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Many years ago, I was in crisis. As a result of university, I had come to hate reading, an experience all too familiar to those who study literature. What saved me was picking up an unfashionable Victorian novel in a bookshop: Wilkie Collins’s The Woman in White (1860). A short way into its opening – in which the hero Walter recounts how, returning from his mother’s cottage in Hampstead he is accosted by a terrified young woman dressed in white, assists her, then learns that she has escaped from an asylum – I was gripped. The story, filled with vivid...

A 20-year-old woman believed to have died was found breathing at a Detroit funeral home.20-year-old woman believed to have died was found breathing at a Detroit funeral home. "They were about to embalm her which is most frightening had she not had her eyes open. They would have begun draining her blood to be very, very frank about it," Attorney Geoffrey Fieger, who has been hired by Timesha Beauchamp's family. We spoke with Timesha's mother, who said she is a beautiful and caring 20-year-old young lady, who has a twin brother. On Sunday morning, Southfield Fire Department paramedics responded to...

On this date in 1841, Peter Robinson hanged for a New Jersey murder. Little could he have imagined that he was on his way to the literary canon. A wealthy merchant and banker named Abraham Suydam had disappeared, and suspicion quickly settled on Robinson — one of his debtors, who suddenly seemed to be a little bit flush with cash and a timepiece too rich for his station in life... It is commonly thought — though there does not appear to be any direct evidence for it — that this nationally infamous body-under-the-floorboards murder helped to inspire Edgar Allan Poe‘s...

For Halloween, this is the full post of the story. This is a full text version in HTML for the short story by Edgar Allan Poe titled “The Cask of Amontillado”. I consider it one of his best stories. The story is set in a nameless Italian city in an unspecified year and is about the narrator’s deadly revenge on a friend whom he believes has insulted him. Like several of Poe’s stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive-in this case, by immurement. What is Immurement? Immurement...

The traditional visit by an unknown shadowy figure who has left 3 roses and a half bottle of cognac on Edgar Allen Poes grave,failed to show up last night.http://wbal.com/apps/news/templates/story.aspx?articleid=44005&zoneid=2

"Lisa, that wasn't scary, even for a poem!" Bart Simpson complains after his sister reads Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven" in a classic Halloween episode. "Well, it was written in 1845!" Lisa says. "Maybe people were easier to scare back then!" Jaded cartoon kids aside, Poe still does scare people — even 200 years after his birth. His tales of gothic horror and grisly murder retain their grip on the imagination. His sad, short life and mysterious death feed his legend. Even the daguerreotypes of a pallid, death-haunted Poe burnish his image as a master of the macabre, a man...

BALTIMORE (AP) -- For the 57th year, a mystery man has paid tribute to Edgar Allan Poe by placing roses and a bottle of cognac on the writer's grave to mark his birthday. But some of the 25 spectators, drawn to the tiny, locked graveyard in downtown Baltimore to view the ceremony, climbed over the walls of the site and were "running all over the place trying to find out how the guy gets in," according to the most faithful viewer of the event. Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, who has seen the mysterious visitor every...

BALTIMORE -- It was nearly "nevermore" for French cognac today in an annual tribute at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. For 56 years, someone has marked the writer's birthday by slinking into the small cemetery where Poe is buried to place French cognac and three roses on his grave in the middle of the night. This year, however, the mystery visitor included a note with a possible reference to French opposition to the war in Iraq. "The sacred memory of Poe and his final resting place is no place for French cognac," the note read. "With great reluctance but...

The Poe Toaster E.A. Poe Society of BaltimoreSince 1949, on the night of the anniversary of Poe's birth, a mysterious stranger has entered this cemetery and left as tribute a partial bottle of cognac and three roses on Poe's grave. The identity of the stranger, referred to affectionately as the Poe Toaster, is unknown. The significance of cognac is uncertain as it does not feature in Poe's works as would, for example, amontillado. The presumption for the three roses is that it represents the three persons whose remains are beneath the monument: Poe, his mother-in-law (Maria Clemm) and his...

As the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated, fans should be thanking him for his invention of the modern detective genre, writes crime fiction author Andrew Taylor. Bestseller lists and library lending figures tell the same story - crime and detective stories are more popular than ever, and their success has spilled over into film and TV drama. It's remarkable how many of the genre's classic elements can be traced back to the feverishly fertile imagination of one man, Edgar Allan Poe. Once you start looking, the clues are everywhere. Born 200 years ago, on 19 January 1809, Poe...

Edgar Allan Poe was plagued by addictions, and his life was cut too short. The mysteries of his life were as complex as those conveyed in his stories and poetry. Today is the 200th anniversary of his birthday.

In his short story The Black Cat, the Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe writes about a killer who conceals his victim behind a wall and is found out when the cat he accidentally hid with the body starts howling. Assistant State Attorney Brian Cavanagh referenced the gruesome tale as he laid out the evidence against Charles Gregory Moninger, accused of killing his housemate four years ago and stuffing her corpse in a closet.

Only four mourners attended his funeral in Baltimore, along with an Episcopal minister, the gravedigger and the sexton. The minister, a distant relation of the deceased, decided not to deliver a sermon to such a small gathering. The grave itself sat unmarked for 25 years. As if fate itself conspired to accentuate the void in the death of Edgar Allan Poe, 15 years after the burial, a train derailed into a quarry and destroyed the stone that was finally being constructed for the grave. The tablet read Hic Tandem Felicis Conduntur, "Here At Last He Is Happy". Edgar Poe (the...

Christopher Walken reads The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. A short film starring Christopher Walken.

Masoud Al Hamdouni, a school teacher, was pronounced dead by doctors at Princess Basma Hospital in the northern town of Irbid after suffering from a heart attack. After Al Hamoudi was sent to the morgue, relatives requested to see his body again, prompting his doctor to order morgue workers to bring the body back. “A coroner report proved that Al Hamdouni woke up inside the morgue on Saturday and tried to get out. He appeared to have struggled to get out before freezing to death,” said Qassim Al Masri, head of the teachers’ association in Irbid. “The report showed that...

JACKSON, Tenn. – April 20, 2009– A new book by Union University’s Harry Lee (Hal) Poe seeks to correct some of the misconceptions about his ancestor, Edgar Allan Poe. “He’s generally thought of as a gloomy, dark loner, obsessed with death and that sort of thing, said Hal Poe, the Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union. “Actually, he was a rather cheerful, witty, friendly person who enjoyed music and singing with his friends around the piano.” In the new book, “Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories,” Poe provides some biographical information about Edgar...

An unconscious South African man, presumed dead by relatives, had a rude awakening Sunday when he came to his senses in a morgue, officials said. His cries for help terrified employees at the mortuary in the Eastern Cape province of Libode. "Two workers heard screaming from the refrigerators," Sizwe Kupelo, a spokesperson for the Eastern Cape Health Department, told ABC News. "They thought it was a ghost and they ran for their lives." The man, who did not want his name released but is described as a grandfather in his 60s, had apparently suffered an asthma attack and fell unconscious....

RICHMOND, Va.- A representative for the family of Edgar Allan Poe said the body of the late U.S. author should not be moved from Baltimore despite claims to the contrary. The Baltimore Sun said Sunday while some individuals have called for Poe's remains to be relocated to a U.S. city other than Baltimore, a man whose great-grandfather was the late author's cousin rejected such claims Saturday. "In the spirit of fairness, the family simply cannot agree to move the body just yet," Harry Lee Poe said in Richmond, Va. Baltimore, Boston and Richmond are among the cities laying claim to...

BALTIMORE — It's been a good 200th anniversary year for Edgar Allan Poe. The master of gothic horror has been celebrated at events in several cities to mark the bicentennial of his birth. And on Sunday in Baltimore, he'll get the funeral he never had. Fewer than 10 people attended Poe's funeral when he died in October 1849 at age 40. His cousin, Neilson Poe, never announced the great writer's death publicly. Because of intense interest, Baltimore will host two funerals. Each is expected to draw about 350 people to Westminster Hall, the former church adjacent to Poe's grave. Actors...

BY JOHN J. MILLER On a snowy night toward the end of his life, Edgar Allan Poe delivered a lecture on the origins of the universe. It was an unusual topic -- Poe was always more interested in death than birth -- and the reviews were mixed. Frustrated by the response, Poe announced that 2,000 years would pass before his work was properly admired. His remarks were soon published as "Eureka: A Prose Poem." The book sold a few hundred copies and then slipped into obscurity, forgotten except for the fact that its author went on to become a giant...