Thinking Sideways: The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

I did, no. Well, I saw that really terrible John Qusack movie The Raven years ago. I didn't see it, so I would high recommend that you don't. Okay, okay, okay. It starts with a letter that reads, there, sir, there's a gentleman rather the worse for wear at Ryan's fourth Ward Poles, who goes under the cogniment of Edgar A Poe, and who appears to being great distress. And he says

he is acquainted with you. He is in need of immediate assistance, yours in haste, Joseph W. Walker to Dr J. E. Snodgrass. So the story goes. Poe was found either in the street or in the tavern room of public house tavern also pulling station. It was voting time. Yeah, they don't. They multitasks back in those days. That's how you got people to vote. Was, Yeah, you're like, drink and then go vote. Well, no, it's the other way around. Vote and we'll give you a drink. We should do that again.

I think they're still doing that. He was described as delirious, with his appearance being quote repulsive unquote. His hair was unkempt, he seemed unwashed and unshaven. His clothes were all ragged and torn, which was very atypical of po He was very well dressed, known for being well dressed on almost all times. It's worth mentioning probably also that the clothes that he was wearing were later discovered that they weren't his.

He'd for some reason, been wearing someone else's clothes. When he was found, he was taken to a local hospital. He spent four days and fairly incoherent stupor before dying on October seven. In those four days, uh Poe was never coherent enough or couldn't remember what had caused him to be in the state that he was in. And that this we're going to talk about in a minute. But this just comes from some fairly maybe unreliable sources.

So it's hard to tell if it was that he was so incoherent the whole time that he couldn't actually tell people what had happened to him, or if he just couldn't remember what had happened to him, or if it didn't get recorded. Yeah. Yeah, the doctor who was taken care of him actually, who has submitted some fairly inconsistent accounts of the whole thing. Yeah, and we're gonna we're going to talk about that. I wouldn't let other

people in. So maybe co maybe Pe was torobably coherent the whole time and the doctor just gassed him and killed him. Yeah, I know it is. I mean, that's it's a for all we know, that's what happened. I, as Joe kind of mentioned or alluded to to, wasn't allowed visitors while he was in the hospital. He was kept in what's described as a prison like cell. It even had bars on the windows. It was often reserved for drunks, you know, sleep it off. The dunk tank,

basically hospital the hospital drunk tank. Yeah, as I said, he didn't have any visitors. The attending physician's name was doctor John Joseph Moran, and a lot of people had been saying that Poe was found drunk and that's why he was in this stupor, but Moran said, no, Poe wasn't drunk. He was totally sober. But then again, as we already mentioned a little bit, it's hard to tell. We just have the one account, so who knows what

was true and what was not true. Apparently Poe told Moran when Moran said, oh, soon you're going to have friends being able to come visit you, post said the best thing that his friends could do for him would be to blow out his brains with a pistol. Well that's not well, it's not like Poe was known for not being more. I mean, it wasn't he wasn't all sunshine.

That wasn't so much Poe. Mrs Harring tried to visit him, but we later find out through letters that it was in fact Mr Harrying, which was his uncle in law. Oh so it was his uncle that was trying to come see him, and not a woman. Okay, that it was recorded as a missus, but again it was Moran who recorded it. So, and we don't know how late, how far after Poe died that he wrote it down, So why his account might be a little mixed exactly. Poe was said to have called out Reynolds repeatedly on

the night of his death. This is a huge, unexplained mystery. There's a lot of speculation about who Reynolds might be. There's a lot of Reynolds is a fairly common last name in that area at that time. Could be Reynolds, trap he just wanted something. He just wanted some foil man. But it even occurred to me that possibly I was. I did did a little research and couldn't find anything else, but occurred to me that maybe Reynolds there was a brand of laudanum or some other drug that was produced

by the realms. Yeah, it's always possible. He also spoke about a wife that he had in Richmond, but more on this later because oh, by the way, Podon actually have a wife at the time at all, particularly not in Richmond. He did live in Richmond. He was probably confused not what was going on, although in which way he was confused it remains to be seen. Maybe he is, he was talking about his ex wife who had died

two years before. She died more than two years Yeah, and he also had a fiance that lived in Richmond. So it's as I said, well, we're going to delve into the whole PO history a little more in a minute. Here. This is just kind of the brief synopsis overviews, super brief, right, it's just ten minutes, have the warm up. This is me dribbling the ball around. I also, so let's let's

talk about quickly the whole problem with Moran. Doctor the doctor, doctor John Joseph Moran, the only witness to pose final four days because he denied all visitors who tried to come. And it turns out there were a couple of people who tried to come visit PO. Family members and such who heard about his condition and tried to visit him, and Dr Moran said no, no, he's not well enough. Yeah. They said he said it was excitable and violent or

something like that that. I'm not really clear on this either. Did were there any nurses that attended Poe in those four days? It sounds like it was just Miran. I seem to remember something about a nurse, but it was very vague. And I think again, the problem is that their accounts were not recorded. Moran is the only one who wrote this stuff down, and as we're going to

talk about, talked at length about it. But I think that there was probably nurses, but they just right, well, who, yeah, who writes the records down at that time, right now, nurses. Everything's tracked, Yeah, but not in these days, not in the mid eighteen hundreds. Miran, it turns out, changed his story more than a few times, and very drastically. Some say that, you know, Poe was famous, the death was unexplained. It was he was just trying to kind of add

some romantic drama to the whole situation. For example, one of the great examples of that is that it's generally accepted that pose very last words where Lord helped this

poor soul, or help my poor soul. But later Moran claimed that his last words were he took a deep breath in and then said, the arched heavens encompassed me, and God has his decree legibly written upon the front lists of frontlets of every created human being and demons incarnate their goals will be the seething waves of blank despair. And then died, so as you can see somebody that was incoherent for days. Yeah, so it's it's worrying that

he changed all of that stuff. And yeah, I think for you can a little bit say, yes, he was trying to make the story sound so much more romantic. But on the other hand, he also changed pose admittance state four different times, and that prose style does not sound like POSE. So I because I I have issues with it, just because he changes his stuff so much and that just doesn't sound like the things that we know. The the cadence in the style of all the writings

of PO that doesn't really match it. I know he was feeling a little bit under the weather, though, and that always throws up. Yeah, your style drastically changes what was I thinking. I don't know. Moran also lied about having tried to contact pose aunt slash mother in law. Listen, it's it's complicated, and again we'll talk about this later, but yes, his aunt and mother in law were the

same person. And most troubling for me, of course, is that there's no records or death certificate for PO, which of course means that we don't have a cause of death officially. Officially, there are some theories out there, which we shall speak of in the theory section, but I want to talk about pose super tragic life first. Ready, Yeah, let's do this, Okay. Edgar Allan Poe born January nineteenth,

eighteen o nine, in Boston to two actors. His father abandoned the family when he was a year old, and then his mom died when he was two years old. And I don't know how he got connected to John and Francis Allen of Richmond, but they took poor little Edgar in for pretty much the rest of his life. I don't have a clear recollection, but I think that they were either friends of the family or they were some kind of relative aunt, uncle, something like that, and

that's how they took him in. It wasn't just some random couple that said, will take this poor orphan boy. Sure, I'm sure, I mean, surely there was a connection, but I don't know what There was a family connection. I'm almost positive of that. I don't think they were relatives. Okay, Again, I'm a little fuzzy on that because I've read this

so many times. I've kind of glossed over there. Yeah, there's and there's you know, and then more family comes in later, and it's just yeah, I think I think that kind of arrangement was pretty common in those days because people died like flies, and so there are a lot of kids left orphans. Yeah. Yeah, So the Alan's never formally adopted Edgar, but he did live with them and they did support him for pretty much like well into his twenties. Yes. Uh, the father, John Allan was

kind of a jerk. He reports are that he fluctuated between just spoiling the crap out of Edgar and being abusive, both emotionally and physically. So is that like pendulum swing? And so they fought a lot, as you can imagine, and Edgar joined the army under a pseudonym. I'd have to look it up, Captain James T. Kert. Nothing like that. Nothing so awesome is that, I know, But I don't think it really matters that much. But you know, through his life, Poe did have a penchant for using pseudonyms.

He did it a lot, So I can only imagine that this was, you know, his early stages of doing that, and then he just continued that on through his life because it worked for it, because well, you remember we see early eighteen hundreds. There's no way to verify who you are, Jeff Papers, No, I lost him. Okay, I guess you're you're that guy, ye, easy enough. Yeah, he lied about his age. He was eighteen. He said he was twenty one, and then he used the money that he made in the army to kind of start his

publishing career as an author. His adopted mother died in eighteen twenty nine and John that caused John Allen and Edgar to kind of reconcile. It was that, among a lot of other things. It's very involved story. Wikipedia will be a friend if you actually hair to know well. And there's all kinds of histories on po out there that are in not necessarily Internet form, but printed from a litany of books about the guys. I can pick

up any of them. Yeah. So, after Poe got out of the army, he moved in with his widowed actual aunt like blood relative aunt and her daughter, Virginia Clem. Virginia was fourteen years younger than Poe, but that didn't stop him from marrying her at the young age of thirteen. Sorry, having a momentary. This practice is so weird that I understand that it wasn't uncommon, but it still doesn't stop me from being skeeved out. But there's actually there's a

bit of speculation around this. There's some kind of mystery around this marriage as well, because since the aunt was widowed, she didn't have any income. The only soul income maker died.

Pretty much everybody in that family died and it was just Virginia and her mom, and Poe wasn't making a lot of money, but he was making money and he lived with these people, and it's speculated that the relationship with Virginia could have been more of like a sister relationship, and that he saw a way to be able to provide for them by marrying Virginia. On the other hand, there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that says actually they

were like crazy in love. He once wrote to a friend, I see no one among the living as beautiful as my little wife. Okay, right that just okay, I'm ignoring that. Yeah, no, you should, because Poe had a couple of scandals with other poets of the time, lady poets. But Virginia and Poe were married for eleven years. She got cholera and died at twenty four. That's three very important women to

po dead. And you know before he was forty, man, no wonder he was depressed his mother's stepmother and his wife. Yeah that's that's yeah, that's but I thinks Joe pointed out this is actually not uncommon at the time. Edgar Allen to Post seems to have been a little more sensitive to it than I think a lot of dudes. I'm not saying people in general, but dudes of the time were about that kind of stuff at that time,

A few years after she had died. I believe I don't have the actual dates in front of me because I don't know why, because I don't know why I didn't write them down. But he po reconnected with a childhood friend named Sarah Royster, who he may or may not have actually been engaged to before he left for the army. They were friends when he was living with Alan's and she had accepted his proposal. I think within

a month of his death. Something around that. Can I ask a question, because I know I've speculation about this is that when pose adopted mother died and then his father eventually died, he had expected to get an inheritance from his father, but his father had remarried, and after he'd remarried, written him out of the will. So I know that there was stuff about, well, I've I'm really broke and this is really hard, and I've heard some stuff that said that his engagement to her, to Sarah

was some ploy to get him back into money. We'll actually talk about that. There's some stuff about that in the theory section. Yeah, but it is worth mentioning that Poe in his entire life, was paid nine dollars for the Raven. Like that's the total sum of the money he made off of that, which, granted, that's the equivalent of two million dollars today, granted it is more right then we think of it would buy you more than

just a meal. That maybe it was a couple of months pay back in those days, but that's like, that's incredible to me. The Raven. You guys, just like pause the podcast for a second, take a moment to think about that. Okay, you back, Yeah, have you thought about it? Okay. I mentioned that Poe was found on October three outside a polling station which was sometimes called Gunner's Hall but

usually called Ryan's Tavern. Just again in the eighteen hundreds, you just kind of call stuff what you call stuff. That's true. I mean, that's how a lot of places got named. Oh that's uh, that's Billy's Canyon over there, because Billy lives in that canyon, and then years later it's called Billy's Canon. It's just how it happens. This his discovery on the third was actually after about a week of totally unaccounted for time. It's one of the

other things that makes this such a big mystery. Nobody knows at all where Poe was for that week at all. They're literally, well, we'll talk about that in theories. Poe had left his home in Richmond, Virginia on September a week prior. Pose fiance Sarah remarked that he looked ill, so he visited a doctor who was also his friend, named John Carter. Carter advised Poe that he should not travel on in his condition. This was, in fact the day before. He actually visited Carter the day before he left.

So Carter said, hey, don't travel, and Poet said, I'm gonna I'm leaving bye. What do you remember? What was? What was it was that the heart condition? He said, had a heart condition? He didn't. He said he had a condition and that had recently suffered an attack and if he had another such attack, it would kill him. He didn't never define what it was or anything. They're

so vague about that kind of stuff. Back in those days, an attack of you know, the hebbs or something like that, that would have been an official it would have this is these are the days of lady vibrators for you know, hysteria. Yeah, but I do. I do know that there is. There's letters from Poe that talk about having been ill before this trip, and he said something, I think I have the cholera or the spasms, and he had evidently been

taking medication for cholera. So it's it is evident that there was something not right some what it is I don't know, but he did have something going on exactly, So this isn't just out of the blue one guy's diagnosis of note, just to bring it back to Carter here is that when Poe left Carter's house, he who buy a mistake air quotes included, took Carter's walking stick walking Hayne in place of his own. Carter's walking stick

had a sword concealed in it. That's so cool. There's a letter from Carter about this whole incident, and it says Poe was just standing there playing with it, the cane, and just kind of looks at Carter and says, I'm just gonna go down to the tavern for a minute. I'll be right back, and just like walks out with the cane, never to return, but not to be kind of absent minded. And he had brought his own walking stick, and he had actually remarked on he had said, oh,

this is really nice, had remarked on it. Carter had been like, yeah, I'm super proud of it. But they had a conversation about it, and Poe just kind of looked at it and said, I'll be back. It seems The thing that I want to make apparent to people is that it seems from the accounts that this was an intentional thing that Poe did not necessarily that he thought, oh, this is my walking stick, I'll take it. He looked at Carter's and said, I will have that, thank you.

This is very cool, and I will take it now, thank you. Obviously, his life was on his threat. And we'll talk about there's some dispute, like we talked about earlier, about what Carter told Poe was wrong with him. Some people say that it was a brain tumor. Some people say it was a heart thing. Some people say it was the cholera. If I remember correctly, the cholera had

been resolved a month or so prior so recent. But because there's there's a span of time and his letters to people where he says I'm so ill, I can barely hold a pen or the quill, and then there's letters after that which you're dated weeks later. I feel so much better. I'm a different man. So yeah, there's definitely some time. Yeah. He also apparently had an irregular heartbeat, which it is not always problematic. I have any regular heartbeat,

my doctor says, and it's fine. Yeah, And so it depends. I don't know. Uh. He also Poe fun fact, and pretty much everything you've heard about Poe being a drunk came from his rival writing about how drunk he was all the time after his death. Wasn't that Clark? Yeah, Poe, Actually it wasn't Clark. Almost all of the accounts from the time Paul was actually part of the Tembrance movement, like he death. At the time of death, he had had about of drinking years and years and years and

years and in his very early life. And it turns out that when Poe drank, he was taken by terrible bout bouts of insanity. He was such a lightweight that one glass of wine would just do him totally in. He was just smashed after one glass of wine, apparently. I I do want to raise that I didn't really find any accounting of that other than from all of this official stuff from his rival, so I have to question that. Yeah, there was I can't remember the guy's name. Now,

I should have written this down. I was researching this, so somebody else who knew him, not for many years. He said that they would occasionally drink together and there was nothing bizarre or anything like that. They'd get drunk. But that's because he sat around and drink brandy for an hour. Yeah, but distance, Yeah, nothing nothing about and and and awesome. But they also did not appear to be an alcoholic, because he would go for months without

a drink. Yeah. Yeah, I think that, as far as I can tell from the accounts, there is some evidence to suggest that he was a lightweight, that he couldn't really handles alcohol. His sister had the same thing, so we'll talk about that a little bit in theories as well. I brought that up to mention that the night that he visited Carter, where he said he was going was down to a tavern, a local tavern, and the tavern owner reports that Poe left totally sobering, in high spirits

and seemed totally fine. That does not explain why Poe left his luggage in his rented room and said tavern, but that's fine. This actually caused some controversy during the time because when Poe was found, he obviously wasn't coherent enough to say like where his luggage was or anything, and it turned out that it was still in Richmond in this tavern. His nephew went to Baltimore once he

found out, yeah, once where where Poe was found. Once he found out about po and he and harrigr Harring, Sorry I don't know why I keep saying harrogast started they started searching for the luggage as you would, you know, if somebody said, well, I don't know where my luggage is, he would go looking for it. And he wrote in a letter at the time he arrived in this city, where he spent the time he was here or under

what circumstances I have been unable to ascertain. It appears that on Wednesday he was seen and recognized at one of the places of election in Old Town, and that his condition was such as to render it necessary to send him to the college, where he was tenderly nursed until the time of his death. Mr. Harring and myself have sought in vain for the trunk of the end clothes of Edgar. There is reason to believe that he was robbed of them well, in such a condition as

to render him insensible of his loss. But it turns out it was always in Richmond. He just didn't take it with him. He just didn't take it with him, which is random, Yeah, a great sign or by accidents, who knows. And again then there's literally nothing known about that week in between between when he left Richmond and the third when he appeared in Baltimore. So there's there is stuff out there talking that this trip that he took. I believe it was his final destination was New York,

Is that right? Because he had a book to edit for somebody, and then he and the woman who had written that book, we're going to come back and it might not be New York. I'm trying to remember what city it was. Do you know what I'm talking about? The trip was what you're talking about. I can't. I'm trying to remember where he was going, Okay, But but the point is is that he could have been in any city. So that's an important thing for people to understand.

Is it's not that he went from Richmond to Baltimore. Baltimore for five days, it's possible, but he also could have been anywhere else. I'm not sure actually how long it took to travel from in those days from Richmond to Baltimore. I mean that I could easily see that being a couple of days back in those days. Yeah,

I could see that being a train. Yeah, yeah, Because there's there's talk about people saying, well, maybe he meant to get on one train and was confused and got on the other, an accident backtracked, and some of this is in different theories, but so it's it was. He was definitely traveling by trade, so I know that for a fact, but he could have been wherever the stinking rail routes went. Yeah. I could have stopped off or got off the train for a couple of days here

there or whatever it could have done all kinds of stuff. Yeah, and as mentioned, the reliable list reports that his nemesis released after his death said, well, he was on a drunken vendor, but no nobody really believed that. Nobody thinks that that. Well, that's not true. Some people do think that, but it's likely that that was just made up to

slander his name after his death. I think. So, you know what the biggest tragedy is for Poe after he died, is that his rival and what was the guy's name again? The last name. His last name was Griswald. Okay, what Griswald did? I don't know if you guys saw this in the red is. I don't know how he convinced pose family to do this, if they were in need of cash or what. But he bought from them all of his papers and all of his writings and all these letters, and so he was essentially the executor of

all of this stuff from Poe. So he had an iron grip on what came out after the fact, which is just clever and just cruel. But I don't understand how. I guess the family must not have been aware that this guy was kind of a and it's not not a friend and an enemy of that Groland post. I I have a feeling that they may not have realized the level of venom that was between them somehow, because it was pretty public, but he may not have realized

how bad. They may not have known, and so they're like, oh, well, he's being very nice and very very considerate, and so we need a couple of bucks. Okay, I mean, I I don't get it. I don't know. But then again, a hundred, a hundred, fifty years later, it's very easy to see the value of those documents. But at the

time they may have had. Yeah. The one I like to kind of compare it to is Van Gogh, right, who was a drunk and literally trying to give his paintings away to have alcohol, and people would say, no, dude, your paintings are pretty bad. I don't want to, Like, that's not worth a beer to me. So why would buy that guy a case of booty at the time? I'll take that. Yeah, after the time, as his style was a little out there, though, I mean, we all

recognize it today is brilliant. Yeah, yeah, right, But exactly that sort of phenomenon that happens pretty frequently it was not. Yeah, maybe Poe was not well. He was actually pretty highly regarded, I guess even at the time. But it's not. But but now he's, like, you know, one of the great American authors of all time. But does this mean, though, that because Grizzwold bought all this stuff, does that mean every time I buy a copy of The Raven than

some descendantive Grizzwold guests the Royalty. I don't know that. That's an excellent question. We should do some research. Yeah, yeah, you guys want to talk about theories. Okay. The first theory is that it was voter fraud. Yeah, a k A. Cooping.

I mentioned he was found outside or maybe in a polling station, and apparently it was pretty common at the time for people to find a mark like Poe, for instance, beat him, kidnap him, dress him in a variety of different disguises, and force him to vote for the same candidate multiple times. It would explain why he was wearing someone else's clothes, explain he was incoherent. It would explain why he was incoherent. It wouldn't It wouldn't explain you know,

why he kept getting worse after he was hospitalized. Definitely not. I feel like that's the sort of thing people recover from and can remember what happened. You don't agree with that. It's the other thing, of course, says that there and our records are shoddy, But there's no mention of him looking like he got beat up. Yeah, I know that's there. There are other other beating theories out there too, Yeah,

And I don't I haven't heard anything. I haven't read anything that says that he was described as having even really any kind of cuts or bruises or anything exactly. Doctor probably would have mentioned as if he had. Yeah, but there is there is recordings of the fact that there are people who when they were victims of these cooping schemes, and they would be locked away and they would be drugged, and there are accounts of people who

were overdosed with whatever it was. And of course when you voted, they gave you a drink, and then you were hauled to the next place and you voted again, and you've got another drink. So if you're chucked full of drugs, whatever it might be, because lord knows what kind of concoction they're using to make you doscile, that that can have a negative effect. That it did kill

some people was infrequent. But the other problem with this theory is the police who monitored the polling stations that year said it was a very calm and dull day the cooping's these guys came out and kind of big groups, and it was pretty obvious when they were showing up because these people were in a cart. They had them all chucked in the back of a cart. So well, yeah, and there's another problem with this particular theory, which is that was actually fairly well known back in those days.

So the description of him is that he looked so unlike himself that even his friends had a hard time recognizing him when they saw him. Somebody knew him recognized him finally at the bar and said, oh, hey, you're not just some random drunk yar head Garland Poe. Oh you don't look great. Let's get you some help. But it took a while for all we know. You know, it could have been that he just wasn't recognized as possible. But well, I don't like this theory. I'm not trying to.

I don't think this theory is really any good. But because it sounds like it sounds like when they discovered him, the election took place on a single day. Correct, yes, right, It sounds like from the state that he was in, he had been um he had been going downhill sharply for more than just today, from the condition of his hair and his skin as closed, everything like that. But these cooping schemes would start to gather people days prior to an election and they would hold him in basements

and locked up and all of that. So, I again, I'm not I'm not in bed with this theory at all, but it does the the evidence does show that if he was a victim of it, he could have been held for days on end. Why didn't they just bribe him like to do today, I don't know. Next up is Booze Whoo whoo, whoo whoo, who has previously mentioned. There were a lot of reports about this. Apparently Poe was the lightweight. We kind of talked about that and

the validity of that. Who knows. The theory goes that his illness prior to traveling was brought on by drinking. Somebody had tempted him fall off the wagon, and that's what you know, the doctor was talking about. Dr Carter was talking about when he said, if you have another attack, you'll it'll kill you. There's some speculation that Poe had something that made it so that his body wouldn't process alcohol right way, or that it affected him a certain way.

His sister was also a lightweight. As I mentioned, there's some speculation that that could have been caused by lesion on the brain. I think there are probably other things. There are other things that can cause that. Right, Yeah, I was because I do not like the theory that po drink himself to death, just because, as Joe pointed out and you've pointed out, there's not a whole lot of evidence that he was an alcoholic because people who love the sauce always drink the sauce. So that doesn't

hold up to me. But you know, just to play devil's guy, and I started looking into what how does your body deal with alcohol? And your liver takes and processes somewhere between nine of all alcohol that you drink or that you absorb, and then breaks it down from there and that process how it does it is the liver first breaks alcohol into acid. Tall to hide, hide at the hide, that's how you say it. I'm struggling with that word for a day now um, which turns

out is a pretty bad substance. But once it's once the body doesn't just leave it there. It then breaks it down into acetate, which is relatively inert in the body, and then and it can expel it. And it's so the whole thing is normally not a problem. But it got me thinking about what if he has some kind of condition and there are conditions where people can't handle liquor,

and so it has a greater effect on him. If his body wasn't processing alcohol like it should have or breaking down these components and and expelling them the way that it was supposed to. That might account for some of it. Because the acetalde hide, it turns out, is a carcinogen, and it's people. This is something that you find in a chemical form because we know how to now make that If people get exposed to the right parts a million of it, they have delirium, they have hallucinations,

loss of intelligence, all this stuff. It's actually been linked to for people who don't break it down correctly, they don't have the proper enzyme, or they don't create enough of the enzyme. It's linked to Alzheimer's, So there is a possibility that his body wasn't his liver specifically wasn't doing its job in the way that it should have

for whatever reason. So he had a build up of this stuff in his system which may have caused this this condition that the doctor was saying, if this happens to you one more time, it's going to kill you. And I don't know that he necessarily did take a drink, but if he did and it he had built up enough of that in his system, that might have been what he was suffering from, because if you get enough

of this chemical compound, it will kill you. Again. I'm just looking at this from the science perspective, if I just wanted to see what happens and how that works, and it's it's plausible. I don't buy it, but it's totally possible. And now the thing is, though, is that you have this. You have this when you drink alcohol and the stuff builds up and you get all horribly

sick and everything. Then after you recover from that, then I assume your liver does manage to process it, at least in your body manages to get rid of it at least somewhat right, Yes, yeah, that's kind of that's that's part of what makes a hangover is your body is breaking down the alcohol into the acetel hyde and then into acetate and that's a noxious thing in your system.

So that's part of what makes you sick. Yeah, but you think that if somebody suffered from a condition like that, then if they would draw, they would notice it every time they drink, they get horribly sick, they would not drink. Well, that might be why Poe, though he did drink occasionally, didn't drink often because it may have been man, I went out and I had two glasses of wine and I had a really fun time and I have felt

like crap for three days. That that could explain why he was such an infrequent drinker and why he got on board with the temperance movement. That's why other issue with the booze himself to death. Okay, he had friends that were in the movement, so he jumped on board the bandwagon. But you know, they're just the evidence doesn't support it short of this one jerk who said, oh, yeah, Post was a total booze hound. Yeah. Well, also I think that um, even if he had had some alcohol,

I don't think that they were. I don't think the doctor was feeding him alcohol in the hospital, so he should have recovered. Well, well, yeah, and correct me if I'm wrong, Devon. When they picked him up, there are there's nothing in the writing that says, oh, and by the way, your buddy smells like a still, No, there's not. And as they said, Miran, for all his unaccountability, did say, no, Paul was not drunk. He said he did not smell of liquor. Yeah, he said he wasn't showing any signs

of that. And I think, you know, the only thing that this kind of helps to explain is you get drunk and where someone else's clothes. I mean, you know that's yeah, we've all done it. No, we haven't theory poisoning of any kind, carbon monoxide and having metal poisoning meide. Now, there is something and I don't remember what the compound is in the medication that he would have been taking for cholera. There is a compound in it that if

you get enough of it, it is really lethal. But he would have had to have been taking so much of that compound that it's obscene he would have been having to take. I don't remember what it was. Five to ten times the prescription for that to have made him go into the state that he was founded right back back in those days. That's a pretty questionable stuff. And some of the like mercury, Yeah, I think that might be what was it? It was mercury, Yeah, I think yeah. Yeah. And so I maybe he did chug

alog his bottle of loudon um. I don't know. But well, the other thing is that so pose hair became collector's item directly after his death, which is actually kind of fortunate. Yeah, it turns out it's fortunately because doctors have been able to since then take and test his hair and they've come up with nothing. There's nothing, there's nothing they can find. So no and no rabies. I'm actually kind of liking rabies, like brabies, thinking rabies makes a lot of sense. I've

never liked rabies as a disease. I don't really care for it either. That's why you know what people go about to say, we're raising money for cancer. I say, good at hell, I'm not a favor of cancer. Apparently his symptoms match. I don't buy it. How he would have gotten it is unclear. There was no evidence to suggest that he gotten bit by anything. One of the biggest, most prevalent, almost every single time somebody has rabies fears things symptoms is the fear of water, and he did

not have that. So yeah, that's the only that's the only problem with that is, I mean, they're probably other ways to get rabies besides just being bitten by a dog or a bat or a rat, but rabies isn't an immediate onset. Rabies has an incubation period of something on the order of, if I remember correctly, four to six weeks before you're really in the symptoms. Yeah, so you could have gotten a rat by it, for example, and that it had enough time to heal exactly. Yeah.

So while I again not on board with it, I'm not going to discount it because there was no bite wound. Yeah, I give it's the water thing for me. But you know,

say I was good. I was gonna check into the the actual symptoms of hydrophobia because I know that hydrophobia you're afraid of water, and I know it was drank water while he was in the hospital, But I don't know if hydrophobia means that you're afraid of the water because you still have to drink water to stay alive, right, But that's part of the problem with brabies is that you're afraid of water and so you don't drink, and so you start to get dehydrated. So I mean, people

won't drink. That's why they get all their fluids intervenously when they're being treated for brabies, is you know, when they're in the throes of it, because you can't say, would you like a glass of water, because they freak out and knock it out of your hand and it scares the holy living crap out of them. Okay, but again I don't I don't buy that one. I don't like any Next is an illness of some kind. It's not a tumor edition. It's speculated he could have had

the flu or had another bout of collar um. There there's nothing to suggest the symptoms. He could have been hypoglycemic, which I don't get because I assumed they were feeding him.

So if he had low blood sugar, you would think he could have had some unknown illness like the vapors, Like I don't know what he could have the vapors, and the vapors is just a term for for you know, like like when Victorian women would like be all offended and they act all faints and go oh my, oh my lords, you know when they go sit on the fainting couch, because you know that's the vapors. I think, Okay, yeah, sorry, Javin, I didn't mean to interrupt. I just didn't get that

could have had syphilis. I mean he could could um well, I know that there. I mean, syphilis does lead to insanity at the at the end, so it's entirely possible. It seems like it came on really quickly. It seems like he you would have been showing symptoms, although if he had been sick and not looking well, it does seem like it came on really quickly. Though. I if we're going to say that it's syphilis, because we've gone down this road, I would point have either of you

ever done any research into al capone. But oh yeah he was a symphiletic idiot. Yeah he But but that lasted a long time time. It wasn't as if yeah, I've got syphilis. Oh I'm not treating. Yeah I got syphi. Listen, whoo screwy three days later. Yeah it doesn't work. No, you drag on for a long, long time brain. So exactly, it's it's not an immediate killer. Yeah, I'm not liking syphilis, don't like I don't like cephialis period. Yeah, really, why

would you? Nobody should? He could have, I guess been epileptic as well. Explain that to me. I can't explain it. It's just something I saw on the internet. And I was going to scratch my head over that one. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, we're kind of doing a list of things that aren't viable right now, aren't we Just to just to say it, that's what. Yeah, that's what. My mother had had epilepsy, and and she also had

brain cancer. And eventually, after the surgery and all the radiation and everything and that they gave her, she had a massive seizure and she was out of her mind for several days. I mean literally, I mean it was it was crazy. She was I was, but she wasn't completely incoherent. I could still talk to her, but she

wasn't perceiving reality quite correctly. I mean, like, for example, I talked I was talking to and and and she said that the people around here are acting so strangely because like the phone rings and I tell them that to the phone, and they said, the phone's not ringing. And I'm going too, you know, they're lying to me. And I was visiting the next time, I was visiting her. We're sitting there talking and and suddenly she says, there, do you hear it? And she's pointing at the phone

and the phone was not ringing. Yeah. Yeah, and stuff like that. I mean, I can list a whole bunch of stuff. But she eventually recovered, though she didn't just like go down and down and down and then die because because at the see the athletics. Yeah, I mean yeah, she was kind of sort of out of her mind for a few days, and then it started getting better, and within three or four days she was she was okay again, you know. So yeah, yeah, I agree. Yeah,

so now it's illness of some kind. It's a tumor. Oh, this is the tumor edition. This is actually, uh not a bad one. This is the one that I'll get behind. These next two are my two favorite, saved the best for last. Apparently, a doctor once told Poe in his younger years, I think in his it was a doctor in New York, and it was in his he was in his twenties or something like that, said that he had a legion on his brain and that was the root of his booze problem. How did they figure that out?

I don't know, Okay, than an X ray. Maybe I don't know what you can see and what you can't see anywhere. Yeah, if you have like scar tissue, that's differ I don't know. Yeah, I just don't know how they figure out you have a legion on the brain

in eighteen thirty. So I'm just I'm just have no idea. Yeah, because here's the thing, I'm kind of pulling a Devon on Devon is I'm googling as we're talking, and I knew I had heard something about this recently, which is X rays weren't used clinically until about eighteen nine, so it's eight it's still not something that they're doing. So I just okay, So I don't know why how that doctor knew. But let's just like take on faith with the doctor knew or said, hey, there's something wrong with

your brain. It was the brain savant of something. Maybe there were there there are ways to deduce disorders and stuff like that from the behaviors. Sometimes you can tell but of course, back in those days, a lot of us still was like basically they were kind of witch doctors. I mean, I don't know if they were. They were still bleeding people in this at that time, were they. Some of it happened, but not nearly as much as

it had. It wasn't that much that earlier. Like George Washington, for example, supposedly died of a cold turn in pneumonia, but he probably actually died from because they kept bleeding him, you know, otherwise he would have lived a lot longer. And that was not that long before. Yeah, that was still around, but I don't think it was quite as popular as it had once been. Can we start talking

about my favorite theory again? Oh? Yeah, sorry, we wouldn't way out in the weeds, didn't we Yeah, we haven't. We haven't discussed yet that pose body was fairly unceremoniously dumped into a cheap coffin into an unmarked grave when he first died, Well wasn't. It wasn't quite dumped. They placed it in there. And yeah, he actually had a very brief funeral. I think it lasted three menace with

seven people in attendance. Yeah, yeah, at least there's so many millions of people who love love him now well, and that's exactly a twenty six years later, his body was exhumed and moved to a more permanent location with this like huge statue or not statue, but monument. It's a beautiful monument. Yeah, that's really pretty. You should look up pictures if you'd like. It's the second one, you know, the first one that they were going to put down

got destroyed by a train, right, which was crazy. Well everything, Yeah, he didn't have a curse, and they did. Anyways, when the crew was exhuming his body, the coffin was in such disresp disrepair that when they went they had it connected to some mechanism to carry it, and the coffin just like fell apart. So Shelton obviously it was not the soil will do that. Yeah, it wasn't in a

great shape. And one of the workers remarked, unsolicitedly remarked that there was an odd feature of the skull, and that was that it sounded like there was a ball rolling around in there. And the given that this was about the late eighteen hundreds, they said, oh, yeah, that's just his brain. It troveled up in there. We now know, of course, that brains don't last that long real quick.

But apparently a brain tumor can calcify after death and would account for the sound of a ball rolling around inside of a skull because it would be calcified, it would be harder, it would have lasted, it would have been in there, it would be in the skull without a fracture or anything like that. So that could account for that sound. It could account for a lot of his behavior, could account for his swift decline, his inability

to be treated. I get I personally put a lot of stock into the idea that Poe had a brain cancer of some kind. I know Joe has briefly talked about, you know, having family that had brain cancer, and I've seen it too, and it's amazing how someone can operate and operate and operate and seem completely okay, and then just one day it you know that whatever the cancer maybe shorts the circuit, to put it kind of in a general phrase, and it just shuts everything down and

send somebody downhill quite rapidly. Damn it. Actually, though, a tumor probably depending on what part of the brain it's in, I mean you'll feel the effects of it for a long time. I mean, and they'll continually build. But he may have been suffering, for it's possible that he had been suffering from years. You know, he he was having attacks,

He wasn't a very well man. He had bouts of time where it was better and bouts of time that it was worse, which I think is typical of kind of a long term illness like that you kind of get better and you get worse, and you get better get worse. So I don't know, it's it's not as though we have any evidence to suggest that he wasn't

suffering migraines and headaches and delusions and whatever else. The things that that I I really find horrifying in the whole story is of course, the lack of records of oh when he was in the hospital, because if there had been any kind of written accounting of his actions and his behaviors other than this kind of I'm going to use the word anecdotal recollections of the of Miran, then that might lead us to know a little more, have have better better ideas. I mean, there's there's things

that people in that condition do. I don't know if you guys have ever heard of things like terminal agitation, which is it turns out kind of a related or a common thing with with can't of the brain, where somebody's just constantly moving and doing stuff. And so it's it's like, if we had that kind of record, we might be able to say, oh, yeah, we've seen that over the last hundred and fifty years and categorized it.

But unfortunately I just don't have it. And the ball rolling around in his in his skull, can I just say, is not indicative to me of brain cancer. That sounds more like a clod of dirt. I'm I'm just gonna say it still is not going to roll around and rattle. It's going to disintegrate. But I don't care what it is. A chunk of earth of some sort is in the skull where I But I still I get behind the cancer theory because that's the one that explains to me

why he switched so quick and went downhill. That's one of my favorite theories. The next to my favorite theories is murder. As we previously alluded to, it turns out Sarah, his at that point fiance, was quite wealthy, which we started talk about she also had three brothers. Yeah, I don't. I think they were younger than her, because I think that she had all the money, she was in charge of all the money, and that they were in risk of using a lot of the money if she married

Poe or something of that natural nature. The theory goes that Poe was threatened by the three brothers in Philadelphia, and he was so frightened that he disguised himself for a week and hidden Baltimore to throw them off the trail. It didn't work, of course, he was intercepted by the brothers. He was beaten or else wise incapacitated, forced to drink which they knew would kill him, and left for dead. Why didn't he use the sword cane? Well, that I mean,

I think that's one of the other things. Is this is one of This is literally the only theory that addresses the fact that he seemingly purposefully took a weapon with him the night before he left on the train. So I think it's at least fun to think about. Maybe their brothers had threatened him just verbally before, so he thought, oh I need to protect myself. I'm going to take this cane with a sword in it wasn't. One of the only things that he still had on

his person that was his was the cane. He still had the cane when they found him, so he ditched his fancy clothes. I was wearing the palm hat I think they called it in raggedy coat, like a straw hat and raggy coat. But he still had the sword cane. Ye, yeah, but why didn't you buy a gun? He was broke, he was super broke. I don't know. I think that's a fun theory. I don't know if it's the one that I necessarily to believe the most, but I definitely

think it's fun. It's also possible that, you know, he was kept in communicado in the hospital, so there's another couple of ways to look at it. And maybe the brothers paid off paid off the doctor, and there, you know, then I've already even paid the doctor to poison him, overdose him, something like that on lauding him. It's always possible.

And then uh, you know, and then just the doctor made up this whole story about even though he was completely loose, it doctor made up this huge story about how he was just out of his mind and raving the entire time when actually he wasn't right, It's possible, It's always possible. I I also wonder if, well, let's just not say necessarily that it was the Brothers that beat the holy crap out. I mean, but he he got clubbed by somebody or something. You could well, he

could have been mugged, but I'm not. I'm not gonna infer what caused the beating. But if it is possible to get whacked in the head hard enough to cause bleeding, that doesn't leave a giant crater in the skull. And yeah, and it may have been that, you know, the the Miran just didn't do a very thorough exam, or maybe it had been a day or two and so the swelling on the outside of his skull had gone down,

So we just didn't know. I will lend credence to the beating of some sort I I don't think it was this the brothers that just it seems too convenient. Can we talk about how convenient pose life was, though, I mean, it was so tragic and it's like you can't make it up. It's so good anyways, that that would be the perfect end to an otherwise very tragic life of a man who's just obsessed with tragedy, so very at the very least it's nice and romantic and

poetic ending to his life. Well, that he was beaten, senseless murdered over the woman. Yeah, or you know, but but that leads me to my just another theory I'm gonna throw out there, which is that perhaps Poe was feeling that he kind of the words on, he kind of shot his wad. Perhaps he was having writer's writer's block, Perhaps he felt his best days were behind him, and so after this episode and it sounds like he had these episodes. He winds up in the hospital where he

spent several days with the doctor. He tells the doctor that he doesn't want visitors, and at the end of it all, he tells he asked the doctor to help him fake his desk, so they find an average substitute for his and he goes off and runs away and joins the circus and changes his name because he likes to change his name. So and that would explain, that would explain a lot of stuff. He just you know, he just left Grolan. Poe could have gone just gone out to somewhere. Maybe he went out west and he

became a cowboy. Possible suicide is also possible, So I'm actually really liking Joe's theory. Edgar Allan, Edgar Allan, Poe rides off into the sunset. That's pretty awesome to me. All Right, I'm going to get behind that one. We can end on that note. Okay, that's fine. Yeah, and then it eventually meets up with John Wayne and they shoot a lot of people and uh and they russell cattle or no excuse me, they shoot rustlers and they heard cattle. Okay, yeah, yeah, all right, girl on. Poe

rides off into the sunset. All right, good, well, uh, you want to talk about aliens? No, okay, all right. You can find some links about this episode on our website. That website is thinking Sideways podcast dot com. You might be listening to us there. Maybe you're probably not. You're probably listening to us on iTunes. If you are, please make sure you subscribe because you liked us, and leave us a comments and a rating, which you guys are really good at. Right now. We could also be streaming

us on just so many different places. Stitcher is the one we always mentioned, but I know there are a bunch of other ones. Uh, and I guess Stitcher's back up and running, which is great. You can join a conversation. We have lots going on right now. On Facebook, we have the Facebook page and the Facebook group, so like us, find us, friend us. I'm sorry, friend us, find us, find us, friends us. Whatever Joe said you should. We

also have a Twitter Thinking sideways. Uh. You can always send us an email if you'd like to talk about this or any other unsolved mystery, or you have suggestions, or you just want to say hey, Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com. With that having been said, as Steve says, I think we're gonna get out of here. Sounds good to me. Never more, never more, never more,