Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 77 - The Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe

Episode Date: November 24, 2020

Alex takes us through the final months of one of the worlds most prolific poets. Patreon - http://www.patreon.com/chilluminatipod BUY OUR MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/ThatOneLazerClown Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft End song - POWER FAILURE - https://soundcloud.com/powerfailure Video - http://www.twitter.com/digitalmuppet

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Welcome to the Chilli Minari podcast. Episode 76. 77, bro. No, 77. You are correct. Yeah. Oh, my God. It's happening too fast.

I don't know what we're going to do for 100. I'm thinking for 100. Either we start JFK or we start MK Ultra. Let's know what we should do is we should get a vaccine for episode 100. That would be fucking tight. I would love that. I could fly out and come see you guys and it'd be great. 20 weeks.

Come on. 25 weeks. 24 weeks. Come on. Who knows? The world could be different. That's true. It could be a wildly different place by then for good or ill.

It could be. Before I hand it off to Alex for the Patreon shill as always. It's an Alex episode today. You better believe it. It is also an Alex episode. So I'm expecting a Patreon shill that segues well into your episode. Yeah. So share storm it while I say, hey everybody, I'm Mike, one of your hosts.

As always, joining my other two co-hosts and buddies, Alex and Jesse. Hello, boys. Jesse, how are you doing, man? Are you there? Alex is praying now. I'm not sure what's going on. I'm working. I'm thinking.

He's thinking. He's improving. He's going through. He's a bit after bit after bit. He's going through his mind right now. Characters are coming and going. This is really. The higher life cycles are happening.

Shilling is very hard work. You might not know it, but a lot goes into trying to convince people to give us enough money to continue doing this show in a way that is both entertainment and educational. And let's be honest, we've been failing for 76 episodes, but one of these days we're going to get it right. We don't stop trying. Yeah.

Yeah, we're going to get it right. And we will continue trying every single week, as long as you guys keep supporting us on patreon.com slash chulminati pod, which has so much stuff that you can get for a paltry sum. You can listen to this. You can be done. You get a whole another episode right afterwards. You know what?

Mel's art is freaking sick. It happens every month. It looks great. Go look at it. It's freaking amazing. In fact, ads. What? I said, do you hate ads, Alex?

I fucking do. And you know what? If you hate ads, patreon, it's got them done. It's got them off of there. There's so much stuff there. You might even say, get ready for this, that it's unbelievable. OK. And speaking of things that are unbelievable.

I'm just going to jump into it. I'm sure you guys all know where I'm going with this. Going right into it. Go for it. A couple of weeks ago, we recorded Jesse's episode about Roanoke. And if you remember, right at the end of that episode, I tacked on sort of like a much less researched mystery to the end of it because Jesse's mystery was too educational

and peer reviewed and it made too much sense. So I needed to bring an element of mystery into the end to fuck with everybody. And so I brought up the fact that much like the long lost colony of Roanoke, under some very strange circumstances, the word crotoin, the same word that the Roanokeans, if you will, carved on the post that they left behind or the tree or whatever it was, that let people know maybe that they went to this island.

We found out that they may have been among some of the last words written or spoken by some of the biggest names in American history to have mysterious deaths, right? Can time out. No one can see this, but I don't even care. As Alex is like, it may be the last word saying, meanwhile, in another screen, this is why Zoom is the best. And another screen, this is just eating chicken.

He's got a bowl of chicken, fried chicken fingers that he's dipping into. I'm going to call it a vat. It's like a triple decker Petri dish filled with sweet sour sauce. And he's just like sitting here just munching and staring at the camera. It's so funny looking. He's just sitting back and enjoying the ride. Dude, I am loving the story so fucking dope.

I'm getting it. I'm in. I'm so in. He's like that Michael Jackson gift with the popcorn, except it's giant chicken tenders. There's a giant piece of chicken dripping in pink, sweet and sour sauce. Yeah. So look, I looked into this thing.

I wanted to do a whole episode on the Croatowan thing. That was my plan, right? But that plan fell apart very quickly, because when I did begin to look deeper, let's be honest, it's like a Da Vinci Code level premise. But other, like I said last time, other than articles that are just like maybe this is a thing. There are like no sources for that mystery at all.

There's actually no real information on it. Yeah. So had in hand as I was, I was ready to move on with my life and start working on my episode about little green kids that came out of a pit in England and would only eat fava beans. Whatever. I was like what? What?

Forget about that. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Did I go that way? No, come on. No, I want that episode. I realized that in front of me, dude. Don't worry about it. You'll get to it later.

I realized that I was staring. You decided against that. Don't worry about it. No, don't worry. I realized before I moved on to that, that I was already staring another really big mystery in the face. That script that I wrote for this episode came together really nice and clean. So that other episode about the kids who eat the beans,

that's going to be shelved. I swear to God that I'm going to do it. And I promise that it is the weirdest fucking thing ever. But we're going to go into that later. Is it going to boil down the Jesse breaking it down and realizing that it's just a story about the kind of diet that those in the UK have? You want to know something? Just a whole lot of beans?

You want to know something? No. And it's fucking weird. But if I don't do this, if I don't do this one, if I don't do this episode that we're about to do right now this week, it loses its like connection to what was happening before, right? So I got you. So you got to trust me here.

Instead of doing that, which I will do, I will do. Not like JFK will actually happen soon. I'm going to take you to a rainy day in Baltimore, Maryland in the fall of 1849. Okay. It was October 3rd. It was election day at that time. And a man called Joseph W. Walker, who was a what do they call him? A composite compositor?

A comptroller? The people who take the little words and put them together, set them for the newspaper before computers. He was like a type setter guy for the Baltimore Sun, which is the biggest newspaper in Baltimore. And he was headed over to his polling place to vote in the fourth wards, a local pub, which was called Gunners Hall, which at the time, understandably, was a fairly busy zone.

And in fact, there was commotion happening everywhere, because a way that they used to get people to vote before the prohibition was that you could go vote. And if when you were done voting, you'd get out and they'd give you a freaking drink at the bar, which is like, yeah. This is something that is akin to, I believe in Australia, they give you hot dogs, right? Yeah, it's a similar deal.

Like, yeah, it's like, it's almost like you give blood, you're going to get an orange and a cookie. If you adopt the hot dog tradition. Look, I said that when they, yeah, when I saw it on Twitter and they were giving like freedom sausages or whatever the hell they were, I was like, why the hell don't we have that? That's on, yeah, what people would go vote. That's a free meal.

America is a country that is food driven. I know, yeah. Just put food at the end of anything. Like a two piece chicken meal there. I would go, oh my God, a biscuit. Oh my God. Little, little bit of salsa on the side for the chicken or a little tortilla. Like a sweet tea.

Oh boy, that's it, well done. Uh, anyway, sweet liberty. Oh my God, that's how we vote. Look at that. That's how you do it. You wrapped it up with a pun. That's a, that's a, that's a million dollar idea. That's a million vote idea.

Hi, it's Alex. Listen, yes, I'm reading an ad on my own show, but let me just ask you, do you read comic books? Do you want to read comic books, but you don't know where to start? Do you just want to hear as many hours of me and my friends talking about stuff we care about as possible? Well, check out the new 52 and you, my new comic book podcast, where me and six rotating pals

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Thank you. But yeah, people would get like hammered. There was like a commotion outside the bar, but that didn't stop Mr. Walker from noticing that there seemed to be a delirious looking man, lying half awake in or at least on a bench near the gutter outside. There's some deliberation on that, depending on whose version you believe. He was dressed in like shabby hobo clothes

and really couldn't even move his body on his own. And there was like a crowd gathered around looking at him because it was like a weird thing to see. And being a nice guy like he was, Mr. Walker, moved closer to help. And when he did, he was surprised to find that he was actually talking to an extremely messed up version of a rather famous cat, the author and poet, Edgar Allen Poe. Was this man on the bench?

And he recognized it. So it really was him, but just like very drunk. It was Edgar Allen Poe fucked up beyond belief. Oh yeah. And at this point, I should say, shout out to Natasha Galing at Smithsonian Mag for a good article about this that she wrote, as well as the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore,

who have some really good like extended documentation and research about Poe. Like if you ever interested in the guy, he's got a bunch of great books. He's a guy that you can get obsessed with really easily. And they got all the shit at the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore. I realized I don't know nearly enough about Poe. He's an interesting, he's an interesting dude. He's an extremely complex dude, but they had so much stuff there

that I was able to like pull up a million different things and like really fact check a lot of this stuff. But anyway, let's get back to the gutter. Walker knew that Poe lived pretty far away, like probably like he thought maybe in New York or something like that. So he asked him if he knew anybody in town who could like take care of him while whatever was going on with him sort of pass by maybe a relative in town who could like let him stay at their house

or something like that. And Poe gave him the name of a local magazine editor who apparently also had some medical training who was called Joseph E. Snodgrass. I adore his last name. I know, right? Joseph Walker had never heard of this other strange Joseph before, but he wrote him a letter anyway, which went like this.

And I'm going to give you guys this little so you guys can read this. This is Jesse. You got to read this. Imagine you live in Baltimore in the 1850s. And my name is Snodgrass. This is a letter to him. Ah, all right. Oh man, what is the Baltimore accent?

I can't do that. Don't worry about it. You're not going to get it. Dale Saw, for some reason, he's from the south. I like that. There's a gentleman. He's coming to life with my eyes. Well, at Ryan's fourth world polls,

who goes under the cogn man of Edgar A. Poe and appeals in great distress. And he says he is acquainted with you. He is in need of immediate assistance. Yo, in haste, Joe's W. Walker. To Dr. J. E. Snodgrass. I also want to point out that Joseph Walker was wearing a white seersucker suit and he had a cane and a monocle. And he, oh my God, sugar farm.

No, I'm just kidding. He didn't. That's all. That's just based on the voice. That's what they do. I still have just hooked on like Snodgrass is the only thing happening up in my brain. His voice is 100 percent like, of course.

I'm from him. I don't they say hun in Baltimore? In Baltimore, there's a lot of huns. Yeah. I'm sure they didn't. Don't worry, hun. I'm sure they didn't say that in like 1838 or whatever. I hope not.

I hope that's not where it's from. So they went in the pub to wait for this to happen. In the meantime, and Dr. Snodgrass eventually showed up with a man called Henry Herring, who was Edgar Allen Poe's uncle, who lived in Baltimore. And they did not want to bring him back to their house because they like saw him and real decided that he had been super fucked up, drunk, and they arranged for a carriage

to take him over to the Washington College Hospital, where he was admitted immediately and they made him as comfortable as possible. He was in pretty bad condition. I should also mention that Poe's expected outfit at this time would have been something like a sort of nice black wool suit or something like that. He was like a foppish gentleman around town,

not a very tough guy, sort of like a high society type guys, what Poe's vibe was. But here is the quote from Dr. Snodgrass that was describing what he was wearing. And Mathis, this one is for you. You can try and take a little Snodgrass. I'm going to try to do that voice that Jesse gave him. Just go for it.

You know, your own interpretation is fine. Yeah. See, Snodgrass to me, he sounds like a nerd, where he's like, I don't hold your nose, be kind of like that. A rusty, almost brimless, tattered, and ribbonless, palmleaf hat. His clothing consisted of a set coat of thin and sleazy black compacta, ripped more or less than several of its seams and fainted and soiled, and pants of a steel mixed pattern of, what the fuck is that word?

It's Casanet. Casanet? I don't know. Casanet? That one. Half worn and badly fitting if they could be said to fit at all. He worn neither vest nor neck cloth, while the bottom of his shirt was both crumpled and badly soiled.

On his feet were boots of coarse metal and giving no sign of having been blackened for a long time, if at all. So can you picture this? He just looks like this. Like he's in these like insane, tattered clothes. He has like a straw hat on that has no sort of wrapping to it or anything like that. Shitty ass shoes. It would be very strange if you knew Edgar Allan Poe.

And his pants were half off. Yeah. If you knew Edgar Allan Poe, it would be very strange to see him in this outfit, is the main point, right? Gotcha. And over the next few days, Poe would just sort of drift in and out of consciousness. And the doctor was the and the doctor who was there is this guy named John Moran, who is sort of a controversial figure because he he's a big source of a lot of the stuff that

people say about what happened with Poe here. And he kept trying to get information from Poe about what happened to him, like why he was like this. But apparently, quote, his answers were incoherent and unsatisfactory. And we know that he was actually in a pretty bad state at this time, suffering from things like delirium and visual hallucinations. To the degree that at one point, another cousin of his, a guy named Nielsen Poe, who was a local judge, he tried to come by and visit and they actually didn't let him

because they were worried that it would like make him go crazy. Like it like Poe would like lash out at him and stuff. So they didn't want to like rile him up. So this was like he was in a pretty serious spot. I also love how in the 18, like mid 1800s, everybody has everybody knows a family member who's some sort of government official. Yeah. Yeah, my cousin's a judge.

Yeah, my buddy's a sergeant. Yeah, my other buddy's a cop. Everybody knows somebody who's some sort of official. People like wanted to have civic jobs at this time, I think, you know? Yeah. It's crazy. But eventually, after four days passed in the hospital, sometime between three o'clock and five o'clock a.m. on October 7th, 1849, Poe finally died.

And interestingly enough, even after looking way deeper into this, I couldn't find anything at all about his last words having anything to do with Croatoan. That theory is like completely out the window. But Dr. Moran did have two other options for things that he said on his deathbed. The first one was just Lord help my poor soul was the first thing he attributed as Poe's last words, which is, you know, it's sad, but it's not. It's also kind of a mystery almost like, yeah, it's like most people would say something. You can see a lot of people at that time saying something.

Yes, it's not mysterious. Let's put it that way. Like it's somebody's dying. They're going to say that, right? But here for Jesse, here's here's as as Poe. Here is the other option for what Dr. Moran eventually said Poe's last words were. Oh, this is this is Poe's last words according to according to Dr. Moran. He who art the heavens and upholds the universe has his decrease legibly written upon the

frontlet of every human being and upon demons and carnage. I would be like, oh, shit. If a guy said that right before he died, I'd be like, that's incredible. But also what it's like, it's like God is real. He who art the heavens and upholds the universe has his decrease legibly written upon the frontlet of every human being. It's like he could suddenly see everybody's soul or something.

Pretty wild stuff. But there is also an interesting claim that the night before he died, Poe repeatedly called out for someone he knew as Reynolds. He was calling out for Reynolds. Where's Reynolds? Get Reynolds. Nobody knows exactly who the hell that was, though. Nobody around him knew exactly who that was.

But according to people who were actually there, he shouted that from early Saturday evening all the way until 3 a.m. Sunday morning. He was calling for Reynolds, which is like super weird. Nobody knows who Reynolds is. There is no official death certificate because, I guess, they weren't required to do that at the time. But a couple of 1840s, they were wild. They're still figuring shit out.

No death certificates, I guess, required. But a couple sources at the time refer to something like a congestion or an inflammation of the brain as the supposed cause of death. Though in 1849 medicine terms, that could mean a whole lot of different things. But literally, I think what they're saying, I forget the actual scientific word for it. It's like Phyllis. It's P.H.Y. something.

It's a term that means your brain swelled up too much and you died, I think is the basic gist of it. So those are the mysterious circumstances surrounding his actual death. But before we get into the nitty-gritty of what could have possibly happened to get him to that point, let's give it a little more context so you don't go getting any wacky ideas. And you can kind of see a better idea of where Poe was at just before this happened to see if you believe the theories

that people say about him. So to do that, we're going to go back a couple months to June 29th, 1849, where he's still sharing a home in New York with his dead wife's mother, Ms. Clem. And Poe has just set off on a lecture tour. He definitely just did it for money because obviously writers, there was never a time period where writers were making a bunch of money unless they were super lucky. They've always just been sort of taken advantage of by publishers as per tradition.

But he was also trying to drum up interest in a magazine. He was going to launch called The Stylus, which for me, like made me feel like Poe's like us. Like he he felt almost like a content creator for a second when he was like going on tour to like get people to pre-order his magazine. I don't know. I don't know. It made me feel connected to him at some point. I don't know. I had a moment where I was like,

oh, man, he's just like us. He related to him first. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, first he hit Philly on the tour. Then he went to Richmond and then he went to Norfolk. But most importantly, while he was in Richmond, Poe reunited with his childhood sweetheart, a woman called Elmira Royster Shelton, who also was recently widowed. So they had a lot to talk about.

And they hit it off so well that pretty soon after that, they actually ended up reengaged a couple months later. And Poe was about to head back to New York to pick up his mother-in-law and all their belongings to take with him back to Richmond, Virginia, where he was going to live again with Elmira. But before he left, before he left Richmond to go do all that and take care of business, before he left town, he dropped in to meet up with his friend, a guy named Dr. John F. Carter at around 9 30 p.m. on September 27th,

which remember he showed up in Baltimore on October 3rd. So this is pretty close to that. And we know that he showed up around 9 30 on that on that day because Dr. Carter noted that not only did Poe leave behind a copy of Thomas Moore's Irish rhapsodies when he left, but he also accidentally took the doctor's cane with him instead of his own when he went to dinner after that classic mix of and it probably is just something that doesn't matter. But it is exciting to know that whether or not Poe was aware, the cane that he took with him by accident actually had a sword hidden in it like a bond

villains cane. So I don't know if that figures into the mystery or whether he like knew that he needed to get this guy's sword cane for protection or whatever, but he had a sword cane. And the friends that he went to after that meeting that he had dinner with said he was sober when he was with them and he was cheerful when he was with them and he was hopeful about the idea that he was going to be moving back to that town soon because he really likes Richmond. And they took him over, they walked him over to the boat like to leave Richmond as after dinner as he left. And he was excited. You know, it was a good vibe. Like he had a nice night with everybody and he had a good vibe and you went off. And according to official stories,

he got to Baltimore the next day, September 28th. And what he did there or who he was with while he was in Baltimore is largely unknown even to close family members that it would have been natural for him to visit like his uncle or the judge, Nielsen, who we already talked about. But according to some sources, he may have come calling at the home of a poet and historian called Dr. Nathan Covington Brooks, who had published some opposed work in his magazine called The American Museum. And when he came calling, the witnesses say he was possibly under the influence of alcohol, but Brooks wasn't home anyway. And there's some confusion as to where this story even comes from since the same author who first mentioned it happening in a later book attributed it to someone

else. So it's kind of a mysterious little thing. He never met the guy, but there is a possibility that he was looking for that guy. I should also mention at this point that he was likely traveling with what it would have been. I don't know about likely, but he was there's a high possibility that he was traveling with what would have been an insane amount of money at this time. Because according to some primary sources who saw him during that visit to Richmond, Poe allegedly had not only $1,500 in 1840s money. That's like that was like pre-order subscriptions for his magazine, apparently, which is like, I would say 50K in 2020 money. He was watching that's a lot. But I'm going to do a quick Google,

just I'm curious, but you keep going. Sorry. I think it's about 50K, but also a small advance that he also got for an article that he was planning to write. So he had the advance from the article and $50,000 ish in cash. But again, there's no evidence of this other than these affidavits from people who were there and who hung out with him. So it's not like police found this money or something like that. It's just that when he left Richmond, people were like, pretty sure he had a shitload of money and I just gave him some money for this article that he was going to write. So that's crazy. So there's all these things already dead on 50K. Yeah. So there's a really? Yeah. No, it's like dead on like right on. But Zenga. But already there's like all these things

sort of just like swirling around this that are all these things that are like motives, probable causes. He has a weapon like it's crazy. But another thing that's interesting about this whole thing is that he was never supposed to be in Baltimore in the first place on his trip. Most people who knew him at the time said he was actually supposed to be headed to Philadelphia before going back to New York. Yeah, which is supported by the fact that in a letter to his mother-in-law, he mentions that he's going there first to edit a collection of poems for this woman, Miss Leon Loud, who said she'd pay him $100 for it. And here's here's the here's the letter. This is for Mathis now. You can hear Mathis's poem. My sad boy, my sad boy, Poe. Sad boy, Poe boy.

But you know what? This isn't totally sad boy, Poe boy, because he's he's. Yeah, but he has still that emo. I'm not a fan of us calling him Poe boy, because now he's just shrimp to me. She's like shrimp boy. A little remoulade. Oh, my God. Here we are. On Tuesday, I start for Phila Delphia to attend to Mrs. Loud's poems. I'm just reading it verbatim, boys. Come on now. Delphia. Oh, I hate that. And possibly on Thursday, I may start for New York. If I do, I will go straight over to Mrs. Lewis's and send for you. It will be better for me not to go to Fordham. Don't you don't you think so? Where's Fordham? Is that in New York somewhere? I'm not sure, but it's another place that he

decided not to go. Okay, gotcha. Don't you think so? Right immediately in reply and direct to Phila. For fear, I should not get the letter. Sign no name and address and address it to to EST Gray Esquire. Don't forget to write immediately to Philadelphia so that your letter will be there when I arrive. How does he spell Fordham just real quick? Fordham. Oh, yeah. Fordham. Maybe he means the university. Fordham University. Could be. Where is that? NYC. Oh, yeah. Then yeah. And that's where he's going to come in from. So yeah, that probably makes a lot of sense. He probably had some business there in town and then he's deciding, you know what, we better just go. But the weird thing is that he was so worried about missing a letter that was correctly addressed,

which is weird. And also that he wanted it addressed to EST Gray Esquire, which I don't know what that is. That's like a mysterious name. But we know for sure that he never made it to Philadelphia, according to official sources, because later in a press release for the book he was supposed to edit, which was called Wayside Flowers, the poetry book, it read the late Mr. Poe was accustomed to praise her works very highly and was to have edited this edition of them, which implies that he did not edit that edition of them that he was supposed to. So he never made it to that appointment in Philadelphia. Interesting. But yeah, less than a week later, the dude was completely somewhere he wasn't supposed to be acting completely different

than he should have been. And a few days later, he was dead and nobody knows why, right? So that's where we're at. So what the fuck happened here, right? The number one culprit that people keep coming back to is the idea that Poe could not handle his alcohol and just had the worst bender of his life and just ended up here in like a hangover type scenario. It was known for drinking a lot of crazy stuff. Well, sort of. So like here's the problem, right? In the month before he died, in the couple months before he died, not only did Poe get reengaged, but he also became an outspoken part of the temperance movement after struggling with alcohol all of his life. So at the time that he was found, he was known to his friends as a teetotaler. Kind of interesting. Interesting.

But you tell people, oh, but he was a teetotaler and he and he died of alcoholism. So most people would maybe tell you that this is just like a really tragic story of him sort of like falling off the wagon after running to like some buddies in Baltimore who were like, come on, bro, drink. And then he just went crazy. But like, I still have a problem with this because I doubt that he was wasted for like five straight days when no one knew it, like not a single other person knew where he was. I mean, like if he was drinking for five fucking days, right, you'd think that he would do it because he ran into somebody that he knew and was like having a good time with them. No, it doesn't explain where you got to close either, which is like another big part

of this that like I don't buy in that case. But also more interestingly, modern science has shown that pose postmortem hair samples had low levels of lead, which I don't know the process here, but it indicates that he was most likely sober while he was in Baltimore, just based on some sort of low levels of lead. Equal sober. Equal sober. Yeah, I don't want to know. I do not know. I'm just basing it off with the curator of the Pose House Museum said about in response to people talking about that theory of alcoholism, lead and hair. And hair and sobriety. Yeah, it's super weird. But also in 1867. So this is like, you know, almost 20 years later, a biographer called Elizabeth Oaks Smith was one of the first people to mention something other than alcoholism or

brain swelling as his cause of death. When in an article about him, she mentioned that she heard this and I'm going to give this to Jesse to read as almost like like a. Think of it as like a overly tenacious reporter from the 1860s. Sure. Um, wow. Just really quickly. Just. Oh, you look into the hair thing. I did alcohol and lead just to see if there was any connection. And there are plenty of articles about alcohol is linked to higher lead and iron levels. There's a study that was it is an LA Times article from 1991 that says more than 600 domestic and imported wines tested federally were found to contain lead at dangerous levels. So I assume that's all changed since the nineties. But holy crap. I guess it's I guess there is some evidence

for that. Then let's say. All right. So this is a newspaper article. Yeah, this is this is like a like a biography article about him because it was a different sort of vibe back then. But yeah, this is the on Tuesday. No, that's at the instigation. I don't see that. Oh, I do. Never mind. Sorry. I thought it was all part of, you know, whatever. Yeah. At the instigation of a woman who considered herself injured by him, he was cruelly beaten blow upon blow by a ruffian who knew of no better mode of avenging supposed injuries. It is well known that a brain fever followed. So yeah, so we know Poe was a hopeless romantic almost certainly to a fault. So it is possible that this account is has some merit to it, right?

Of him just like jilting some girl and then some dude beating beating him up as a result. But weirdly, the word ruffians, the specific word ruffians shows up again in an article from about five years later in 1872 by a respected post scholar because post scholars existed by this time. Jesus, that was pretty quick. The dude was famous in his time and he's very prolific. The guy was called Eugene Didier and he says that basically Poe ran into some buddies from West Point who convinced him to go out drinking even though he couldn't hold his liquor. And then after just one glass of champagne, he wandered off and then quote was robbed and beaten by ruffians and left insensible in the street all night, which I still have a problem with,

you know, because because it wasn't nighttime when this dude ran into him. I feel like they wouldn't just leave a raving man on the street who'd been beaten like from one glass of champagne outside on a bench all night to the 1840s and 50s. Though he had things happen in the streets that people just kind of drink one glass of champagne. I mean, I don't know over the night. He ended up in different clear. I don't know. It just doesn't seem to gel with me completely that that's where he ended up after like wandering off. The beating gave him a concussion that he just didn't recover from. It's possible. It's possible, honestly. But there is another sort of like adjacent theory to this that is that involves something called Cooping. Do you guys know what

Cooping is? Have you ever heard of that? No. Okay. So basically, Cooping is where like a gang. This is like some Gangs of New York shit where like like the movie Gangs of New York where gang would engage in like voter fraud. They would kidnap people, random strangers, dress them in crazy outfits and just force them over and over again to vote for the same guy in like different clothes as different people. Oh, my God. So that explains the weird clothes already, right? Obviously, they're just maybe it's just like some disguise using him. Yeah, iteration of disguise and why maybe he got his shit kicked is just because he was being roughhouse by these guys. But also, if you think that if you imagine that Poe couldn't hold his liquor and every time that you vote,

you get a free drink of alcohol. Oh, my God. And he votes multiple, multiple times. It's possible that he just like used and abused this motherfucker for like half a day and then left him just wasted outside, just confused and fucked out of his mind. Man, that actually kind of fits in a really bizarre way. But yeah, so that kind of makes sense. Yeah. So this is this is a very common practice, by the way, this Cooping thing. Like this was like especially in a big city like this where like you're saying everybody's involved in local politics. Cooping is a big deal, right? Especially if your gang is like, you know, gangs of New York style where it's like the politicians are part of the gang.

Yeah, exactly. Which is exactly what was going on here. Another another theory that people like to throw around has to do with Poe somehow getting contaminated with carbon benoxide from the coal gas lights that people used to use back then for indoor lighting, which can drive you nutty. But even though the 1800 fucking nuts, it was just super unsafe back then. Everything you lit on fire to give you like convenience cost you a year your life. It's real. Like people were like in London, just like dying of cancer because they didn't know they had cancer because it was so much cool. But even though the tests ran by a public health researcher called Albert Denay in 1999 were inconclusive with regard to carbon monoxide poisoning,

they did apparently reveal elevated levels of mercury had been in his system in the months leading up to his death, which was likely due to the mercury chloride that he had been recently prescribed to combat the cholera epidemic. He'd gotten exposed to that July while he was on to it. What a time to be alive. All right, so we got a call where we're just going to drink this mercury. Unreal. Meanwhile, don't leave your room when you're really sick. Just breathe that cold dust up every time you light up your lights and breathe in that coal fumes. However, these levels of mercury are still 30 times below the levels you'd normally need for like the type of mercury poisoning that drives you crazy. So take that one with a grain of salt.

But he did have this extra mercury in his system that they did find later from this like test. But speaking of illness and disease in a 1996 clinical pathological conference, doctors were given a list of anonymous patients from across history, which they then were meant to like diagnose just based on the info that they had and then compare notes with other doctors on for like research purposes. And for the anonymous patient EP, a writer from Richmond, everyone agreed that based on his symptoms, like every doctor, consensus that he had a textbook case of, wait for it, rabies. Oh, yeah. And apparently by like a dog or something. I don't know. But apparently it tracks.

See, rabies patients are commonly admitted to the hospital for lethargy, lethargy, lethargic behavior, confusion. And their condition usually begins to spiral fairly rapidly from there into delirium, visual hallucinations, varying pulse rate, rapid shallow breathing. And after four days, which remember, that's exactly how long it took for him to die. It's also the median length of survival after onset of serious rabies symptoms. They're dead. So that's another thing that could have happened to Poe. However, off topic. Yeah. But has anyone ever seen how an animal gets tested for rabies? Were they like cut its head off or whatever? Yeah. Have you ever seen a video of that get done? Well, I mean, obviously with who you, but no. What? No, what? So they, in order to

get test rabies, you can't test for rabies while they're alive. They have to be dead. So they have to send the head off to go get tested separately because that's where the virus lives. So when they take, when they're doing the autopsy, they fucking put, oh my God, they'll be burned forever in my brain. They took the dog at the end of a table. They had already kind of cut down the center and splayed out for the autopsy, but they take the head and they just level it up against the table. And then just with a hard couple of motions, just snap, snap, snap until the spine and the neck breaks. And they kind of just twist off the head and then they ship it off. I don't know why. What? I don't know why this is where my head was at while you were saying that, but I was imagining

the people's elbow. I was imagining a Chihuahua's body with Edgar Allen Poe's head on it and that he was getting his head cut off. I don't know why. I don't know why that's where my head went, but that's where I was. That's while you were saying that. Sounds like a future Patreon post. No, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I don't know why that's what I was thinking of. Anyway, sorry to track it. No, no, no. That's the rabies theory. But against that theory, Poe never got hydrophobia, which is like a really common symptom of rabies is fear of water, literally. And no one saw any evidence of anything like an animal bite, even though it is likely like it is common that rabies victims sometimes don't remember being bitten. It's enough to cast a little doubt on it, though

I think that's actually a fairly compelling case based on the fact that it's like auto peer reviewed. It's literally like a bunch of doctors from all over the place looked at his symptoms and were like, that dude had rabies. No doubt. Right. So that's to me, that's crazy, right? That's like a rare thing that you get to do with something like this. And it's pretty influential, honestly. And be like, yeah, that sounds about what I would say what happened. Yeah. Or, you know, it could have just been a super serious flu, which may have evolved into pneumonia in the hospital and killed him. And that there's evidence for this too, because apparently the day before he left Richmond, Poe did go see a doctor because he was feeling ill. And that doctor

may have even told him that he was too sick to travel. Right. Or maybe this is just me speculating off of this. Maybe he had like walking pneumonia for a couple of days, and then the shitty weather in Baltimore. I remember I said it was like pouring rain at the beginning of this. Yeah. Maybe that weather just exacerbated it and made it worse. And like, that's why he fucking died because he just got pneumonia and got like crazy fever. Truly was a content creator working no matter how he felt. Doesn't explain why he was in Baltimore. But it is also true. But it is a compelling piece of single evidence towards him. Just you think it could be a mix like he had rabies, but the pneumonia killed him before he got like

the fear of water. It could be a mix of any of these things. That's the thing that's so frustrating about this. It's like all that happened was somebody found him in a city where he wasn't supposed to be. Yeah. Dressed in the wrong outfit, calling for somebody that nobody knows who it is. You know what I mean? It's like a super weird scenario. So it's hard to say for sure which one it is, you know. But that's still not the last super convincing possibility because in 1875, so now we're 26 years after his death, as they were moving his body from an unmarked grave to a nicer one that has a statue that you might know about. If you've seen his grave before, you know, this is probably what you'd imagine an author's grave to be like. While they're

moving his body, apparently his coffin just fell completely apart because it was the 1870s and they were terrible at shit. So his coffin fell apart and a bunch of people saw his corpse and though his body was mostly already just gone and nasty, several newspapers reported seeing something they called Poe's brain, quote unquote, rolling around inside of his skull, right? But if you know your shit, you know that the brain is one of the very first body parts to rot. And there's no way that it could be the brain itself, though it is slightly possible that it could be a brain tumor, which often calcifying to hard masses after death, and which would be yet another path to this brain swelling diagnosis that we got.

Interesting. And while this tidbit of, I don't know, lol, they saw a lump rolling around inside this dude's head here, say, might not be convincing on its own, right? It is consistent with the diagnosis of a brain lesion that he got from a doctor in New York who blamed it for his weakness and low tolerance for alcohol. They said he had a lesion on his brain that whenever he drank it, like he didn't just get drunk. He got like head fucked. Jesus Christ, it sounds like it sucks. I don't know if that's a thing that can happen, but I'm sure that it can. You know what I mean? The brain feels like it's capable of so many countless fucked up things. Yeah. And that's mostly it for theories. But this would not be

chluminati if I didn't save the sexy theory for last, which comes from a book from the year 2000 called Midnight Drury, the mysterious death of Edgar Allen Poe by a man whose real name is John Evangelist Walsh. Middle name is straight up just evangelist, which is badass, which says that Poe was murdered by the brothers of his new fiance, his childhood sweetheart, Elmira Shelton, Shelter Shelton, whatever her last name. So let me explain this. So you remember how I said the first theory was that he got beaten up by some girl that he like that sicked some dudes on him. This one is like sort of like a recontextualization of that theory. So according to this book, which came out in the year 2000 and which is not part of the like official like historical

society record or anything. So they're not bound by governmental law and are free to tell the truth? Well, it's just that this guy did his own independent research. You know what I mean? I don't want to say like that. I don't want to say that he's completely out of the out of left field here because he did do research and apparently he does have a paper trail. But apparently this guy's research actually does place Poe in Philadelphia for a little bit. Okay. So apparently according to this guy, this guy did make it to Philadelphia for a little while. And while he was there, he was ambushed on the street by the three brothers of Elmira who tried to like scare him off, right? And this is this caused Poe to disguise himself as a tramp and hide in Philadelphia

for a little while for a couple days, a little under a week before trying to skip town back to Richmond to get married right away. But apparently when he did that, they cut him off in Baltimore, they followed him and cut him off in Baltimore, beat the shit out of him and got him balls drunk because they knew his head was fucked up and that it would maybe kill him and drive him insane if he drank too much because it actually happened to him one time before in New York where he got so they knew that like they knew that they had that little piece of information. So they so according to him, this is what they did. And that's how they ended up sort of, you know, murdering him slash bullying him to death. But the best quote that we can get about that theory

from a Poe expert is that it is quote plausible, but not wholly persuasive, which isn't like a terrible indictment, but it is not resounding praise for it is the most mediocre response you could hope for. Yeah. On on a theory. Yeah. And speaking of theories, that's it for theories about what could have happened to Poe's what happened to Poe before his death. But the mystery still isn't quite over because I probably know what you're thinking, which is who in the fuck was Reynolds? Who the fuck was that guy? Who is this mystery person that Poe was calling for? You totally dug that out of my brain. I'm going to tell you, number one, that none of this is super a hundo satisfying. Just off the top because I feel like, you know, I don't want you waiting for

like it was the name of an alien. I'm not, by the way. I wasn't. But now I am. So some people some people tried to pinpoint down. They were just like, OK, let's just work backwards like Poe is here. He's asking for Reynolds. Who the hell did Poe know that was called Reynolds? That's all this is. And they found. They found one dude whose name is Jeremiah N. Reynolds, who wrote a proposal for exploring the Pacific and South Seas as potential areas to expand a whale fishing operation. This proposal was called a dress on the subject of a surveying and exploring expedition to the Pacific Ocean and the South Seas. And it is popularly considered to have inspired the only novel Poe ever finished, which is called the narrative of Arthur Gordon

Pym of Nantucket, which he published about a decade earlier in 1938. And Poe actually worked at the office and edited that proposal. And that's how he's connected to this guy, Jeremiah Reynolds. But we also know that Poe continued a relationship with this guy after that because four years later in 1842, there's evidence that Poe owed money to this guy in a bankruptcy petition that somebody found. So here's a quote about that guy from a Poe biographer. And this is for Mathis to read. All right. That that sort of explains the theory behind this Reynolds being the Reynolds. Here we go. On Saturday night, he began to yell loudly for Reynolds. Perhaps to his dim and tortured brain, he seemed to be on the brink of a great descending circle sweeping down like the

phantom ship in the manuscript found in a bottle into darkness and distance. In that first published story Poe had written, it is evident we are hurrying onward to some exciting knowledge, some never to be imparted secret whose attainment is destruction. Perhaps this current leads to the South Pole itself. It would have been natural enough for his favorite theme, the terror of the opening chasm to lead us thoughts that other story, Arthur Gordon Pym. And from that to Jeremiah Reynolds, projector of the voyages to the South Seas, whose very language he had used in that tale. He could easily have known Reynolds, but what led to his wild cries must still remain uncertain. Yeah. So that one, I feel like is a little loose, right? Like the conceit is that he was

imagining himself and his journey on towards death as like an opening chasm in the ocean. And it reminded him of the author of a piece that inspired him to write a book 10 years ago. That is wholesale. Pull on out of your asshole what you think is going on. Yeah, it's a rough one, right? But I mean, it's a Reynolds, so I wanted to mention it. But another angle on the Reynolds thing is that there was a Henry R. Reynolds who was serving as an election judge at the Fourth Ward Pulse course, which is where they found him, you know, out on the street. Nobody has any information on this guy. But if you subscribe to the theory that he was cooped by this gang or whatever, this could be another element of that theory. And maybe this

dude, Henry Reynolds, who was the election judge, was like somehow involved in the scheme, right? So for Jesse to read here is a quote from Mr. John Evangelist Walsh. Even now, to the little mystery there can be added only one new fact, small but rather interesting. As newspapers of the day record at Ryan's Fourth Ward Pulse and Gunners Hall Election Day, one of the three presiding judges was a man who bore the name of Henry R. Reynolds, present in the same room as Poe on October 3rd at Ryan's Place. Only days before he began in his delirium to call out the name was an actual flesh and blood Reynolds. Yeah, so I mean, just to give you an idea, he wrote a letter to this guy.

The first guy that found Poe wrote a letter. The letter was delivered and then somebody came looking for Poe. So he was in that room with those guys for some time. But he goes on to say this as well. And I'm sure Jesse will relish reading this part of the quote. Oh boy. A little more. The sodden brain may simply have picked up a sound it heard, spoken in the haze of the noisy room, sparking some far-drawn memory. Yeah. So even this guy is like, you know, it's a thing, but it also could just be a crazy person yelling, which is really good, which, you know, he was this close to death. It could be that it's also worth noting that though Reynolds is by far the more repeated

name that people remember, lots of people also think Poe could have been shouting herring instead, which was simply the name of his uncle who showed up originally with Dr. Snodgrass. How do you mistake those two though? I don't know, but there is there is some indication from that guy, Dr. Moran, who's kind of a shitty guy that maybe he fucked up and then retconned it. Sure. Maybe. So yeah, I'm not sure if that's a viable lead. But if you have seen the movie with John Cusack, the Raven, they really went for it with the whole Reynolds thing at the end of that movie. I don't want to spoil it unless you guys want me to. But there there is a there is a big connection to the Reynolds element in that movie. If you have the time to go watch a fairly average

movie about Edgar Allen Poe. But yeah, there it is, the unusual death of Edgar Allen Poe. That is all I got. And I'm interested to hear what you guys think. But before I do that, I also want to tease. A little bonus part of this mystery, something that is only slightly related and much more lighthearted. But I'm going to talk about it on the mini so Patreon bonus episode, which is coming right after this at patreon.com slash Illuminati pod. So if you want to go hear that right after this, head over there and sign the F up, you bitch. You bitch as we're going to do right now. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will be back next week with another fantastic episode. I think it's overdue that we do something alien related. So I think we're going to dip into the

world of the aliens next week. Be excited for it. Jesse. Oh, boy. I can't wait. If you guys want to go, you know, reach out to us, tell us your stories, head over to the subreddit Illuminati pod. Also, we just have a review of we're almost up to 1400 reviews over on the iTunes and all that good stuff. So please drop us a review. It helps us out a great deal at 50 reviews. Mathis will storm area 51. He said it. I will do it all by myself. He said by himself. They've been waiting to see either of us. Yeah. Right. That's the only way, man. It's like Frodo. And keep your eyes on the Yeti shop. A new t-shirt is going to be popping up very, very soon. So it's good stuff. Hell yeah. We'll see you next week, everybody. Good bye.

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