This Day in History: The Master of the Macabre, Edgar Allan Poe, died on this day in 1849 at the age of 40. Poe is one of the greatest and most well-known American authors of the 19th century. Not only was he the master of the macabre, he is also generally considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre and is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction.
One writer explained Poe thusly: "Poe's mind undoubtedly had a bias toward the dark side of all human existence. It is one of his idiosyncrasies. But it would be far from truth to say that Poe shows any sign of morbidity. He never lapses into the wavering weakness of the degenerate mind. Though he pictures degeneracy, there is no suspicion of degeneracy in his literary handling of the subjects he chooses. He displays the facts in these stories with no less acute analysis than in his tales of ratiocination; and it is interesting to observe that when we have read one of these tales we are led to reflect, not on the amount of misery and wickedness actually existing in the world (as we do after reading Zola), but on certain strange freaks of our own dispositions."~Sherwin Cody
Horror author and historian H. P. Lovecraft was heavily influenced by Poe's horror tales, dedicating an entire section of his long essay, "Supernatural Horror in Literature", to his influence on the genre. In his letters, Lovecraft stated, "When I write stories, Edgar Allan Poe is my model." Alfred Hitchcock once said, "It's because I liked Edgar Allan Poe's stories so much that I began to make suspense films"
There are many theories as to how Edgar Allan Poe died. Some of these are:
Beating
Epilepsy
Dipsomania
Heart
Toxic Disorder
Hypoglycemia
Diabetes
Alcohol Dehydrogenase
Porphryia
Delerium Tremens
Rabies
Heart
Murder
Epilepsy
Carbon Monoxide Poisoning
Suicide
Cholera
Rabies
Syphilis
Influenza
Enzyme deficiency
Apoplexy
Meningeal inflammation
Heart disease
Poe's beloved cat died at the same time Poe did.
"Only seven people attended Poe’s funeral. Poe’s cousins hastily buried him the day after he died. An observer recalled the ceremony as being both 'cold-blooded' and 'unchristianlike.' One of the attendees, Henry Herring, was later quoted as saying about Poe, 'I didn’t have anything to do with him when he was alive, and I don’t want to have anything to do with him after his death.'" ~Christopher P. Semtner
Sexton George W. Spence wrote of the weather on the day of Poe's funeral: "It was a dark and gloomy day, not raining but just kind of raw and threatening."
Spiritualistic medium Lizzie Doten claimed to have been able to channel Poe's ghost and published poems that he supposedly dictated to her in the afterlife.
There is also the mysterious figure of the Poe Toaster. For 60 years, from 1949 to 2009, somebody would visit Poe's grave on his birthday every year (between midnight and 6 a.m.), and would leave three roses and a bottle of cognac.
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