Ghosts of the Raven: The Eerie Echoes of Edgar Allan Poe with Leanna Renee Hieber

Michelle: Before we dive into the eerie tales of the past, I have some electrifying news to share with you. I'm excited to announce that the Haunted History Chronicles podcast now has its very own small shop of the macabre and mysterious. Picture this exclusive merchandise, hauntingly beautiful artwork, spine tingling stickers mugs that will make your morning coffee seem positively paranormal, and prints that capture the ghostly essence of days gone by. Whether you're a longtime listener of the show or a newcomer drawn to the enigmatic allure of haunted history, the shop is your gateway to the supernatural. Imagine decorating your space with a piece of history, a connection to the spectral past. The merchandise is designed to evoke the very essence of the stories I share, making it an essential addition to your collection of all things eerie. You can find all these hair raising treasures on the website or simply follow the links conveniently placed in the podcast description notes. It's so easy, even a ghost could do it. So whether you're searching for the perfect addition to your haunted memorabilia collection or just wanting to immerse yourself in the world of the supernatural, the shop is here to provide. Dive into the past, embrace the spook, and let the stories of history's ghosts haunt your space. So why not visit the shop today? And remember, the spirits of the past are waiting for you. The Haunted History Chronicles exclusive merchandise is just a click away. Happy shopping, and may the spirits be with you. Hi everyone, and welcome back to Haunted History Chronicles.

Michelle : First of all, thank you for taking a listen to this episode. Before we begin, I just want to throw out a few ways you can get involved and help support the show. We have a patreon page as well as an Amazon link, so hopefully if you're interested in supporting, you can find a way that best suits you. All of the links for those can either be found in the show notes or over on the website. Of course, just continuing to help spread the word of the show on social media, leaving reviews and sharing with friends and family is also a huge help. So thank you for all that you do. And now let's get started by introducing today's podcast or guest. Today we embark on a journey through the eerie and enigmatic life, death, and supernatural elements surrounding one of literature's most iconic figures Edgar Allen Poe. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, in the year 1809, Poe's life was marked by tragedy from its very beginning. He was the second child of David and Eliza Poe. Edgar's world would be shattered when, at less than two years old, his father abandoned the family. A year later, his mother would succumb to tuberculosis, leaving Edgar an orphan. Poe would go on to be fostered by tobacco merchant David Allen and his wife, Francis. Though they raised him, they never legally adopted him. Growing up in Virginia, Poe always considered himself a Virginian, but his restless spirit led him to move frequently between Richmond, Philadelphia, New York and Baltimore. Each place he lived carries the indelible imprint of his memory and some say his ghost. Poe's relationship with his foster father was oftentimes tumultuous. Edgar went on to pursue education at the University of Virginia. This was short lived, lasting just one year, as financial troubles forced him to quit. But it was during this turbulent period that the seeds of Poe's literary genius began to spout. In 1829, when David Allen's wife passed away. Poe and Allen briefly reconciled. However, their fragile peace crumbled when Poe deliberately failed as an officer cadet at West Point, driven by his unwavering desire to be a poet and writer. This marked the final estrangement between him and Alan. Upon Alan's death, his fortune was bequeathed to his biological son and stepson, leaving nothing for Poe. Financial struggles would shadow Poe for the rest of his life. Before leaving for West Point, Poe moved to Baltimore to live with his Aunt Maria. Poe Clem and his cousin Virginia. Virginia, only seven years old when they first met, would play a crucial role in Poe's life. After leaving West Point, he lived briefly in New York, publishing various works that garnered little recognition at the time. In 1833, Poe returned to Baltimore to live with his aunt and cousins, along with his grandmother, Elizabeth Poe. The family depended on Elizabeth's small pension to rent a modest home now known as the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. Tragically, Elizabeth passed away in 1835, plunging the family into even deeper financial distress. Many believe her spirit lingers in the small Baltimore house to this day. Poe fell deeply in love with his young cousin Virginia, whom he married in 1835 when he was 26, and she was only 13. Opinions on their love vary, with some seeing it as a sibling like affection, while others describe it as a passionate and devoted love. Virginia's heartfelt poem to her husband, written a year before her death, stands as a testament to their affection. Regrettably, Virginia Poe succumbed to tuberculosis just eleven years into their marriage at the tender age of 24. Her passing left Poe shattered, and his writings would forever bear the imprint of his love for her. Poe's life was a constant battle with depression, which found an outlet in his dark and mysterious writings. His drinking escalated as Virginia's health deteriorated, taking a toll on his own well being.

Michelle: However, there was a glimmer of hope when Poe reconnected with a former childhood sweetheart and sobered up with plans to marry her. Just ten days before their wedding, while traveling to New York City for an editing job, Poe vanished. It was raining in Baltimore on October 3, but that didn't stop Joseph W. Walker from heading out to Gunners Hall, a public house bustling with activity. It was election day, and Gunner's Hall served as a pop up polling location for the Fourth ward polls. When Walker arrived at Gunner's Hall, he found a man delirious and dressed in shabby second hand clothes, lying in the gutter. The man was semi conscious and unable to move. But as Walker approached him, he discovered something unexpected. The man was Edgar Allan Poe. Worried about the health of the poet, Walker stopped and asked Poe if he had any acquaintances in Baltimore who might be able to help him. Poe gave Walker the name of Joseph E Snodgrass, a magazine editor with some medical training. Immediately, Walker wrote Snodgrass a letter asking for help. When Walker found Poe in delirious disarray outside of the polling place, it was the first anyone had seen or heard of the poet since his departure from Richmond a week earlier. Poe had never made it to Philadelphia to attend his editing business, nor did he ever make it back to New York, where he had been living to escort his aunt back to Richmond for his impending wedding. Poe was never to leave Baltimore, where he launched his career in the early 19th century. And in the four days between Walker finding Poe outside the public house and Poe's death on October 7, he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he fad come to be found in soiled clothes, not his own and incoherent on the streets. Instead, Poe spent his final days wavering between fits of delirium gripped by visual hallucinations. The night before his death, according to his attending physician, John J Moran, Poe repeatedly called out for Reynolds, a figure who to this day remains a mystery. The enigma of Poe's death has only deepened with time, and it's no surprise that his presence is said to linger in the afterlife.

Michelle: His spirit is said to wander from homestead to homestead, visiting his favourite watering holes, the hospital where he drew his last breath, and the cemetery where he rests. One such place where Poe's presence is keenly felt is the Baltimore Edgar Allan Poe House, once the home where Poe lived briefly with his aunt in Virginia. It has been transformed into a museum, displaying artifacts related to the prolific writer. But it's not just the memorabilia that attracts visitors. Many claim to have seen an older portly woman, believed to be Poe's grandmother, Elizabeth Poe. She's not considered malevolent, but another spirit in the house could be less accommodating. Reports include mysterious tapping on shoulders, muttering voices, moving lights and slamming windows and doors. Some even report seeing Poe himself as his spirit moves from place to place throughout the locations that define his life and death. His ghost is said to frequent a saloon he visited during his lifetime, often seen heading towards the horse you came in on saloon for a drink. For those looking to dive deeper into the world of Edgar Allan Poe, a visit to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia, is a must. Although Poe never lived there, the museum houses an extensive collection of his original writings, memorabilia, and personal belongings. The museum offers a glimpse into Poe's years in Richmond through pictures, relics, and verses. Some believe that Poe's spirit occasionally visits the museum in search of familiarity among the objects. Poe is often perceived as a shadowy figure moving through the house. The life and death of Edgar Allan Poe are shrouded in mystery, much like the stories he penned. The spectre of Poe lives on not only in his tales of death and the macabre, but also in the ghostly phenomena that surrounds his legacy. To help us navigate the fascinating world of Edgar Allan Poe and the supernatural elements that cling to his memory, we have a very special guest today. Joining us is Leanna, a previous guest, an actress, playwright, artist, and author. She considers Poe her North Star and has an uncanny possible personal paranormal experience to share involving Poe. Poe wrote the following the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins? As we venture into the world of Edgar Allan Poe and the legacy he left behind, let his words connect the living and the dead, the past and the present. Without further ado, let's embark on this enchanting journey and delve deep into the world the mind and the writing of Edgar Allan Poe.

Michelle : Hi, Leanna, thank you so much for joining me.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I'm so glad to be back with you.

Michelle : Now, we haven't spoken in a while, and the last time you were on, you and Andrea were sharing your book, A Haunted History of Invisible Women, which is still hands down one of my most favorite books to pick up and read even now.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Thank you.

Michelle : And it's been so well received. I mean, it's an incredible book. An awful lot of work went into it. Do you want to just give a little update as to some of the awards that you had nominated for, et cetera, because it has done so incredibly well? It's a phenomenal book.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Thank you. Thank you so much for that, and we're so grateful. It's a topic that had not been explored in the way that we wished to explore it. We were looking around to see if anyone had done a feminist examination of ghost stories and a book standing at the intersection of women's history and ghost lore. And just there wasn't anything out there other than women who'd been writing ghost stories. And there's collections of those things, but actual female ghosts and their stories and how that intersects with different time periods and our sort of modern misconceptions sometimes. The myth building around all of that, all of these examinations that we go into in the book, it's been an interesting, ongoing discussion. Now it touches down on some it pushes some buttons for people. We certainly have not been not every goodreads review is kind. We'll just say that there's been some nasty things said about the book for people who just can't seem to handle that women's history is sometimes difficult or so you know you're not going to please everybody when you talk about any kind of marginalized historical viewpoint. I mean, I know that that's certainly when I think it was Haley Rubenhold that wrote the five kind of recentering The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Victims. I know that she got a lot of pushback on that particular book, just trying to kind of give these women their lives back and these victims in that case. And we've had some pushback just online, not to our faces and certainly not in any of the discussions I've had around the country. So I went on a national book tour, and it was a great discussion of all kinds of things. I just had all kinds of people coming up to me sharing their ghost stories, contemplating things with me, sharing how glad they were that there was sort of a refreshing new take on some of these things. People glad that I was setting the record straight about Sarah Winchester, that she was not a crazy woman. She was this really fascinating lady who was very generous and very kind and very interested in. So, you know, the reclamation angle of that has been very healing and very wonderful. We were nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. That's the first time that's happened in my longtime career in fiction. So being able to step into some different spaces in nonfiction has been a real delight. Independent bookstores have been very supportive of the book, and our numbers were good for our first quarter. So Kensington signed us right up for another book, Andrea and I both. So our next examination of American ghost lore is called america's Most Gothic Haunted History stranger Than Fiction, in which case we're going to find real history that falls into different Gothic literature tropes. And we're going to discuss how these things subvert some of those tropes. Or we're amplified by the fact that we have all of this Gothic literary structure, into which very often, we will mythologize onto it. So separating the fact from fiction is our tall task right now for the next book. And it was really neat to be able to come kind of right out of the gate swinging with what's going to be next. That'll be out in 2025. But the research is happening right now because we have an outline due at the end of the year. So that's what I'm doing in the meantime. So if you don't see me on social media, it's because I am deep in the research minds for some interesting Gothic lore, which, of course, I'm going to be trying to tie back into my North Star, my literary compass. Edgar Allan Poe, who really is the core of gothic in America. I believe in terms of the literary angle. So I'm excited to talk with you about the literary love of my life, Edgar Allan Poe and how he really is at the core of everything that I do. And we'll share some facts about his really interesting, fascinating life and mysterious death.

Michelle : But his legacy really is just so important, I think, because that Gothic, that macabre. I mean, he is synonymous with that, isn't he, really? And your writing, you can see touches of that. You can see where you give the nod to that. I mean, you can see it in Invisible Women. You mention him, it's brought into that book. But in terms of your fiction writing, you can very much see that influence. And then I don't think you're alone. I think there are a lot of people for whom his writing, his material, really speaks to people. And I suppose the first question is really, why is it do you think that his writing is and was so enduring? Why does it still have this pull to people, that it really resonates with people in the way that it does?

Leanna Renee Hieber : It's this ability to transcend time frame, even though his work can be sometimes dense and sometimes difficult to get through just in the historical versus more common parlance. But I feel that the core of the content is really relatable spooky stories and terror and psychological focus are always going to be really relatable to people. And he was really good at getting to the heart of things. And I discovered him as a child. I went to a small private school that really was sort of learn at your own pace kind of school. And it was pretty early on that the teachers realized I was more of a literary kid than a math and sciences kid, that's for sure. So I was handed Poe at an early age because it was clear that I was a little bit spooky, a little bit off the beaten path, wandering into the woods kind of kid. I found Poe around like fifth grade, so I was like 910 years old when I'm discovering Poe and diving into his poetry and some of his short stories, the beauty of it, it's just beautiful. And coming back to it, I think when you find something as a kid that just strikes your soul, his pain and his melancholy that he so beautifully expressed in a lot of his poetry. I was a young kid who was trying to figure out my own depression and what that was about, which was just a brain chemistry thing that was a sort of family inheritance and just needed to manage that. And he was a way to manage that. I could see the way he could sort of exorcise his demons onto the page. And for a lot of young sort of Gothic inclined I've been Goth for pretty much my whole life. Whether or not I dressed it, whether or not I was able to actually express that in my wardrobe or not, wasn't until I started buying my own clothes. But I really was sort of a goth kid and his melancholia, that's sort of the Victorian term for it, for the sort of sadnesses that he felt really shines through in a way that I think is relatable. But also he's allowing us to live vicariously into these dark places that scare us but do it safely. That's the function of horror, really. And so coming back to all of his work, I think he's so enduring because there's a lot of different angles by which you can come to Poe. So we'll talk about the different genres that he really created. But at the core of why I think he is enduring is that there's just a lot of heart in his work. I don't think there was a whole lot of artifice about him as a person. I think that just really he was writing from the heart. Certainly he was writing with agendas and craft in mind, and he certainly wasn't writing his horror isn't coming from his own depravity. He was, by all accounts, a very likable and kind man. It's just that he was interested in exploring these range of different experiences in storytelling. And so I believe that there's just a lot people can come to poet so many different angles from poetry, from literary criticism, and from all the ways in which he invented genre, different genres.

Michelle : I think you touch on something that is so absolutely right, and that is that it's that power of connection, human emotion. And I think when you have a writer that can really tap into that, which he does in abundance, it's literally just there in every single word on the page, and you can't help but become absorbed in that, but from a safe distance. So you can experience this new world, this journey, this story, this narrative, whether it's through poetry, whether it's through story. And, yeah, it just sings to your soul, I think, because it is that connection. And I think that was his real mastercraft. And I think he's pretty unique in the sense that this was his driving passion to write. He wasn't doing it because he had nothing else to do. He was a true writer. And again, that passion for writing, I think, comes through in what he crafted.

Leanna Renee Hieber : And a very difficult life, too. He did choose writing. I mean, it was not an easy profession at a time when copyright law did not exist and a lot of publishers were basically doing the equivalent of vanity presses, and he had to chase down paychecks his whole life. In some ways, not a whole lot has changed about freelancing. And that's one of the things, too, I think a lot of writers can really identify with Poe's journey because he was really the first American writer to try to make his living entirely as a writer without coming from means. He was born from actors in Boston, and he came from nothing and was adopted into the Allen family, which is why Alan is put into his name. So he was born to the Poes who were actors, but his father quickly left the family. His mother died at the age of two from tuberculosis. So already we have a death that's going to be a shadowing figure throughout the course of Poe's life. And so he was raised by the Allens, and John Allen had a very contentious relationship with him. He alternately sort of spoiled and kind of chastised him always. Definitely they didn't get along. His adoptive mother, Francis, was absolutely his rock for a while, but he did a lot of schooling in London, actually, so we think of him as his American treasure, but a lot of his formative education was actually in England. And then he had a bit of a military career, kind of not sure what else to do with himself, especially after kind of falling out with John Allen. And so he had this wandering, meandering military career that ended up in West Point in New York. But while he was adept enough at all of that, it just wasn't speaking to his soul. He became notorious at West Point for writing dirty limericks about some of the officers. And so he was celebrated amongst his peers, more often than not for his cleverness, but definitely the military attitude and the military life just did not suit him at all. So he just left all of these various posts and so really had a very unfinished military career, but then trying to hustle the rest of his life in writing. It's remarkable he was so resilient. And then the subsequent deaths of other beloved women in his life, throughout the course of his life, definitely set the tone for a lot of how he deals with the death of a beautiful woman. So one of the quotes that we use from Poe in A Haunted History of Invisible Women is that the death of a beautiful woman is the most poetical topic in the world. I'm kind of paraphrasing here, but he didn't mean that that was something to be romanticized. He meant that it's a topic for poetry to unpack the pain of. And that's at the core of so much of his work. I do think he wrote because he had to. And anyone who has been a writer at any point in their life and has had that compulsion knows what that's about and knows what that's like. And so there is that really does shine through, because the passion shines through in his text, but also just his resilience is what's really incredible about his life. Just trying to reinvent another way of storytelling here, there and everywhere in any way he could try to get his work out to the public at a time when publishing as an industry was a real mess.

Michelle : I think it's kind of a story and a life that mirrors in some ways when we think of artists for many of them. They didn't hit it big in their lifetime, did they? If ever at all. Painters that are so well known around the world now lived such hand to mouth existence, and their struggle was so unbelievably real. And it's almost that same concept they had to paint. Everything was an unfinished picture. It was an unfinished painting. It was in their head, but it needed to get out of their head. And I think the same is true of writing. You have a picture in your head. You have words in your head that have to get out. They have to be on the page. And until that happens, it's just unfinished. It's an unfinished story. And yeah, I think the resilience to throw everything into your passion the way that he did when it wasn't such an easy profession to take up, really does speak to some of him as a man. I think he's so well known for so many things, but I think that resilience and determination to craft, to be that wordsmith, to do that is something maybe that isn't recognized enough, if that makes sense.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Yeah, absolutely. And I wish to goodness know much in the way that there's that beautiful Doctor Who episode with Van Gogh where the doctor shows van Gogh how beloved his work is. And it just makes me cry every time, even just thinking about that episode. I would love to do that for Poe. I would love to do that for Nikola Tesla. I would love to do that for some of these other geniuses that were quite truly cheated out of a lot of things in their life. A lot of people never paid Poe. A lot of other visionary artists were just taken advantage. So I wish I could give that same sense to Poe of really how beloved he was. Really, the only times that he received really effusive praise for his work was kind of from the French. The French really loved his work. They could see a lot of the Gothic in it. They loved that he set some of his stories in Paris. The first sort of serial detective stories were Poe's Augusta Pen as his detective in Murders of the Rumorg and Mystery of Marie Roger in The Poor loined Letter. Those three, they're all a French detective. And they really set the template for something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would take and run with. And the French loved his poetry and they loved his fiction. And so he knew he had some fans out there in the world. I wish he could have had a sense of more, because the American audiences didn't always know what to do with him.

Michelle : I think he was a little bit ahead of his time in that regard. I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned Arthur Conan Doyle, because what you've got here is somebody that was almost creating the mold for which other people would then carry on. His legacy really does exist in so many different styles of writing, whether it is that kind of investigative Sherlock Holmes type, sleuthing narrative, or whether it is the gothic, macabre, penny dreadful style writing. I mean, you have it all, don't you? He covered so many styles, but yet still kind of has his feel very much stamped all over all of it.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Yeah, but it's incredible. It's so interesting. There's so many spokes of a wheel that the hub of it is his voice. And then these spokes that come off this wheel is him really experimenting with form and function. And he really is a progenitor of so much. I mean, I do believe Mary Shelley is the creator of science fiction, but he's also touching down on that. And in mysticism in Malona Tanta and Eureka and some mysticism in Lygia and other of his works that are a little more obscure. He's really tapping into speculative fiction broadly. But yes, Conan Doyle really took the mold of Poe and even said so. He said that Allen Poe created the detective novel because of his template in the Augusta Pass stories. And you see there's narrator character and then the detective character, a very Holmes and Watson kind of thing, and then a very unwitting police chief. And we see all of know Conan Doyle was like, that's a great idea. And of course, Conan Doyle makes it his own, of course. But Conan Doyle acknowledged that Poe was sort of the template for this. And I'm glad he acknowledged that because then I think we really so many people think of Conan Doyle as sort of the inventor of the detective fiction. And it's like no, Poe was really kind of there first in the 1840s because all of the DePass stories were coming out towards the end of Poe's life because he died in 1849. And the DePass stories were released every few years starting from 1841 through 1844, in various different editions.

Michelle : Again, coming back to where we started. All these years later, here it is still coming through in terms of writing that you're putting out there. It's still kind of impacting on other people, other writers. It's influencing what they're doing, what they're interested in, what they're passionate in, and shaping what they're doing because it's still relevant. And again, there's nothing more powerful than that, I don't think, or more of a nod and an accolade for what he was doing. It's an incredible achievement to be an author that stands the test of time the way that he has it's true.

Leanna Renee Hieber : And he really is put there's ways in which he's influenced me, that I'm still realizing that he's influenced me. I think that because so much of my fiction is set in the 19th century, in his century, I take a bit of a cue from him in dabbling in a little bit of societal critique at the time. So one of. The things people don't know as much about him is that he was a very prolific and genius literary critic, which made him some enemies. And I'll talk about Rufus Griswold if you want me to a little bit later, because his vitriolic relationship with Rufus Griswold is one of the reasons why we have so many misconceptions about Edgar Allan Poe. And that's something that I, as a New York City tour guide who gives tours about Edgar Allan Poe sometimes. In my work with Burrows of the Dead, Andrea Jane's, my co author's tour company, I was her first employee, and her company focuses on sort of hidden histories. And one of the things that's one of our joint missions is to restore Poe's good name because so much damage was done by Rufus Griswold after Poe's death. But his literary criticism is so cuts right to the bone, and he's really right about it, but again, because some of the people on the feedback end of that, the other side of that, their feathers got ruffled. And it wasn't always the most politic thing to do. He didn't always make the best friends within the industry sometimes, but that's one of those things where he was a real sharp and sometimes almost sarcastic voice within his own time. And so I've allowed myself to every now and then just kind of comment on something within the time period that my characters would find questionable or would find problematic, or would find that these people taking advantage of these marginalized people, how that's creating a systemic problem. That's not a modern viewpoint that I'm putting onto these things. It's things that Poe was also realizing. He was looking at people who were sham spiritualists or sham mesmerists and taking advantage of people at a time of grief. He was very well aware of some of the pseudosciences that were trying to claim cures and fixes for things that were really truly misleading people. And he specific case in point, facts. In the case of M. Voldemar, he really kind of lampoons a mesmerist for sort of misleading the public. And in this case, he makes it very real where he's trapped the soul of this dead man and he's sort of using this dead man's soul like a puppet. And it's very disturbing. And of course, it ends in the complete release of this soul and then the body decomposes in the instant in the most grotesque manner of which is described beautifully by Poe because only Poe can describe something completely disgusting in a beautiful way. But a British mesmerism journal reported this as a fact, a factual case. So it was this interesting thing of he was blurring these lines between fact and fiction and all of his things and looking at the world around him and everything was fodder. And that's one of the really interesting ways in which he's become this template for so many other things. But he was also always toeing that line of, wait, what is fact? What is fiction here? Because at a time when a lot of those lines were blurred already with new technologies, honestly, if you didn't know the science behind a telegraph, you'd think it's magic too.

Michelle : I still think it is, to be honest.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Right.

Michelle : Yeah, it's totally magic. To me, anything of that nature, anything technological, is magic. I just appreciate it. I don't have to understand it exactly. I think you touched on something so relevant, and that is that people who were kind of on the periphery, who weren't the cool kids of this group, whether it was authors, whether it was people working within the spiritualist community, if you were kind of on the outside of that, you could really be pulled apart. Your reputation could be so easily swayed by the people whose voices were taken more of note, who had the influence and the connections and the you know, thinking about people like Catherine Crowe within the spiritualist community. How her? Reputation was absolutely slammed and pulled apart because of jealousies. The fact that she was a woman in a world and she was doing well compared to her male peers. There's lots of reasons for why she was a figure of being able to be targeted the way that she was. She left her husband, she was living independently, she was producing works that were being reprinted over and over again because they were so successful. She was this person of note that they wanted to tear down because it was an opposing type of group compared to the rivalry between spiritualists and mesmerists, all of that. But you see the same thing with poe. And I think, yeah, there's something very sad about having to actually step in and try and rewrite some of that history that has been negatively put out, portrayed about someone simply because they didn't fit within that popular group. And it's sad that that still has to happen today, but it does. And I think it takes discussions to really understand who these people were and that society could be complex. There was a lot of things at play as to why someone might be targeted that way and have their reputation tarnished. And for poe, I don't think it helped that he did come from a different background. He wasn't the wealthy elite. He wasn't coming at this from, well, I'm just doing this out of was for him, it was something very different. And I think he didn't fit the mold of the others in that group.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Had he been able to reconcile with John Allen, who was of a higher wealthier background, who did have a lot of assets, had he been able to be peaceable with him, then poe may have had a little bit better economic stability, but poe was himself. He wasn't going to bend to someone else's will. And Alan was unreasonable and also of an old antiquated system, some of which his money was built on slavery, and Poe really wanted nothing to do with that. And so some of leaving Alan behind was also his own sense of wanting to be independent and wanting to make his own way by his own merits, by his writing, which was criticizing. Poe didn't punch down in his work, he only punched up. And I think that that's really also why his work really resonates with people, especially if you've had to just get through any kind of difficult time, you can really turn to Poe as a fellow traveler. And yeah, the vendetta stuff, I'm glad you mentioned Catherine Crowe. And yeah, Charles Dickens certainly did not help her. That was a vendetta. And Rufus Griswold's vendetta against Poe stemmed from this literary rivalry. Initially, they had been published in journals and poetry collections and anthologies together. And Griswold would have probably considered still working with Poe had Poe not done some literary criticism on some of other of Griswold's work and criticizing some of Griswold's choices. And he was just being truthful. And Poe was right about his criticism. You look back and look at the pieces like, yeah, no, Poe's right about lambasting these certain choices, but again, that wasn't politics. So Griswold just decided that this was going to be a lifelong vendetta against Poe for the rest of his life. And right after Poe's death, griswold pounced upon the opportunity to write the first biography of Poe, and he became the not legal. But he declared himself the literary executor of Poe, much against Poe's mother in law, his beloved mother in law, Maria Clem, who was one of his foremost advocates, and she was the sole survivor. Her daughter, Virginia, Poe's wife had died, also tuberculosis, years prior, and she was trying to grasp any little bit of Edgar's literary estate, both for his sake of making sure that Poe's work would be continued, to be accessible and read and loved. But also a bit of royalties could support her because she was an elderly woman that couldn't go out into the workforce. Anne Griswold took all of Poe's stuff hostage after his death, letters that he forged and put into this biography, which made Poe out to be this drunken, drug addled madman. And there are these sort of depraved letters in this original biography, all of which later were proven to be forgeries by Griswold. And this is why there's this concept that maybe Poe was like a morphine addict or any of these things. There's no historical evidence to that at all. The only thing that there is historical relevance to, and that is true, is that he did have a lifelong struggle with alcohol, that is true, but we do know that he was trying to keep a handle on it. So he had some issues with some sobriety back and forth, but especially towards the end of his life, we do know he was trying to stay on the wagon, as it were. So the concept that he was this complete psychopath is know, Griswold just put that right out there. And of course, people who were reading The Pit and the Pendulum and The Telltale Heart, who was narrated by a murderer and all of this stuff, we're just eating up the penny dreadful nature of all of this and just believing that the madness of his stories came from the madness of the man. And it's just so unconscionable to me. And Griswold is just such this he's such a nemesis. He's such an evil person. And thankfully, his family, who still had some of the Griswold family still had some of Poe's stuff. And it recently was returned to the Poe Museum, thank God. But this was like an ongoing thing, even until just within the past few years, this ongoing sort of shadow stain upon Poe's good name, where he was just a sometimes sad guy who had problems with a beer every now and then, like everyone among us. So another way in which I feel is relatable is just like his struggles were relatable and he was trying to manage them. And so for someone to take his legacy the way Griswold did and stain it so irrevocably that we're 150 years later, over 150 years later, we're still trying to tell the truth of it, that'll do some damage.

Michelle : It was essentially trying to rewrite who he was as a man and his contribution to the writing work that he was putting out there. Because it's really, truly terrible, I think, to try and minimize someone's achievements, their writing, by simply saying, well, this is a product, or kind of trying to put out there, that this is simply a product of this is a man and his lunacy. It's got nothing to do with his talent, the deep emotion, the way he's perceiving life, the things he's drawing on experiences. No, it can't be any of that. And his ability to capture all of that and create something and weave something that really takes form on the page. No, it's simply the ramblings of the deluded man who is, like you said, addicted to morphine and addicted to alcohol and all of these things. And that's so belittling. It's so undermining of his success and what he was producing. It's almost saying, like, he couldn't have done that if he hadn't been this sham of a person in real life who couldn't get it together. And I think there's part of that in what he was doing. It was tarnish the man, therefore, you're tarnishing his work.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Right, exactly. Because because Poe's work was this was born out of a literary rivalry. Poe's work was better than.

Michelle : Not that.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Griswold's name is not a household name as a poet or as a writer.

Michelle : No, you know him because of Poe.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Which I know him because he's a and, like, that's just such a sad, petty while Poe did write literary criticism, he wasn't trying to play a game with people. He wasn't trying to say, I'm the best at was he would also get paid to do literary criticism. So you cannot blame the man for doing his mean. You know, I understand not everybody is going to like my work. I am not going to take a personal vendetta out on them. I'm not going to go after people so you can love or hate my work. People do both, and that's their purview. I'm writing about things sometimes, some touchy subjects, and I'm writing from a very personal viewpoint. A lot of times you're either going to believe me or not, and that's going to be that. But the whole trying to minimize his talent, that definitely was where this was coming from. And he saw an opportunity to take advantage of this because there wasn't a powerful literary estate with lawyers who could counter these things. Maria Clem was struggling herself. She couldn't counter this stuff, so she just had to deal with it, which is just so sad. When you've lost your you know, she loved Edgar, she's lost her daughter, she lost her son in just she knew the value of his work. She always believed in him. One of the few people who did her and Virginia both were very supportive of his writing. And so at least he had a core small family of support. Virginia, while she was healthy, was transcribing a lot of his notes. Just this one little image that I always think about when I'm trying to counter this narrative of Poe as a madman versus a man who wanted to just provide through his art when he lived in the Bronx farmhouse, so he moved up to the Bronx when Virginia was diagnosed with tuberculosis. For the country air of the Bronx, which I know now is like that is very OD to think about, because now it's very, very urban. But it was a farmland in the 1840s, in the 1830s, when they had moved up there. And so he had moved her into this cottage for fresher air, for her lungs. But the cottage, they didn't have money, and the cottage was just clapboard. And at the time, it was not well insulated, and it just was freezing cold in the wintertime. And towards the end of Virginia's life, one family friend stopped by and saw that Poe had draped his West Point wool military academy coat that he had kept from his days long prior at West Point over draping it, over Virginia and trying to warm her hands in his cold hands. And that just breaks my heart. If you're in New York City, please go visit the Poe Cottage. It's still there. It's a historic landmark. And you can see that room. You can see that bed where he tried to warm her. And it breaks my heart to think about it. And here's this beautiful poet who's just trying to warm the hands of a dying woman. And when you see contemporaneous of this time. There's my favorite picture, this sketch of Poe walking the high bridge in the Bronx, which is this beautiful, arched pedestrian bridge, and he's got a cloak billowing behind him. And it's this beautiful picture of a man in motion because he was always walking. He, like lots of great writers, would take walks to think about things, and he was always walking. So it's this wonderful picture of Poe in action with this cloak billowing behind him with this focused look on his face. And that's the Poe that I want people to know about. That's the Poe that I feel in my heart when I read his work and when I know these little tiny details about his trying to take care of himself and those he cared about.

Michelle : And again, I think it's the lesser known aspects of him as a character. We've already touched upon how here's this man who really was so dedicated to his craft, so resilient. He wasn't choosing an easy profession. The military probably would have been an easier job to kind of do well at, to provide that income, to have that stability. But he followed his passion. And likewise, I think you can see his character come through in how he truly, really did love some of the people in his life and really did care for them. He showed real compassion and, yeah, there's something very admirable about that. And I think we mustn't forget he was more than just the mystery surrounding his death. He is more than just these other little things that kind of come out about him and his life and his story. He is such a complex character, and I think you see that in his writing. And nobody is one dimensional. He isn't one dimensional, and his work most certainly isn't either. And I think we need to hold on to that because it's very easy to just get drawn into the oh, it's so fascinating. This is a bit of a mystery and this is interesting. This kind of captivates our imagination. But actually, as a figure, as a person, he is so mesmerizing simply because he is so complex. And that's the bit to hold on to.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Absolutely. There is so much going on. Sometimes he didn't do himself any favors, like I said, that he didn't always play the politics of publishing as well as he could. And he made a lot of people jealous by both his talents and also because women really liked him. So he had a lot of lady poet friends, and this became some drama surrounding him. He was not instigating the drama. It just that he was a kind man who also valued other women's minds. And this is attractive newsflash. This is attractive to women. If you value their minds, you are an attractive man. And this was something that he found sort of delightful. There were some literary flirtations that him and some lady poets would exchange in some of the newspapers, all of which Virginia was well aware of. Some women she was more fond of than others. Some women, she said, had a more influencing and sobering effect on him. He wouldn't drink as much in their presence, and she appreciated that. So this other kind of aspect of Poe, where he's just surrounded by these other factors that I assume that he was sort of aware of, but he also wasn't going to compromise who he was and his own character. He wasn't a ladies man. It wasn't that. It was just that he enjoyed the presence of smart people and he didn't discriminate because of gender. And I think that's really lovely. But he also, like in the military, to your point about the military. Yet if he'd have stayed in the military, he was smart and clever and deductive. He would have made a great spy. He would have made a great actual detective in the police force had he joined all of that. There's a great alternate history movie called The Pale Blue Eye, which is positing Poe as his young detective at West Point. It's a great alternate history film. And Henry Melling, who plays Poe, is an absolutely astonishing portrayal of Poe. He should win awards. It's absolutely spectacular. So the mystery part of it gets into some very strange territory. But his portrayal of Poe is just absolutely stunning and really speaks to the truth of his character and his heart. And that is absolutely true. The event and circumstances around it is not. But his going at the heart of Poe as this loving, kind, sensitive soul is just a really beautiful thing. But he also was a guy who had a hard time taking orders. So he was this independent man. And that was part of the clash with John Allen, and that was certainly part of the clash in the military.

Michelle: To celebrate heading into the spookier season.

Michelle: Autumn nights, howling wind and freezing rain.

Michelle: Halloween spookiness in the dark depths of winter. Haunted History Chronicles will be posting daily podcasts on Patreon on all tiers over there, as well as the usual additional items offered. Signing up now will gain you access to these, as well as all previous archived content. For as little as one pound, you could be getting hundreds of podcasts to enjoy writing source material and more, and know that you are contributing and helping the podcast to continue to put out more content. You can find the link in the episode Description Notes as well as on the Haunted History Chronicles website or social media. So why not come along to enjoy a rich web of accounts perfect for this season dark tales of corpses, ghosts, folklore, Christmas and Halloween, macabre traditions and.

Michelle: Connections, and a whole lot more. And now let's head back to the podcast.

Michelle : I always think of him as a kind of a wanderer in the sense that he couldn't sit still. He was always wandering from one interesting subject to another and seeking out interesting people to talk to and surround himself by. And he didn't discriminate. It was this kind of coming from a place of yearning, of just wanting to be surrounded and involved in things that really captured his imagination. And yeah, I think, again, just very ahead of his time because he didn't allow things like the trapping of gender to get in the way of that. He just was a man who marched to the beat of his own drum and he went where he was interested, where something captivated him. And yeah, again, just very admirable quality, I think.

Leanna Renee Hieber : And it's also, in terms of the wandering, it's also in search of cheaper rent. So there's so many towns on the East Coast of this country boast a poe house because he lived so many different places. He was born in Boston, died in Baltimore, lived in all around the East Coast. So lived in literally from Virginia all the way up all around. So Philadelphia has a poe house, obviously, Baltimore does. New York City has lots of poe. Legacy of things he was writing and plaques that are on the buildings where he wrote certain things. So much of that was following jobs, work, family, various other things, the military appointments, things like that. So some of the wandering nature, too, was also part of that economic necessity as well. And so there were these seeking things out. He was trying to supplement income in all kinds of various ways, usually involving writing, but sometimes even involving the arts or lithography or various other ways in which he was trying to figure out what are things that I could be good at doing? I really do think he'd have made a great detective. So much of his tales of ratio nation, which is what he calls his Augusta Pan stories now, that didn't take as like a subtitle, because ratio nation is actually a very hard word to say. So that didn't stick as the literary term for the detective novel, but that's what he called them. And so much of his tales of racismation are just extolling the virtues of logical thinking. So much of that. It's like the Mystery of Marie Roger, which is, I believe, one of the first truly successful true crime stories is so much of that is just saying, here's what the police should have done, rather than it being a story. It's really almost notes to give to a detective more than it is an actual story, because he doesn't actually solve the murder, even though he pitched it to magazines. As I've solved the Mary Cecilia Rogers case, he had not.

Michelle : It was almost the observer, wasn't it? It's a fascinating way of putting pen to paper, but it was almost an observer, again, critiquing, which is fascinating.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Absolutely. And so, yeah, the Marie Roger is based on a real, still unsolved death of Mary Cecilia Rogers and he changed the names and said it in Paris rather than in New York. But it was a sensational case at the time of this woman whose body washed up in Hoboken, New Jersey, in the Hudson River, and the corpse had not been treated kindly. And there's all kinds of rumors about what various things that it was. And there are several different theories, all of which Poe touches on in his work without really necessarily stating it one way or another. But it was tracking a very interesting development of the time at a time when forensic sciences was not really a thing. So detective work was really guesswork and you can really kind of see that in how he writes about it in his work. But I think any job in which he couldn't have the freedom to make his own schedule I think I've freelanced now as a freelance writer and performer and tour guide. I have lots of different hats, but I've been a freelancer for so long and sort of master of my own schedule. I kind of think that that's probably how Poe felt at a certain point, that he just needed to be a master of his own schedule. So I don't know that he could have done like a beat cop routine. I think that that would have much like everything else, he would have just found that he needed something different.

Michelle : I think he would have got wandering feet and a wandering mind. Again, I don't think he was somebody that sat still. I think there was always something else capturing his interest. And again, you see that in his writing because he touches on so many different very relevant themes and topics and things of note that again he's almost commentating on. He's applying this brilliant masterful mind to something that is universal or something that is of note and he's unpicking it and putting his own flair to it. And yeah, I just think he was someone just captured by life. For someone who is so associated with dark macabre things and death, I think so much of what he writes about is actually things to do with life. It's human experience, it's tragedies, it's all of these things.

Leanna Renee Hieber : He writes about that absolutely and about the psychological shifts that happen over the course of a life. It's such a bold choice in the telltale heart to choose to write from the perspective of the narrator murderer. That's a bold choice. And these terrifying circumstances he puts the characters into, whether it's The Pit in the Pendulum or the somewhat gratifying, I suppose, a demise in the Mask of the Red Death of consequences catching up to the wealthy people who think they're above everything. And I think that's probably coming from some opposed real experiences too, and just sort of not seeing the consequences for ignoring significant concern to the kinds of things that would make someone wall someone up down in a cellar in the casco Monte, these explorations of what would it take for a life to turn into these things. And this is not him advocating for any of this, but he's exploring it's like every single one of his stories is just a different facet of human existence. And he's living through some pretty dark times, too. There's a lot of big changes were happening in the 19th century and also just death was everywhere. And there was so much death in his life, around his life. So it's sort of a topic that he just decided he was going to muse on. And that's a very goth thing, I suppose. And even when he was really struggling financially, he was always well put together. He was almost always in a black suit. It was always well tailored at things where he made a good put together appearance for the most part. And that's why his death being enclosed that were not his own is most particular and most curious. So we can talk a little bit about the mysteries of his death.

Michelle : I think it's an interesting touching point to talk about, given, like we've said, I think lots of people focus on it. And I also think some of the criticism that came after his death was because of the mystery surrounding his death. It kind of helped fuel some of other people's agenda. I think it gave them ammunition, if you like. But in some ways, it's almost fitting that there is that little bit of a mystery, because his life was mysterious. If he'd have had some really mundane end, it just wouldn't have fit his character.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Yes, the end of his life reads like one of his own stories. It absolutely does. And it meanders, as sometimes post stories can meander, that not every single one of his stories is above some legitimate criticism. He has things that we're, a modern editor to take a look at it today might say, you know what, you're kind of going off on a tangent here. Can we bring this back a little bit? I know my editor certainly would. So I feel like in some ways, his meandering last few days where he was supposed to be going one direction and ended up going another direction and ended up in Baltimore, I do think that he was probably ill. Some kind of sick, feverish flu or cold or some sort of the fever angle. And it possibly kind of getting him a little disoriented. I think that was probably in play ahead of his death. But the things where he ends up in Baltimore and there is no one narrative that adds up about his last days, which is why I personally think out of all of the various theories, I think it comes down to what is known as couping. That's my thought. So let me explain couping a second, because this is something I didn't know until I looked into this a little bit more. So couping. Was a 19th century way of committing voter fraud, where you had these sort of accomplices who would get people drunk and change them into different clothes and take them around to different polling stations and have them vote as different people. And this particular Baltimore area election was particularly contentious and later was being investigated for reports of voter fraud. So we know that this was happening. And some of the people involved that ended up tending to Poe were also vaguely associated with some of the people that were running for offices. And his certificate and cause of death, his death certificate was not found. The doctor who presided over him gave several different accounts of his condition. And all of that seems very suspect to me that something had happened to him because, again, Poe was very meticulous about how he dressed. Even though he was struggling financially, he would not have been dressed in like a disheveled tan suit with a straw hat. Just not his style. He was an iconic style and what he was found in was not that. And so for me, as like a Goth, I was like, I literally wouldn't be caught dead in that. And he was caught dead in that. And that's like absolutely a nightmare. So I think whoever sort of preyed upon him did so acknowledging that he was probably already in somewhat of a fragile health state. And that probably made him a candidate for this sort of voter fraud scheme. That's my personal thought, because otherwise, why would you have there weren't any other violences done to him, there weren't things missing from him, he hadn't been robbed, there weren't other factors in play. So I think it was just a case of wrong place, wrong time. And then they suddenly realized that he was famous, not realizing at first, and then realized, oh, this guy actually is well known. Now we have to sort of COVID our tracks. And that's where the back and forth with the presiding doctor is so odd. So my thought is that it was Cooping because there was toxicology reports. Was it some kind of chemicals, some kind of did he have bad seafood? Yes, he had a lot of seafood, but it wasn't the only thing he was eating. There was actually a toxicology report done on his hair in 2017 and just found out that his diet was actually pretty good. And so it wasn't that. So I don't know, I think it was cooping. That's my personal belief. But evidence may yet uncover itself. There's always time. History is never static, as we know. And there is a great book that deals with this that was written by a friend of mine. And this book is called A Mystery of Mysteries the Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawadzak. And that is Dawidziak, and he's a fellow Ohioan by birth, who I get to see every time I go back for book festivals. And we always have a good time talking about Poe and Twain, which is his other background. He looks a lot like Twain, so he does a lot of stuff in character as Twain, which is really fun. So he decided to shift over into Poe, another great voice of the time.

Michelle : But I think it is so important to evaluate and constantly keep reevaluating something like his final few days because it is a mystery. There is no conclusive evidence that points to what exactly happened. And like you said, there isn't any really satisfying conclusion that has ever been drawn. There's only speculation. And they all have holes in my opinion, namely the clothes shift. I mean, there's no logical reasoning for that. And so, yeah, I think it is important to keep analyzing it. And like I said, it does seem somewhat fitting that it did happen to Poe because it's that stranger than fiction ending that was him and what he wrote about, right.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Full of unreliable narrators. Because even him, he was clearly ill. Whether that illness had been supplied by, augmented and sort of covered up by additional alcohol in case he'd seen something he wasn't supposed to. Any of that, I'm sure, was a confluence of factors. But I don't think he was entirely well. I do think he was suffering from some kind of physical ailment going into his last days.

Michelle : Yeah, I think that's actually so important to note, again, because I just think it turns around some of the things that was written about him as being the alcoholic drug addict who couldn't get it together. I think the mystery surrounding his death, like I said earlier, I think gave some people ammunition to really go down that path oh, yeah. And instead overlook completely that there is a lot more to, again, a complex story, a complex few days that's difficult to piece together because you do have conflicting information and back and forth and back and forth. And like you said, history is never static. Maybe we will one day find out. Maybe we'll never find out. But I think it certainly helps people to keep talking about Poe and his life and all of the wonderful creations that he put down onto paper. It kind of adds to that rich tapestry of him. I think. This really incredible man who never did anything ordinary, not even his death was ordinary.

Leanna Renee Hieber : In only 40 years of life. He was born in 18 nine. He died in 1849. He's only 40 years old. And just the treasure trove that we have from him, some of which is sort of still being discovered because of the different pen names he was writing. Some criticisms under, whether it's reviews of plays, he was drama critic too. And all of these other facets to him, just kind of on constant intake of storytelling and then just writing his own and critiquing others or lifting up other forms of storytelling one way or another. It's stunning to me when I think about how short of a life that he had and how large he looms over American literature.

Michelle : I don't just think literature, if you look at film, if you look at so many different things, things like The Corpse Bride, just so much in terms of film, animation, literature, music, art, I mean, it's just there. It's just in so many different things. And yeah, you have to wonder what stories he didn't get to tell, what was still in his mind. But yeah, I mean, just an incredible man, a real kind of brain, I think, and just a master craftsman when it came to writing the supernatural and all of those things that got attached to him was only more of what was already there in the beginning. I think it was something that followed him around like everything else that followed him around.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Right, absolutely. And I think that people that the popularity of horror and gothic literature and genre fiction is why we sort of know him really for the horror angle, because of really how defining of the genre he became there. But I really do think we need to continue to consider him a cross genre writer because not all of his work could be or should be categorized in the horror capacity. But we will be seeing a new filmic adaptation of his work because Mike Flanagan, who adapted Haunting of Hill House, who adapted Haunting of Bly Manor off of you know, he's done a lot of literary adaptations. He did a film called Dr. Sleep, which was a sequel to The Shining. Mike Flanagan's about to release The Fall of the House of Usher, positing The House of Usher as a crime family and using Poe's many of Poe's stories throughout the course of this limited run series that's going to be coming up on Netflix soon. So the teaser for that just dropped yesterday that I was eager to watch. I've been a fan of Flanagan's work, so it's going to be interesting to see what he adapts. I clocked about seven different references to Poe just in the trailer of different Poe stories. Like, okay, he's taking that from Mask of the Red Death. He's taking that obviously from the Raven. He's taking this obviously, from The Fall of the House of Usher, the central core of this, obviously. And maybe berenice so there's some crazy smiles in there, which is a very unsettling story about teeth. Not as well known, but very creepy. But yeah, I'm excited to see what his work continues to inspire. And I'm always excited when I get a chance to talk about him and go back into his texts because every single time, it reignites all of the reasons why he's been sort of my literary North Star.

Michelle : It's an incredible body of work. I don't think anybody can really dispute that. I mean, it really is just incredible. And no one thing is alike but yet they do like we talked about, they have his style. You can see his voice, but he is so masterful that he can go from one style of writing, one type of genre of writing into something else and it still have that PO feel about it, which is just a masterclass in writing, I think.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Yes, his voice is very distinct, I think. And I personally had sort of the audacity to write a sequel to one of his stories. So his story, The Oval Portrait, is a very, very short story. It's one of his shortest, about a painter who uses his young new wife as a subject. And he is so engrossed in his painting that he looks up and she's dead. And it's just this stunning little story. But I just sort of had the question that was nagging in the back of my mind, like, what happened to that painting? And so I posited a little sequel to that that I titled not More Lovely than Full of Glee, which is a quote directly from The Oval Portrait. That's how she's described the wife is described. And I had the honor that Pseudopod Online, it's an online magazine as well as they do audio adaptations for Christmas last year because it is set on Christmas Eve, did a double feature where they featured The Oval Portrait by Poe and then my sequel. And it was really great to have them back to back in that you and that's available for free online. So if anybody wants to go to Pseudopod and look up and or my name, you'll come up with Not More Lovely than Full of Glee, which was originally published in called A Winter's Tale horror Stories for the Yuletide by Pavon Press the year prior. But it was really neat to see that double billing with Poe in that particular regard. That was definitely a bucket list item, for sure, because I think that was the most direct way in which I could say, okay, so really Poe has inspired me and I'm really proud of that little short.

Michelle : You know, just to kind of finish, I mean, we can't talk about Poe without talking about some of the supernatural ghostly elements to his story. You know, you mentioned earlier how he lived in so many different houses, which is true. And if you look at all of these different houses, the number of them that have some apparition or story ghostly connection to Poe is really quite staggering. I mean, he really does have quite a name as a figure, as a ghost that appears across a multitude of locations, kind of reminiscent of Anne Boleyn, who has a lot in the know. Her ghost appears in so many different locations in a similar kind of vein and manner. And I guess just asking, do you have a particular favorite or experience yourself connected with Poe that you want to share for people listening?

Leanna Renee Hieber : I do have my very own Poe ghost story. And this is one of those things where you're just going to have to take my word for it, and I'll explain why there's not actually evidence for this. But as I'd mentioned before, I work for a company called Burrows of the Dead in New York, and they lead macabre walking tours through the city. And so one of our tours focuses on some different literary spots in the city. So I was taking people by 16 Waverly Place, which is right outside of Washington Square Park, and that is the address where Poe read The Raven aloud for the first time at a literary salon before its publication. And you can stand on the steps. It's a private residence, so you couldn't go in. I really wish it was still a literary salon, because how wonderful would that be? But no, this is Greenwich Village, so it's bajillion dollar properties these days. But I was standing on the stoop talking about this being that classic location where and wouldn't it be incredible to be in the room listening to Poe read his most iconic poem out loud and just kind of trying to take my audience with me? And I went into a bit of a rhapsodic ode about how Poe is my everything, the literary love of my life. And at this point, I am wearing a pendant I made of Poe's image set under resin, so everyone's got his portrait right in front of them because it's around my neck on a choker. And there are two polished granite columns on either side of this front stoop here on Waverly Place. And one of my audiences, a group of about ten that night, and one of the audience had an actual physical camera, not a phone camera, but like a physical camera. And there was that little red light that comes on ostensibly to offset any red light that the eyes might shine if someone's taking a photo of a person. So the red light goes on, but the flash doesn't go on. But I do see the red light. And then I hear a click and I see a little bit of that red light reflected in the polished granite column to my left. And as I'm again discussing how much I love Poe, the lady looking at the camera view screen screams. And I stop what I'm saying and everyone turns to her and I say, would you like to share with the class? And she points at me, she points at my pendant of post face and points at what she's seeing on her view screen. And we all gather around this tiny little screen and my heart stopped, because in the circle of reddish light that was cast on this reddish granite, polished granite reflection, there was the unmistakable visage of Poe. It was like an afterimage, kind of like the Shroud of Turin. So that concept of this shadows of the face, but of the distinct features of Poe's face, which is again, very distinct. And they were looking that everyone who was taking this tour were confirming those shapes, that striking face with the pendant I was wearing of his face. And there's this tension. No one knows what to say. Everyone is like wide eyed. And I just declared, my love has come for me. Everyone starts laughing because I really get really worked up about how much I love Poe. This is to the point where I'm going to share an embarrassing fact about my 13 year old self. When I turned 13, which is the age that Virginia Clem was when Poe married her. When I turned 13, I sort of pronounced to the world I was old enough for Edgar Allan Poe to marry me. I've literally loved him my entire life. And so when I see this sort of like whatever I summoned, and honestly, it may just have been a trick of the camera picking up something from my pendant and somehow placing it as an afterimage onto the granite column next to me, I don't know scientifically how that could work. It didn't look scientific. It looked like an apparition. And everyone saw what I saw. And then I said to her, I said, you have to send this picture to me. You understand that I need to have this. And she tried looking back through her photos, and later, by the end of the tour, it was gone.

Michelle : Oh, gosh. Which is even more mystifying.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I know. She literally couldn't find it.

Michelle : Wow, I've got goosebumps.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I always hope that something will happen on a tour, but at the same time so the whole point with Burrows of the Dead is that respect for the dead comes first and foremost. We don't make stuff up. We don't try to tell salacious stories, we don't do jump scares, none of that nonsense. We're very straightforward in our approach about stuff. So if something uncanny happens, it's kind of delightful because it sort of feels like and folks will think we stage something every time. One of the most haunted houses on Gay Street, several times a black cat has come out to the roof to say sort of to inspect what's going on down below. And every single time it just feels like it was staged. And it's great. And I just say, yeah, we pay the cat extra. But anytime there's these coincidences of an uncanny thing, it certainly adds to the cachet of the tour. But we don't dream these up. We don't set them up. So this was one of those things where I hadn't expected to have an Edgar Allan Pogo story, but now I have an Edgar Allan Pogo story.

Michelle : I think if anyone was going to have one, though, it was going to be you.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I feel so honored.

Michelle : But don't you think sometimes it is the right person? It's having the right person at that moment in that place, and when there is some kind of a connection. Yeah, maybe something does speak to something out there. Who knows?

Leanna Renee Hieber : Well, it's funny that it happened at that address, because that is where Poe did all of his flirtations, sort of literary flirtations with all these women poets were at that address. So here's me, this lady writer, talking about how much I love him, and he did really like compliments. I mean, this was a man who was not complimented. He actually made a point of the first time when John Neal wrote a kind word about him in 19 it was 1929 before he actually got a compliment on his work, like a legitimate compliment on his work. And he made a point of, this is the first truly nice thing that someone has said about me. So it took him 20 years for anybody to say a nice thing about Poe in his work and his art. And so I think in some ways, the concept of his ghost appearing at places that honor him, I think there's maybe something to that, because he was looking for some validation through his life and some support and some help and some care and some recognition for his genius. And he didn't get much of it in his life. And so I do think that maybe it's a bit of people wanting to see and hoping that Poe will show up that sort of places that there almost as a bit of its know place memory, that people's hopes and anticipation is putting it onto all of these properties. And if it gets people in a museum door, then fantastic. Then they're in a museum door and they'll learn something about Poe. And then that's all for the best. Whether or not it's been evoked by the museum or it's just people's wishful thinking, there is something to be said, even just for the wishful thinking. It's creating something. The mind is very powerful. So even if you are projecting that there's still something unusual going on, even if it's your own mental projection, it's still outside of your normal, and that becomes paranormal.

Michelle : Oh, I completely agree. I think energy, we create that energy, and we can put things out there as much as something being there in the first place. And again, it's just adding all to the mystery, I think. And it's so fitting for Poe. There's nothing more synonymous than mystery when it comes to Poe. So, yeah, it's a fascinating story. Like I said, I had goosebumps, quite literally goosebumps, head to toe. Listening to that. I was like, wow. And then to have the photo disappear, to have it not on there, that's.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Just never yeah, and there was never any like, I had asked for this woman to follow up with me later. She never did. I gave her my card. I said, this is very meaningful, and there was no further communication. And so this was just a lost in the void moment. And I did confirm, I said, everyone is seeing what I'm seeing, right? Please, because I'm going to need to talk about this in the future. Everyone seemed to understand the gravity of the moment and my extreme delight. Everyone, I think, was as tickled as much as they were shocked by it, they were as tickled by how much I swooned at my great love coming for me after all of these years.

Michelle : And boy, did he find you.

Leanna Renee Hieber : He did. It's unbelievable. I just wish I had proof to show you. But in the meantime, so I'll send you a picture of the pendant in question so you can all at least see it's. His most iconic photo, which actually is something I didn't know until I went to a museum exhibit about him. He had a stroke just prior to that to the most famous photo of him. So that's part of why his face looks just a little bit more sunken and haunted than he usually was, because he'd had a minor stroke right around that. So, again, he'd had some various different things that had gone on health wise through his life and that photo wasn't taken terribly long before his death. So I think that there's some other factors about his physiology going into his mysterious end of days that we just might never know either.

Michelle : Yeah, and like we said, sometimes people don't want to focus on that. It's easier to focus on. Well, he was just simply this and this is the explanation. But nothing is ever usually that simple and can get tied up in a neat bow like that. So, yeah, like I said, it just sometimes just takes constant looking and reevaluating and coming back and seeing what comes up over time because history doesn't stay still. So who knows if we'll ever really know or if it will always be a mystery. I definitely think it really matters if it doesn't ever come to light as to what exactly happened. I just think if we can talk about Poe in a more rounded way, I think that's really positive. Like you were talking about earlier, if we can start to really make sure that the truth about him and his life is corrected, then that's a positive thing because there are so many people, like Poe who had their stories rewritten or parts of it changed and altered for other people's agenda. And we have the ability to look back on some incredible people who did incredible things with a different pair of eyes and correct some of that, hopefully.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Absolutely. I don't think that Poe would mind that there's speculation around his death.

Michelle : I think he'd love it.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I think you think that's delightful. I do think he minds the outright lies that Griswold was telling about him. I think that's where it gets into. Like, it's fine to speculate about different things that do not have a concrete answer, but Griswold's material was proven false. So those are the things where I get really adamant, know, speculation, where speculation is warranted is fine. And I'm also not lifting up Poe as somebody who was perfect. None of us are. There were things that he struggled with. Absolutely. But you also have to understand certain historical context things. Yes, a 26 year old marrying a 13 year old is very problematic today. That was not uncommon. Yes, she was his cousin. Also not uncommon in the 1830s. And it was a consensual relationship and it was by all accounts the healthiest group dynamic that any of them had had in their lives. So it was one that was loving and supportive and for as long as Virginia did live. So I do think know, even though we would rightfully have questions about that kind of thing today, I do think taking things into historical context is important.

Michelle : Absolutely. Honestly, I could talk to you about anything, but I could particularly talk to you about Poe, I think, for a you know, I just think obviously all of your things are on the website and on the previous podcast. So all of your details in terms of where to get the books that you've written, as well as the book that we mentioned at the top of the hour about the invisible women, which is still, like I said, still one of my hands down favorite books ever.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I'm so honored. Yeah. A Haunted History of Invisible Women has just been this wonderful conversation that has opened so many doors and that's really what we want it to do. We don't want to tell people what to think, but we want people to have conversations about it. It really is a series of prompts that we hope people will think about history a little bit differently and think about women's ghost stories a little bit differently and think what's more to the story and see if people will be willing to seek out some of the real truths of some of these women's lives. And that's what we hope is the ongoing legacy. And I'm very much looking forward to turning a gothic lens onto all of this and seeing how many Poe references I can get into the book before my editor says that's one too many Poe references. Can there be too many references? So I'm going to start my tally. But I have to ask you, though, what is your favorite Poe story? Because I love hearing what people's favorite Poe is. Sorry to put you on the spot, but I really want to know, do you know something?

Michelle : That is such a tricky question. And I'll tell you why I am that person that if you take me to a restaurant, I will take forever to choose off of a menu. And likewise with anything else, I really do deliberate because it depends on my mood as to what style of music I like. It's so eclectic. I have such eclectic taste in pretty much everything. I will say the one story that kind of really has still piques my interest is his narrative about the connection with the Minionette. So you've got this story that he wrote 30 plus years before this other actual historical account, isn't it, which is the sinking of the Minionette and the three that ended up being stuck in the small boat with no provisions. And one of them is cannibalized the uncanny similarities between those from a supernatural, was this some kind of precognition or is it just us looking for connections because it's PO and the similarities are so striking. But that mean we're talking about you had names that were similar, you had kind of very specific details between those two that matched identically. So yeah, the narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is one of my favorites because of that kind of what is this? Is there something more to this? Is this precognition? Or is it simply us trying to make these connections because we see something that is so similar to something else historically? I don't know.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I love that you mentioned that because I do think that that taps back in to what we were talking about earlier, about his lasting quality. I feel like there's so much about him that was in fact aware of our modern age somehow. I really do think he was just on another level of seeing what was possible in all aspects, like almost metaphysically seeing what was possible. I really do think he tapped into things like I sort of describe my connection to the spirit world as a bit of like a satellite dish that picks up certain transmissions sometimes and I'll just have written something in I couldn't have known how I know it and then that will prove true. So a certain amount of that synergy, I think the artistic mind sometimes can open up to something that goes into all kinds of theoretical physics levels, which is another thing he sort of wrote about. Some of his work actually can break down into theoretical physics. It's an incredible but I'm so glad you mentioned that because I do really think that speaks to his ability to still be a contemporary touchstone because he was, as you say, sort of writing ahead of his time, this piece almost literally.

Michelle : But I think what's interesting and again, it's just my musings again, because this is a story that really sticks with me for that kind of what is this about? But if you think about the writing process, it is almost meditative, it's trancelike, isn't it? You can get really focused and lose yourself. And so with that kind of state of mind, who knows what you are opening yourself up to. And when you then look at the number of authors who have similar examples of writing, that seems very much akin to something that happens later. I mean, there are really, really famous examples. W t. Steed and his writing of the. Sinking of a ship that is uncannily like the sinking of the Titanic of which he was on and died. That's another really famous example. But there are so many others and there does seem to be this kind of this kind of aspect to some writers where they do have some sense of knowing. And is it because they are tapping into something in some kind of a state of mind, a state of being that allows them to open up to that? Or like I said, is it simply us making these connections later because we have that ability? With hindsight, who knows? But it certainly poses more questions than.

Leanna Renee Hieber : It answers, I think.

Michelle : And I think that's, again, it's the mystifying thing about people like Poe. You are able to keep those questions burning. They don't.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I yeah, I think at a certain point, some of those coincidences are just too many coincidences for there not to be something almost metaphysical at work. I agree. Which is thrilling for me as someone who revels in existential questions, which, as you know from my work, I revel in those existential questions. And that's something that I look forward to continuing to talk with you about, no matter what you would like me to talk about, because I love talking with you and I could certainly do so for hours on end. I appreciate you so much and I can't wait to get your thoughts on our America's Most Gothic. You'll be sure to get an early copy ahead of everyone, I promise, because I will be curious about your thoughts on what we've chosen to touch down on as some wild history. We're in the collecting stage right now, but I'm kind of letting Poe be sort of my dowsing rod and sort of seeing what's the most Poe like real history that we've got.

Michelle : Honestly, I can't wait. I really can't wait. And when it is ready to be out there, when it's due to go out, you're going to have to come back on because you know we're going to have to talk about it. You just know we are to talk about it.

Leanna Renee Hieber : I am so thrilled. We've been asked a lot if there's going to be a sequel to A Haunted History of Invisible Women. Well, there's certainly more women ghosts that we want to talk about. But Kensington had made a great point about nonfiction and that you don't actually want to put out a volume two right away that's going to directly compete with the first volume. Nonfiction working a little differently than series fiction in that regard. So we're still focusing on women ghosts in our America's Most Gothic because so many of traditional gothic literature focuses a heroine in harrowing circumstances. So we're going to keep with that as sort of the lens for most things. But yeah, it will be a companion book for what we've done. We're still going to take our unpacking skills and sort of say all right, well, where's the truth of this and what got taken over by Gothic legend and our mythmaking capacity as human beings?

Michelle : And this is why I said people listening. You really do have to check all of your different social media platforms that you're on and see what you're up to because you have exciting things to come. But you've also got incredible work out there already. And, yeah, I just can't recommend you, really. I think you're an incredible writer, you and Andrea. And yeah, I just think people need to take a look at what you've already put out there. It's brilliant.

Leanna Renee Hieber : You're very, very kind. And I do have a couple of essays that will be coming out later this year yet about my kind of being in a liminal space. I have two articles, one coming out in Apex called between the Dreaming and the Dead, which talks about being a ghost tour guide. And being in a dream state can sometimes be almost parallel places where the spectral realm and the dream realm are absolutely next to one another. And I share another personal ghost story, waking from a dream to find myself in a ghost story in that one, too. And then I've got an article called On Paranormal Chaplaincy coming out in the Deadlands magazine in December. And that's kind of going into a little deeper dive. About a term that I used in my introduction to Haunted History of Invisible Women. About how when I'm giving ghost tours and people come up to me and bring me. Their ghost stories, the things that have happened to them, their uncanny experiences. I'm in this sort of chaplain role of walking them through their own existential place. Whether it's the grief over a loved one that then factors into this possible ghost story or this other uncanny experience, or just them wanting my opinion about whether all of this is real or is not, which is in itself almost a question of faith in spirit. So it's this interesting position that I didn't realize I'd be put into until I started doing this work a lot and talking about the spirit world very openly in both my fiction and my nonfiction, that it engages some of the most fascinating questions that I'm stepping into this role with a great deal of humility and love and care and an open heart and open mind. So I'm looking forward to having that ongoing discussion with people, too, as things go forward.

Michelle : Honestly, they both sound intriguing, both of them, for different reasons. Just fascinating. So, yeah, just lots to look forward to. And thank you for coming and talking today. It's honestly been such a pleasure.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Thank you so much. And as we are nearing the October 7 anniversary of Poe's passing, I hope that this will give everyone a few new things to think about, or an appreciation of Poe, maybe. I hope that folks will pick up one of his books of poetry or his Collected works and pick a favorite story for Spooky Season, because I'd like to think that The Spirit of Poe is glad with how many people are still reading him.

Michelle : Oh, gosh, absolutely. I echo that. Completely echo that. I just think, yeah, it's just there really for everybody to enjoy and hopefully will continue to be a legacy that people can enjoy and pick up and create their own imaginative, own worlds and stories. Using something that he started almost like a continuing thread. It's connecting us all to something, isn't it?

Leanna Renee Hieber : I think, absolutely. He began so many different genres, really, and it's just and all of us are just continuing in these pathways that I'm not sure he had the awareness that he was building new genres as he was going or tapping into things that would be recurring touchstones. But I love that he did, and I love honoring that he did. And thank you so much for carving out the time to be able to talk about my favorite guy.

Michelle : It's been an absolute pleasure, and yeah, thank you once again. And I'll say goodbye to everybody listening. Bye, everybody.

Leanna Renee Hieber : Bye, everybody.