cemetery the Western burying grounds and a lot of Infamous people are actually buried here but PO is among the most famous a couple years later his cousin did financially uh invest in a monument to put above po burial spot mhm but guess what it was never erected because a train plowed into the ston maker shop and destroyed the monument I feel like Po made like what's the reverse of a deal with a devil where you just like you actually don't get anything like you're just was constantly being plowed over just cursed yeah just

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seriously cursed damn okay well that changes one of my statements cuz I was going to say what are your thoughts on his arch nemesis actually being the one who had something to do with his murder or his death because I was thinking like who after someone dies a horrible death who then is like I'm going to dedicate the obituary and a biography about this person to make him the most hated and ugly type of person ever like that's so [ __ ] up unless he had a motive which is beyond just like trying to beat Poe to some not I mean if he really cared about po not having much of a reputation and him himself trying to be famous why bother actually writing a biography at all like you're just you're giving more people an opportunity to learn about po but I'm thinking perhaps he had a motive to make people hate him so much more than they may have already had in his life because the more people were disgusted

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by this man the less likely they were to investigate his mysterious death I don't know I I have no idea where I didn't look into Griswald really at all like so I don't know where he lived if he was even in Baltimore but keep in mind if you remember episode one po made a lot of enemies like he yeah did he was not a pal to people like he was not like buddy buddy with people he burnt a lot of bridges so it wasn't Griswald it could have been someone else who wrote A Memoir and also tried to degrade his memory I don't know it's kind of wild that in English classes I maybe it's different to this like nowadays when kids are in school but I feel like when we learned about these literary figures that are historical figures too we only really learned about just like strict facts of their life and then a lot about their writing style and their influence and I feel like that's missing a huge part which is like their personality and how people perceived them why didn't we learn that PO is a dick that seems

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important but also why didn't we learn about how traumatic his life was you know I feel like that also feels important right because it was just like oh poor was po was orphaned and then a writer at this age he started writing and yeah you skip over the trauma yeah and I I don't know I feel like learning about it's when we look at presidents we learn about the good and the bad so why don't we not I mean kind of but I don't know I feel like I guess now with the internet we do maybe not in school there's also so much that like with po you could spend your life learning about Po and studying him and they're probably like Po experts similar to like specific president experts like it's very hard to know everything about them and then when someone is in such a famous in like the spotlight things get so warped that it's hard to know what is fact and what has been misconstrued over time this makes me miss my history teacher in Middle School Mr Duncan he was so real with it

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he'd tell great stories and he would just be so blunt and I think he would bring up the things that other teachers strayed away from which was he'd make you imagine that you were this person something horrible was happening to you or that you were the abuser oh and it would stick with you the history lesson that he taught he was a great teacher yeah yeah rip Mr Duncan okay so the family is unable to afford because they're really unwealthy like they don't have any money that they spent this money to make a monument gets ruined by a train no one else can afford a monument or a marker for po so his plot remained unmarked until 1875 when this community of people who were teachers and in the literary world were like we want to honor Po and so they raised money like truly we collecting pennies to raise money for this and they make a marker for Po's plot people today like will leave pennies on his grave kind of as a offering to the teachers and to the

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literary Community but apparently his birth was mislabeled I think they put January 20th when he was born on January 19th so even still it's not get it right perect he is famous in the literary and English worlds but his his life and his history is full of typos yes nearly 25 years after his death they do this like Grand reveal for his new marker that the literary Community has raised and that doctor who was at Po's deathbed who had written Marie and said that you know very like mysteriously like not being concrete and straight forward about the death he comes to this event and he starts to tell people that PO is not actually drunk and that alcohol had nothing to do with his death intriguing but he doesn't say what did happen so it's like why are you what what what's going on buddy are you just now trying to like stir things up right like does he know something or

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yeah is he just trying to create a conspiracy of his own right so no one knows there's probably I think there's over 26 published theories as to what caused POS death his death remains a

Hauntings and history

mystery and here's what I will say to transition to the next portion of this episode I'm going to go back to part one and repeat the quote I said and I started the episode with the boundaries which divide life from Death are at best shadowy and vague who should say where one ends and where the other begins because when po left this Earthly realm he does still remain his presence lives on through his literary works and his Spirit lingers and is present at many different places on Earth the first Oddity that feels quite paranormal and also so very me in essence and calls back to the way we started this episode Katarina is the legend of Edgar alen Po's spirit animal

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and his cat so his cat Catarina was several states away in forom New York with Marie and on October 7th when po died somehow this cat intuited and knew that PO had died and decided that she could not live on without him and died oh on the very same day oh my God gosh oh this is beautiful but so sad it's like this just reminding me of all those posts that people put on the internet of like dogs going to their owner's Graves and not leaving them for a few days it's so sad it is so sad but hey he had a very loyal pet a very loyal friend who loved him unconditionally yes maybe the only thing SL person/ soul that did and as I read this I I said it to Leia and I looked at her and I said would you do this and she just didn't

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didn't respond so TBD stay tuned okay another strange thing so the woman he was engaged to Sarah Elmyra remember he was engaged to a different Sarah before that Sarah Helen so she was very interested in spiritualism and was deeply infatuated with po during his life in all of his writing deeply inspired by his work it almost felt like that relationship I think there's one letter where po writes how he loves her because she loves him like she loved him so much and he loved that feeling so he loved her wow yeah but so she still loves him despite their engagement being called off she's actually one of the like leaders to trying to rectify his name and kind of call out Griswald and have this movement of Defending Po and kind of actually truthfully telling his story but she also is into spiritualism and tries to communicate with the late Edgar

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alen Poe through seances and she holds these seances in her own home there was a point in the 1860s where she was so convinced that PO Spirit was coming through that she hired a medium to move into her home and live there fulltime so that they never missed any of the attempts that PO is making to communicate with them wow how very Houdini of her I know another poet slsp spiritualist her name was Elizabeth or Lizzy Doon was adamant that she was able to channel poetry directly from the spirit of Po himself so she would like say poems and be like but this is not mine this is the work of Po's of course hard to verify if it actually was po Spirit but there are a couple places that it really makes sense that PO Spirit appears like the cemetery where he was buried the old western burial grounds Legends say pose ghost wanders here but there are also some Mysteries

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okay so remember how they finally made this Monument for his burial plot this is like 25 years after his death they're like okay let's put it on above his burial ground but then when they're about to do that they realize there's this church being built kind of on the cemetery that would block site of Po's burial spot so they decide to actually move him so they exume his body and as they are doing that they're like carrying his coffin Po's bones his decaying body falls out through the bottom yeah e oh God what do you do do you think everyone stood there in shock or do you think one person was like it's okay and just started picking up the bones I don't know I mean I don't think that was part of the whole process I think what they there's probably like a small group of people who worked at the cemetery who were helping plan and prep for the

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actual ceremony and reburial where they were going to reveal the monument so there were probably only a few people here and so then they're like okay well we need to make a new casket and new coffin for him and instead of getting rid of the old one they start to sell pieces of it off for a high price wow that's kind of [ __ ] up and here is is the birth of the goth movement there was someone who loved po so much that she purchased two pieces from his coffin and fashioned them into a cross and wed around her neck which became a massive symbol of the goth fashion movement I'm actually kind of surprised that Zack bacin doesn't have anything like this in his Museum I know may seems like something he would go after I wonder how you verify that it's actually his coffin you know I have no idea okay here's another a really weird thing a lot of weird things happening here so PO

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is moved and when he's reburied they like save plots next to him and his aunt SL mother-in-law Marie when she dies they bury her beside him and then all these people who like really love po are like well his one true love was his cousin wife Virginia she should be moved and buried beside him as well the only problem is remember she died in 1847 she was originally interred in the Bronx and a couple years after po death developers actually decided to build over this Cemetery so they moved all the bodies and no one was really there to claim Virginia's body so guess what this Man Who Loved Poe and actually is one of the men who started to write like a real biography of Po like a better more Justified one yeah he takes Virginia's body and so so all these people are coming to they're like oh where's is it like for safekeeping until they know what to do with Virginia because you

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knew know when was coming for her or was it to possess Virginia just like Po did because I feel like although it seems like a wild move if you know this body is just basically going to be abandoned and lost to time since no one else is claiming it and you have the opportunity to like maybe I would do the same thing I don't know yeah I mean I want to say that there were good intentions because he did love Po and he really wanted to help like maybe he learned that Virginia's body was being exed and no one was claiming her and so he was like I'll take her for safekeeping but like it is weird because this was before people were calling to bury her next to Poe and this is where it gets weird so finally this group of people are like where's Virginia's body we want to bury her next to PO this guy is like huh I have Virginia's body where did I put her he doesn't remember where she is and then finds her a little bit later in a box under his bed okay I mean just

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disturbing all around ew okay never mind I take back all of my oh maybe he had good intentions maybe he did but like I don't know where to put her otherwise like did he I don't know a Sellar a shed like why wasn't it his first thought to be like oh we should bury her next to PO you're right why was his thought let me store her under my bed he just wanted her to sleep with her every night right to feel close to her oh poor Virginia but nowadays that girl went through so much Virginia and Marie are resting beside po many people have actually reported seeing Po's ghost walking around the cemetery there is a shadowy figure in a long black coat seen quite often but there's so many people buried here so it's hard to like know for certain who it is I think people just want to say it's po one woman once saw a man that res resembled po so much like she saw his face that she was convinced that there was a PO impersonator at the cemetery and so she

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goes to like the staff working there he like do you guys have a PO impersonator here and they go back out to the cemetery and the man is gone but this is amazing so there is a legend of the PO

The Poe toaster

toaster excuse me what for over 70 years on the morning of January 9th every year there is a man a human man who appears in all black he appears the exact same day always wearing all black since 1949 he wears a black fedora and a black scarf that hides the features of his face he carries a walking stick and slowly strolls into the cemetery every year in the early morning of January 19th which is the birthday of Edgar Alan Poe and every year he leaves a bottle of KAC which es Po's favorite drink and three red roses upon the grave of the

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late and beloved literary genius he places them there he stands he tips his hat and leaves it is the same every year except for one year this man left behind a note and it said Edgar I have not forgotten it was left unsigned and to this day no one knows the identity of this man there was a letter left in 1998 that said the tradition has has been passed on to the next Generation okay that's what I was going to ask I was like it's not still happening is it cuz if it were and it's the same man that guy's a vampire no it's been passed on but people have tried to catch this man because no one knows the identity of this man or who he is what his relationship to Edgar alen Poe is they call him the PO toaster it's this big mystery there is a photo it's called po toaster and this is the only photo that has ever been caught of the man oh he looks young in this photo I think that was back in the 90s I don't know why I

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was picturing like an old old man anyway in 2006 a group of people tried to find him they literally like staked out the cemetery and tried to chase this man down but he got away interesting since then I I don't know if like maybe the toaster has like changed their tactic or comes later because now people are trying to catch them but it seems like it's been passed on through generations then in 2015 I think people were having trouble finding him or I think he maybe stopped coming because people were on to him and he needed to change when he came I don't know but in 2015 the Maryland Historical Society decided to elect a new po toaster to continue the tradition and their identity of the elected official is always to remain a secret I love this what great way to keep on a tradition yeah and that's fun to try to become that the PO toaster yeah the PO toaster

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it does make me so curious though who this person was especially the I haven't forgotten or whatever that said yeah like what have you not forgotten makes me wonder because I could be it could so be someone who's like who maybe po showed a great kindness to and it's like I I haven't forgotten the moments that you were great despite what people are saying and so I'm like here to honor you every year on your birthday it could be a complete stranger who's just a huge po fan but it's also like what if there's just some big secret what if it's like the family of the doctor yeah I don't know anyway that mystery maybe will never be solved again another mystery

Poe's haunted sites

but post spirit is also known to haunt the city in which he died Baltimore Maryland the Edgar Allen Poe House in Baltimore Maryland was once home to PO his aunt and his cousin wife and it has been turned into a museum and it houses

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many artifacts that once belong to him people believe that PO Spirit visits the home on occasion but the most commonly seen spirit is actually his grandmother Elizabeth Poe who had died while living in the home and there's a spirit of an elderly woman often seen wandering the Halls she doesn't do much she kind of like mosies around there is however another Spirit who causes quite the Ruckus she breaks windows and like will whisper in people's ears tap them on the shoulder turn lights on and off and like bang and Clos doors and stuff we don't know who that is she's chaotic I love it there's a little like area called Fels point in Baltimore Maryland that is incredibly haunted Beyond just po there's like a phantom Whistler women in high heels little kids running around but there's also po but now he has friends maybe he's making friends more easily in the afterlife and that's why he chose this uh hot pocket

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for energy maybe so the horse you came in on Saloon is a bar and has been a staple in the Baltimore City for over 246 years it was established in 1775 and is the only bar in Maryland that survived before during and after prohibition so it's got a lot of history there are a lot of hauntings and mysterious things that happen in this Saloon but it is known for being Po's favorite Watering Hole while he was alive apparently okay this is the one thing that I'm a bit confused by because I read one thing that said it was the last place he drank before he died although we thought he was sober no one actually knows that he was drinking and then there was another thing that said it was the it was the tavern that he was found outside of so I don't know oh but he used to like drinking here that is what we know and many people report seeing Po's ghost walking down the street towards the Horse Saloon and so

1:00:00

they no longer serve KAC but when they did the bartenders every beginning of their shift would put a glass with cognac on the bar for Poe and a lot of them would be like it's so weird because at the end of the night the glass is empty as if someone has drank the cognac but they don't see anyone drink it throughout the evening it would be weird for a random person I guess unless someone's really drunk and they think it's their drink drinking it that's interesting have they never gone to look at their security footage like I assume they have a camera at the bar I don't know when they stopped serving cognac they would hear like a glass being like thrown and broken on the ground as if like someone was like pissed so they associate it with po being like where's my drink watch it just be some other random Spirit who's like this is great every single night they give me a drink yeah yeah did we talk about this tavern it feels so familiar to me I don't know so it almost makes me wonder for some

1:01:00

reason I'm thinking of the Resurrection Mary episode we did but I have no idea if that's oh interesting at all accurate I don't know I have no idea cuz I didn't end up reading more about like there are other ghosts that haunt this Saloon but because there's so many po things I didn't read those like I didn't do more research into that cuz I was focusing on PO there's a story about a man who was sitting at the bar talking to one of the bartenders about Po and was like I doubt like I don't believe his ghost is here and all of a sudden his bar stool is pulled out from underneath him and he like went crashing to the ground so people like to joke that PO like don't challenge my existence yeah it kind of sounds like something po would do based on what we know about he's Petty how he lived his life and how he treated people yeah then the saloon has honored PO with a frame drawing of him that says Po's last stop and it's like right behind the bar so that's Baltimore and Po's ghost but po lived in a lot of different

1:02:00

states Philadelphia he didn't really live in Boston he did frequent Boston and he was born there but Philadelphia New York and Richmond are all places that PO Spirit has been seen which leads us to Richmond Virginia there is another Edgar Allen Poe Museum in Richmond Virginia and it is said to house three spirits but this is strange because po never actually lived in this house I think it's just an old historic home it's called the Old Stone House and was built in 1740 so it's pretty historic and when people were trying to create a museum for po I think this house was already in possession of the state and they were like well it's pretty reminiscent of the type of house that PO lived in so let's turn this into the museum looks close enough yeah so they filled it with like some of Po's belongings and some of his literary work so it is a museum dedicated to him but people want to believe it's his Spirit

1:03:00

but there's three spirits and it belonged to the egg family so they think these Spirits are related to the original owners of the house oh actually though I read a thing that PO apparently again it's hard to know for certain but when he was in the military he visited this house like very briefly he stepped inside of it maybe it's just because there's so much memorabilia and things that belong to him that there's enough of a connection where maybe he does pass by there's so much that's unexplained it's kind of like the first thing that comes to mind is why so many people who have near-death experiences see Elvis Presley it's like why is Elvis hunting everyone who's almost dead yeah yeah like what what does he have to do with any of that but it's like maybe there is just something with the connection or enough people saying your name or intrigued about your life that it does draw you as a spirit to that place whether you had any connection in Life or not yeah it's like Beetle Juice the most commonly seen Spirits in this house

1:04:00

in the the museum are children they're two kids with blonde hair they are seen running around and they love to photob bomb so like they show up in people's photos I couldn't find any photos specifically but that is what has been said maybe the museum like has some there I don't know yeah makes me want to go and then there's a shadowy figure which is the third spirit and people like to say it's po but the most famous ghost story from this Museum I love it okay so the museum staff one evening gets this delivery and it's a box of Edgar alen Poe bobbleheads it's late at night when they get this delivery so they're like okay we'll set that up tomorrow so they leave it unopened and they lock up for the evening they come back the next morning that box is completely unpacked and all of the bobbleheads are displayed and put out on the shelf for purchase and whatever happened whoever did it it never

1:05:00

triggered the motion alarm that they have at the Museum so it just suddenly happened like in a blink of an eye did pose ghost do it who knows yeah I guess that's one way to be like is this right should we be selling bobbleheads of Po and then the answer is yes because clearly he's ready for these suckers to go home with people and for people to buy them because he's putting them on the Shelf if it is him yeah stuff like that also makes me question timeline glitches like glitches in The Matrix too where it's like did someone else set this up like an employee set this up and there was just like this weird like glitch in the timeline where we're missing in this timeline someone doing that but it did happen at some point yeah yeah I don't know people like to think that PO liked the bobbleheads and was like o look at this and put them all out

Final reflections on Poe

but there is one last place and it is actually the last place that PO ever lived it's the forom cottage in New York

1:06:00

it was the home that he was planning to go to to retrieve his mother-in-law Aunt Marie before moving to Richmond and marrying Sarah Elmyra it is also the home that his cousin wife Virginia and his cat Katarina died in it's also the place that PO wrote his last and final story before dying in the home is now a museum and this is really sad so I don't know why I kind of laughed but it's very sad so his aunt outlived everyone kind of in the family and had no money she had this house and po didn't make money there was no money coming in even after his death and so in order to feed herself she would sell off furniture and items in her home so when she finally passed away there was very very few pieces of furniture left in the home it has now been refurnished and then the few pieces that were left are still

1:07:00

there one of those things is his desk where he wrote many of his Infamous pieces I'm glad she kept that cuz that could have easily been one of the highest yeah sold items you know that she had but clearly it was sentimental enough that she was like nope I'm going hold on to this his cat Katarina would sit on his shoulder as he wrote oh like a little par like a little Raven a bird also there is the bed in which his wife cousin wife Virginia had died and a mirror that is cracked it's interesting because when they found the house and like retrieved the house after Marie's death they were like why did she keep this mirror that's cracked and they think it had a lot of sentimental value and to this day people catch the image of a woman passing through the mirror so ooh it's either Virginia or it's the aunt who has some connection to it interesting people see

1:08:00

they believe they see Virginia's Spirit but she's very shy so she like will wander around in a dress but like try to avoid being seen yeah again there's some hauntings that happen not necessarily of Po himself but people are like it could be po it is the last place he lived he also loved his wife so much like maybe he visits there are so many hauntings as you can tell where po haunts all over the world I absolutely believe that the man who bestowed upon us the great Murder Mysteries and the gothic horror Tales he has haunted us once more but this time in spectral form his Spirit lives on whether in Apparition or through his writings because Edgar Alan Poe is a man who haunts us all ever more ever more every time me say Evermore I have to repeat the word I know it is a beautiful word and to end this episode I want to

Cipher solutions and banter

give everyone the solutions to the ciphers that we gave at oh [ __ ] I never

1:09:00

even tried to solve them that's okay you wouldn't have been able I wouldn't have yeah no okay so the first one basically solves in two the soul secure in her existence Smiles at the dawn dagger and defies its point the star shall fade away the sun himself grow dim with age and nature sink in years but Thou shalt flourish in Immortal youth unhe hurt amid the war of elements in the wreck of matter and the crush of Worlds I can understand why people were having trouble deciphering it too because it's it's a poem it's harder when you don't yeah clearly know what's coming next like it's not the way people typically would speak right the other one I like don't understand it but anyway it deciphers as follows Mr Alexander how is it that the messenger arrives here at the same time with the Saturday Courier and other

1:10:00

Saturday papers when according to the date it is published 3 days previous is the fault with you or the postmasters that was po or was that the one that PO had solved that was one that PO had solved and published in a paper okay yeah yeah that one seems easier so po really loved ciphers that had like if you had a phrase that like I can't remember what the type of Cipher it is but it's where every letter of the alphabet corresponds to a symbol or a letter in the message whereas this one I don't think followed that at all H so I don't know ciphers are hard dude not my thing yeah I would never be able that's yeah that's not my thing either no I wish it was I wish I had that brain but I do not if you and I were in an escape room and they were like figure out the cipher we'd be like well we're stuck here yes we live here now the bunker we've always wanted to Live May someone else will come in and help or we just die here do you think

1:11:00

we'd even get one letter right I think we would in Escape rooms they make them that you they want you to get out eventually yeah if we were stuck in a in a room though that wasn't like a escape room put on by any sane person but an escape room from someone who was trying to keep us there like jigsaw but there was no timer it was just like infinite how long do you think it would take us to figure out I do think together it would be under a year I would say like less than a day wow you a lot of faith in us I believe we can do it we would get out but yeah everyone that is Edgar Alan Poe and I hope you enjoyed the two-parter I think he's so fascinating there's so much more about his life that obviously I could not cover in these two parts but I hope that it gave you enough of a satisfying taste or tantalizing of your Sensations your feelings about Edgar Alo it certainly piqued my interest good I'm glad I learned a lot

1:12:00

about him yeah me too do I want to come in contact with his spirit I don't know I don't know because I don't know if he'd be nice or mean to me I don't know either if you tell him you love him maybe he would be nice to you I love you and I love your bobble head and he's like okay fine you may pass okay I have an email and this one I picked out I was originally looking for emails that related to Ravens because I was like that just feels appropriate for edar and Poe that is yeah uh but there weren't really that many so we're going to read about a crow instead which honestly could still be a raven yes because it's hard to distinguish between the two I think a lot of people don't know the differences yeah but Ravens are freaking massive too I said hello to my Crow this morning sitting out in the courtyard do you feed them peanuts yet to make them Peggy does really love you and attached to you Peggy feeds them peanuts but maybe I will start feeding them peanuts too yeah cuz right now

1:13:00

they're probably they're Peggy's crows yeah cuz they're whoever feeds them but I want them to be my crows I haven't found any neighborhood crows if I do find any crows I'm bringing them to my yard a trail of peanuts my peanuts bring all the crows to the yard damn [Laughter] right H okay this is called a pile of

Listener emails

gravestones in my backyard sleep paralysis and astral projection hello ghostesses hello H that's how it's spelled was recently turned on the podcast via morbid love all you spoopy conscious woke quirky special ladies I wish for a scary sleepover with all of you I've resonated with your podcast so much because as much as I find listening to True Crime so important and interesting I have many more experiences with the other Realms I have a few so feel free to pick and choose I'm going to just

1:14:00

read everything in this email cuz I think it's very interesting where to start my family built the home that I grew up in and I'm currently living in in 1999 I was seven the road the house is on was constructed and changed because of our house being built we all remember there being a small graveyard up the road consisting of maybe five headstones there's this really cool Gravel Pit across the way owned by an oldtime farming family and they gave us permission to walk dogs explore Etc on their land my sister and I way later in life connected on the fact that we always felt like someone was watching over us I had one time experienced sleep paralysis as a kid where an entity just came in and led down next to me on the bed I was scared and I tried to scream but I couldn't the spirit didn't seem that threatening though just lay down forward no just laid down and then you're paralyzed and you can't say anything nope don't love that fast forward 22 years later I moved home after living in Portland Oregon for

1:15:00

8 years I was so happy to be home and for nostalgic reasons ventured over to the Gravel Pit with my chunk muffin of a dog and Came Upon a huge pile of gravestones at least 100 a huge pile Da Back to 1804 men women babies young children just in a [ __ ] pile I had this overwhelming feeling that this was not right and that these people had been Disturbed and that they wanted acknowledgement I did some research and found out that these gravestones were taken away from multiple different graveyards that were still selling plots my theory is that the owners were reselling plots after finding that they had no existing family to reclaim their bodies that's so messed up are you kidding it is jeez e that night after discovering the stones I fell asleep on the couch I heard the front door knob turn and someone walk in thought it was my sister or my mom and I tried to call out of course realizing that I can't I'm now in sleep paralysis which has

1:16:00

happened a lot and I'll get into in my next story but I feel a presence enter the room and I could tell that this presence was standing over me I looked up and there's this little boy naked just staring at me it wasn't threatening or scary just truly curious the word curious still sticks out to me looking back on this experience he was black which really stuck with me because I'm from way up in northern Michigan and it's predominantly a very white area H this little boy's life was cut short it's just something I feel and I know and his curiosity seemed innocent and I wish I could have taught him a game because I felt like he never got a chance to experience much fun oh days later I had sleep paralysis where this angry lady was dragging me around the house by my neck I just mov moved back into the house as I've been binging and catching up on all of your episodes definitely had the realization that listening to y'all open some [ __ ] up so we'll see

1:17:00

what happens great but on to my second story about astral projection woo we woo wo where to start with this one is even harder I was 21 and recently moved to Portland from Chicago and I was definitely going through some big Consciousness transformation and was feeling very connected I went for a run and I realized that this Crow had been following me skipping from light post to light post I finally turned around made eye contact with it continued on my run and then I heard the whooshing wings coming towards me the crow tapped me on the top of my head with its wings flew up to the Post in front of me and then just stopped and stared at me what one of the coolest things to ever happen to me to this day later that day I laid in bed writing a grocery list for the two we cleanse that I was about to do and all of a sudden everything was spinning and I thought that I was having a seizure and I heard two voices saying she's ready she's fine no she's scared

1:18:00

let's not hearing those voices a thought crept into my mind could this be what I think it might be and boom I flew out of my body my mom is head out of body [ __ ] when she was pregnant with me so I had an inkling I saw myself I saw the room and when the experience started it was Daylight so I decided to test it and see what I could do I smacked the wall surprised to see that it was solid I played a game of slow trampoline on my bed I fell down on my butt and then slowly floated to the ceiling I started laughing cuz I'm like this is real this is actually happening then my surroundings changed the dimensions got dark and Scratchy kind of like a static TV with orbs I got scared and was able to wake myself up and for weeks after that I couldn't sleep without being sucked in in and it seemed to get darker and darker because I was a new traveler and entities can identify Travelers who

1:19:00

don't yet have control therefore they feed on their fear I wish I had the energy to go into detail about my experiences with the Demonic realm after that but I'll send those another time in order to sleep I had to have a whole ceremony crystals Sage candles all the works I said look I'm very grateful to have this experience of Astral exploration but I only welcome it if it's within the light Plaines I need to sleep at this time I need all of y'all to leave me because I literally just need to sleep yeah and after I said that nothing ever happened again I think my spirit guide who was saying no she's scared was right thankful for the other spirit guide to believe in me though wowa I've never written those experiences down and I know I'm leaving a ton of details out see you on the other side or maybe in the astral plane from Nikki Nikki okay it's so fascinating that the same day well the crow that experience is so

1:20:00

cool it's interesting that it's the same day that Nikki was able to travel to the astral plane so it feels like there's some connection because before that part of the story I was like was the crow trying to warn Nikki about something or was it trying to protect Nikki but maybe it was like a spirit guide being like today's the day and a little like Pro tap yeah almost like a sign you're in and kind of just like testing where Nikki was in that day it was like a temperature check like are are you going to feel like this is a cool and witchy and kind of eye openening experience getting tapped by this Crow or are you going to react really strongly and be scared because if you're scared then maybe today's not the day but if you think that this is some sort of open spiritual intervention then maybe it's time I love that Nikki's astral body first thought was let me jump on the bed so fun yeah it's also so interesting that touching the wall it was hard yeah you know like I think you could almost I

1:21:00

don't know I I feel like it would be like putty like you could push into it and then kind of just like float through it but that's interesting it seems like you actually do have to open doors and continue through life sometimes the way that it is my astral experience I definitely had to open doors like it was still like following the same rules but my body was not physic Bally like yeah 3D it was more spiritual I don't remember mine cuz there were there was a bedroom door that I had to go through and so I must have I must have opened it yeah because I don't remember how else I got out there someone this is so funny I

Outro and closing

was looking at my last night I posted a picture of me like sitting at my table and I was drinking tea reading that book attached and Leia is sitting on the table and I posted on my story and someone we went to college with responded so are you like a fullon witch now and I was like that is the best freaking compliment in the world I need

1:22:00

to know who it was that's so funny I've never read the book attached but I have a lot of friends who have and a lot of people say really good things about it so my therapist was like I've been telling you to read this for a long time and I was like okay well now I'm back from tour I'll finally read it yeah I think it's pretty much the recommendation of therapists cuz no one's ever heard of it from a friend it's always been a therapist well I first heard of it from Lexi who is a friend and a therapist a therapist who is a therapist but she's a friend first but is a licensed and working therapist true true I think po needs a therapist I hope that in the afterlife he has worked through some of his pains his traumas or maybe he's been reincarnated and in this new life he can work through some of his pains from last life yes yes our big hope for po yeah wishing him the best such an interesting episode or

1:23:00

two-parter really wishing healing upon everyone yeah and also I feel like it's almost the curse of writers and Poets sometimes especially of that generation where like there just was so much darkness and yeah Despair and hardship and they're famous now to us but I wonder if they would have thought that having that Fame was worth what they went through yeah I mean they like you know even comedians nowadays like they say and in the recent past Fame just generally there's a lot of people who their lives seem so glorious and beautiful but there's just a lot of Darkness underneath it yeah well even when we were on tour we were talking to some people at different venues people that worked there and we were making comments about just how hard it is to be on tour and how we don't know how people do that and like maintain friendships and relationships and have time to go home like it's so exhausting you basically have to make tour your entire life to survive it we're like how do

1:24:00

some people just do this so often and the people that we were speaking to were like honestly usually those people don't have the best personal lives outside of work like it tour is is everything to them yeah yeah well we love you all so very much and we hope that you are healing and growing and that you know there are therapists there is love and life and there are people who support you we support you and if you have Ghost Stories We definitely want to read them please email them to us at two girlsm ghost podcast gmail.com if you think your PO reincarnated hit me up let's write something I don't know what in the world was that that was unhinged that's what I'm saying sanity in sanity it's all here we are I think if someone's reincarnated as po they're going to write their own [ __ ] as po well

1:25:00

maybe I'm Mary Shelly reincarnated we don't know no yeah I know I'm not don't worry I'm not that cool put all of your lovers hearts and paper bags St them away is unhinged I'll do it well thank you guys for continuing to come back week after week you can support us in a variety of ways you can watch us on YouTube tell everybody about the podcast and if you're curious about what we're up to or want to follow along with some of the graphics if you're not watching on YouTube you can also follow us on social media we have Tik Tok we have Instagram we've got the things and then we have patreon which we're extremely active on and have an awesome Community there we do campfire stories live every Tuesday night for any of the tiers on patreon so if you've never joined our patreon before and want to give it a go you can join at that please do at that lowest tier and still join us every single week for live ghost stories yes and thank you so much to our team thank you to our producer Jamie for editing the episode we love all of you our team and all of

1:26:00

you who are listening thank you and we will see you see you on the other side very spy