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In Edgar Allan Poe's short story, "The Masque of the Red Death," a group of nobles wall themselves off from the surrounding country to avoid a devastating plague. Seemingly secure inside their fortified castle, the "elites" live in a state of luxurious indulgence, indifferent to the people suffering beyond their gates. While they throw lavish parties, the rest of their countrymen die miserable deaths. Eventually, however, the "Red Death" finds its way into their "safe space" and eviscerates their fantasy. And because the aloof aristocrats are trapped inside a fortress of their own making, they soon perish. This is a...

Credit: Public Domain The cosmogony Eureka, which Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) published the year before his death, anticipates modern science and cosmology.1 It describes a process that is now popularly known as the ‘Big Bang’ and the expanding universe. But it also contains ideas about the unity of space and time, the mathematical equality of matter and energy, the velocity of light and a rudimentary concept of relativity, black holes (including one at the center of our Milky Way), a "pulsating" universe that renews itself eternally, and other universes in other dimensions with different laws of nature. Contrary to the...

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...

US scientists discovered two giant whirlpools in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Guyana and Suriname. It became a sensational discovery because this part of the ocean has been studied thoroughly, and no one expected anything like that to appear in the area. More importantly, no one can understand where the whirlpools came from and what surprises they may bring to people. According to Brazilian scientist Guilherme Castellane, the two funnels are approximately 400 kilometers in diameter. Until now, these were not known on Earth. The funnels reportedly exert a strong influence on climate changes that have been registered...

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...

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...

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 reaches his second century mark today. The young United States was a strange place for literary genius to develop, and Poe’s career was relatively short (he died at 40, on Oct. 7, 1849), but through his works he inspired generations of writers throughout the world, and there has been no letup in the 21st century.

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...