National Park After Dark - Terrible Tales: Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

This week we are kicking off spooky season with a visit to the Edgar Allen Poe National Historic Site. We learn about the history of the house, and dive into Edgar Allan Poe's short and complex life. Hear all about the real life tragedies and events that inspired some of Poe's darkest works from psychosis, to plague, to being buried alive. For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials:Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdarkSupport the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page!Thank you to this week’s partners!BetterHelp: Get 10% off your first month of online therapy by using our link.Apostrophe: Get your first visit for only five dollars at our link and when you use code NPAD.Reel: Use promo code NPAD to sign up for a subscription and get 30% off your first order plus free shipping.Microdose: Use code NPAD to get free shipping and 30% off your first order.For a full list of our sources, visit http://npadpodcast.com/episodes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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What came first? The chicken or the egg? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? Does art imitate life or does life imitate art? Seemingly simple inquiries that stir up a flurry of answers. Answers that alike almost everything else in this world rely on one thing. Perception. The response to these queries is often dependent on the person you ask. In a world that urges black and white, more often than not, the gray area is where many of us reside.

Take the parable of the blind men and the elephant. In it, a group of blind men heard a strange animal, an elephant, had been brought to their town, but none of them were aware of its shape and form. Out of curiosity, they said, we must inspect it. and know it by touch, of which we are capable. So they sought it out and touched it. The first person whose hand landed on the trunk said, this being is thick like a snake. For another, whose hand reached to its ear, said it was like a fan. Another man, whose hand was upon its leg, said the elephant is a pillar, like a tree trunk, while yet another placed his hand upon its side and said the elephant

must be like a wall. And the one who felt its tail described it as a rope. The last man, feeling its tusk, stated the elephant is that which is hard, smooth, and must be a spear. How we experience life and ultimately interpret and express it

is as distinctive as we are individual. But what happens if our life is littered with and marked by, tragedy, unrequited love, death and sorrow. How would we express it then? Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello, welcome back everybody to National Park After Dark. Danielle and I are finally recording in real time. We're back in present day, which feels so good also, by the way. We're back in the group of things, back recording, and it's October. Officially October, I feel like I had a big, like, weight

of responsibility for this first episode of October. I don't know when, like, the pressure got put on of, like, really raising the bar for stories during this month. I think because we're just, like, a dark storytelling podcast, you know? And, like, I feel like it's my duty to provide that for the people. It is the first episode of Spooky Season. Cassie's sick, clearly. That is Cassie.

If you can't tell my voice, if I sound a little deeper, I traveled a little bit the past. couple weeks, I went to Greece and England and I brought home a cold. It's not COVID. I got tested, but I did cold. So here's my voice for now. Well, and the fun thing about Cassie is that she can be sick for two days and sound ill for two months after. Yeah. Who knows how long is the last? Yeah, I'm immune compromise. So when I get sick, I just get sick for a really long time. So hopefully my voice isn't like this for every episode of spooky season, but here we are for now. Well, it adds to the ambiance. It's like dark and raspy. That's what I was going for, actually. That's actually why I got this cold. Some people find that very attractive, so you never know who you could be pleasing right now.

Someone is really excited of my illness. Okay, well, I guess you can take the back seat for a little while, and I'll talk for most of this episode. And we're talking. about something completely different. It has nothing to do with the outdoors or nature, but it does have a national park tie-in. So this is not my freebie. The Off the Trails episode that like we kind of discussed last, was it last episode? I don't even remember. Last episode, the Scandinavian one for sure. Yeah. Okay. So this is the national park. What national park are we going to? Okay. So we're going to a national historic site. And it's Edgar Allan Poe, National Historic Site. So we're doing like a literary delve right now, which is really exciting for me

and hopefully not me only. But obviously it's safe to say everyone, or mostly everyone, I hope, has heard at least of Edgar Allan Poe. I learned about him in high school for like what, like one unit and that was it. So a lot of this research I was really surprised by and I hope I can bring some life into kind of like a bland subject for a lot of people. Well, I'm excited because I have And I've obviously heard of Edgar Allan Poe as well. And the last time I heard of him was in high school and it was The Raven. That is so funny you say that because literally my next bullet is, if you're like me, you likely have a distant memory of reading The Raven or The Telltale Heart in high school.

Yep. The Telltale Heart. Oh, my God, I forgot about that one. All right. We're taking a dive back into high school. All right. So behind all of these writings, whether it's the Raven, the Telltale Heart. whatever it may be, there's a lot of stories of death, tragedy, torture, mysteries, crime,

long-lust love, and even the paranormal. And most of them, surprisingly, were inspired by true events, which I did not, I don't think I learned that. Or I have amnesia or I just didn't give a shit, you know, so who knows? But it is really cool. So how I kind of set this up today is Kind of like English class, only it's cooler because it's DDEC, Danielle's Dark English class. Oh, look at this. I know. All right, we got a new segment. I'm ready.

It's the first and only. I'm not doing this again, just so we know. Class is in session. It's in session. So today, of course, we are going to be discussing some of Edgar Allen Poe's most chilling tales and the events that inspired them. So obviously, like I said, this does have a National Park Service tie-in. No freebie here. I'm still kind of have that in my back pocket.

The Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site is located in Philadelphia, and although it bears his name, it is also referred to as the Spring Garden Home. And it was actually only lived in by him and some of the members of his family for one year from 1843 to 1844. So although it is the National Historic Site designated for him, he didn't really live there too long. He just kind of like breezed by. I feel like the National Park Service is doing their like, it's like how we loosely add things. We're like, this happened here, kind of. And the National Park Service is like, kind of. Someone looked at it once. So it counts. He was in here once. Like, let's add this one. Exactly. Well, there are other structures around the country, including in Richmond, Boston,

the Bronx, and Baltimore that do have connections to him. Cool. They're either now museums, early homes, landmarks, and even the bar where he was supposedly last seen drinking, have all kind of like laid their claim to fame and connection to him in different ways. But this building is the official National Park Service building for him. Cool. Located roughly a mile from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall at 532 North 7th Street. This site is the only one of five homes that Poe lived in during his time in Philadelphia that now survives into today. Built in 1842, the three-story brick home was rented by Poe and his family for about a year after his wife was diagnosed with tuberculosis. It's said that they moved into this home that at the time was pretty bright and airy,

and they thought that it would help with her condition, her TB condition. And although it can't be confirmed, it's speculated that several of his writings were penned in the home, as if he found inspiration from the house itself. For example, his horror story, The Black Cat, tells of a murderer confessing to their crime, quote, I had walled the monster inside the tomb, it says in part, and the seller of the home appears eerily similar to what is depicted in that story. The home today combines both Poe's original residence and two other homes, which are now joined to the original house, but were built after his time there.

So if you visit it today, it has a little bit of some additions on there. Other than the welcome area, the gift shop, and some exhibit rooms, most of the house is staged and furnished as it would have looked during his time. So I love that. I love period things. It's just like I like the Crescent Hotel. Yeah. Amazing.

Like that's the decor I want in my home. It seriously is. Like anything Victorian, if you look at Victorian Pinterest like aesthetic, it's a thing. Like that's your. That's my aesthetic. Well, I remember when we were at the Crescent Hotel and you're like, can I take this couch home? You're like, ew, this like grungy green, not even. fluffy couch. Oh my God, it was so uncomfortable. It's not about the comfort. It's about the aesthetic.

The couch is always about the comfort. Okay, hold on. I lost my spot now. Okay, back to Poe and his house. After Poe and his family moved out of this home, it changed hands over the years but was purchased by Richard Gimble in the mid-1930s. And I immediately knew that name. And I don't know if it's a northeast thing. it's definitely a U.S. thing, but this guy was the son of Gimble who started that huge department store chain. Do you remember the Gimble department stores? It's like Sears kind of. No, I don't remember. Really? I feel like it's a big thing. Well, anyways, they're rich as hell. So the guy bought it and he at this point in the 1930s, it had kind of like, because it changed hand so many times, no one was really preserving it. It kind of fell into disarray. But this guy really was a big.

fan of Poe and he refurbished it and was the first one to open it as a museum. And when he passed away, he left the home in his will to be given to the city of Philadelphia and it was designated as a National Historic Landmark in 1962. And then the National Park Service took over its operation in the late 1970s. So that's how it came into the National Park Service's hands. And we'll touch on some of the cool events that they have throughout the month of October later at the end of the episode. But let's get into Edgar Allan Poe, the man, the myth, the legend himself. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session.

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Watch only on Prime. Edgar Allan Poe was born Edgar Poe on January 19th, 1809 in Boston. His parents were two traveling stage actors and he had an older brother and a younger sister. His father, David, struggled with alcoholism and his relationship with his wife, Eliza, was a pretty volatile one. His dad ended up deserting his young family and by the time Edgar was three years old, his mother had passed away as well. At this point, he was taken in by the Allen family. in Virginia, although it's important to note he was never formally adopted by them. And while he seemed to

have a pretty good relationship with his adoptive mother, Francis, his adoptive father and him, his name was John, they never really saw eye to eye. John was a tobacco merchant and a really successful businessman. He was very business oriented. And while Edgar, on the other hand, became increasingly more interested in following his literary passions. So they didn't really see eye to eye on pretty much anything. They fought about this all the time because Edgar was just way more interested in romance, like writing, reading, while as John, he had a very specific plan for what his children, blood-related or not should do.

And Edgar did not really follow that. Edgar attended the University of Virginia, but quote unquote, rebelled and enrolled to study ancient and modern languages versus business. Wow. And he would often write different poems and things like that on the back of John's business papers kind of as like a jab, I think a little bit. Yeah, that feels like a jab. Mm-hmm.

John once described his adopted son as, quote, quite miserable, sulky, and ill-tempered. So needless to say, he was not very supportive of Edgar emotionally, and he actually wasn't very much help to him financially either. In his 20s, Edgar was in severe debt. He could barely afford food and was not receiving any assistance from the Allen's. So after only a year in school, he dropped out and turned towards the military. He took on the false identity of Edgar A. Perry, claiming to be a clerk from Boston and signed up for a five-year service contract with the US Army. And while he excelled in the military and even went on to study at West Point, he didn't particularly enjoy it. He purposely flunked his classes and acted out in order to be kicked out, which he was

successful at. He married his first cousin, Virginia, in 1836 at the age of 27. Right. Normal. Okay. And she was 13. Oh. Yeah. I, so a young cousin just that's what you're going. Poe. Add the Allen sometime in the story, but ew. Disgusting. Yes. Well, Allen comes from his adopted that, like the Allen family that took him in. Oh, okay. That makes sense. Yeah, not the greatest in retrospect, but it was quite common for the time to marry your cousin. I know. It's weird to say, like, it was part of the times, but like 13 and your first cousin, not even like a fourth cousin or something. Like you share a lot of DNA. There's a lot going on there. Yeah, a lot of ties. So Edgar continued on to live and work in New York City, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Richmond

in several different capacities, including publisher, editor, literary critic, and of course, as a writer. I should mention here that I am really trying my best to condense this as much as possible and make it easy to follow because, damn, Poe moved around a lot. He bounced from position to position. He worked in a lot of different roles. He was here there and everywhere. And he was usually struggling the entire time. His life was really difficult. He never held a single job for very long. He struggled with bouts of depression and alcoholism. He experienced his fair share of family issues, had tumultuous romantic relationships.

But amongst all of that, he continuously was writing and publishing work throughout most of his adult life, including back when he was at West Point, occasionally winning like small little prizes here and there for their publications and magazines if they made it that far. So writing was kind of the core. constant throughout his life, even though everything else was kind of be bopping around everywhere. Today, much of his body of work is celebrated, studied, and remembered. But as it is with many of the great minds in history, this happens posthumously. For Po, he found intermittent success and recognition sporadically throughout his life,

as he made a name for himself as a critical reviewer and through some of his writings that made the local papers, but he really received recognition and national fame shortly before his death with the publication of the Raven, which we kind of touched upon in the beginning. If anyone is unfamiliar, the Raven is a narrative poem that tells of a talking raven's mysterious visits to a distraught lover, who is slowly descending into madness after the loss of his lover. This piece earned Po a few years of deserved recognition before his death. Since then, he has been remembered for his tales of horror, his construction of literary standards, his delve into science fiction themes, including time travel and space, way before

sci-fi was an established genre, and he has been credited for inventing the modern detective story. Oh, interesting. So I hope that satisfied everyone's need for his biography because we're moving on. Okay. So his life is very interesting if anyone obviously wants to read up on it more. There's a lot of intricacies in there that I just don't have the time or patience to go into, because I want to go into his writings. And I want to be clear that not all of his writings were based in horror in the macab. He also penned stories that were humorous and he's also been known for his satirical work as well. But of course, that's not why we're here. So how this is going to work is I chose a handful of his spookier writing pieces. According to the Edgar Allan Poe Society of

Baltimore, his published work contains one novel and three collections of tales that include 69 poems. They're all very interesting and it was really hard to choose. Of course I didn't read all of them. I'm not a psycho. I would like to hear all 69 actually right now for this episode. Well, I did not read all of them or nearly even half of them, but I did browse through a lot of them and I picked kind of like a little charcutory board of Poe stories. So what I'm going to do is I'll share the title, a little excerpt from them, the brief version of kind of like SparkNotes version of what they're about,

and then talk about maybe what inspired him to write them. Okay. That way we're going to get a little taste of different things. things. And if anyone is interested in obviously the full poem or story, then hopefully you're inspired to go read it yourself. So each of these stories touches on a different theme. So I chose murder, torture, disease, grave robbing, and premature burial. Ah, yes. All the happy ones. The happyest of times. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I think that's Shakespeare. Mostly the worst of times. Yeah. So anyways, yes, forewarning, it's pretty dark stuff. But I'm

just going to tell it as it is. So in no particular order, the first one we're going to do is one that I was familiar with, and that is the pit and the pendulum. Do you remember this one? No, I don't. Maybe when you start reading it, I will. Okay. So this is a short story that was published in 1842, and the quote that I chose from it reads, and then they're stolen to my fancy like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave. In death, no, even in the grave, all is not lost. This story, before I get into what it's about, it kind of reminds me of something from current day, and I want to see if you guessed the same thing I thought of at the end. The pressure's on. I'm already, my brain has gone blank.

Don't. It's okay. Breathe. Pressure. The pressure. Okay. So the pit in the pendulum is about an unnamed narrator who survives several methods of torture by the Spanish Inquisition. He is condemned to death by a panel of judges and awakens in a place of the blackness of eternal night. And he wonders if he's actually dead, but still somehow conscious and

quickly realizes that he's very much alive. He's just trapped in a dungeon-like room that's pitch black. He starts to panic as he recalls all the horrific stories of torture imposed on other people of the time. And he's worried that he's next. So he starts losing it. He spends time fumbling around, in and out of consciousness. And then he discovers a large pit in the middle of the room that he almost stumbles into and falls and dies into. Then he passes out again, wakes up, and he's strapped down and completely bound from head to toe, except for his left hand, kind of like right below his elbow. And directly above him is a large razor-sharp pendulum that is swinging back and forth in an arc across his body that's slowly lowering towards him, creeping closer and closer. So what he decides

to do is take some of the food that's next to him and he smears it all over his body so that the rat can start chewing through his binds. Smart and gross. Smart and gross. So the rats chew through, get him in the nick of time. He escapes, like, right away. And then all of a sudden, the pendulum retracts immediately. And this guy puts together that he's being monitored by someone.

And they're watching him kind of struggle through all this. Then all of a sudden, the room becomes a furnace. The walls begin to glow red hot. and they start moving in on him. So they're not in a fixed position. It's all of a sudden a furnace in there and the walls are closing in on him closer and closer pushing him to the edge of this pit

that's in the middle of the room. Okay. At this point, he contemplates throwing himself into the pit as kind of like a less torturous end to his life and finally just screams out in agony and frustration. And suddenly, right as he's about to teeter into this pit, the temperature cools off, the walls retract, trumpet sound, and he's rescued.

So that's kind of the Daniel's version of the PIT and pendulum. So in real life, kind of the inspiration, perhaps, the Inquisition was set up within the Catholic Church starting in the 12th century to root out and punish hearsay. It lasted for hundreds of years and resulted in nearly 32,000 executions. It was also infamous for the severity of its torture tactics, including, but not limited to, burning at the stake, waterboarding, the rack, which are you familiar? familiar with you're kind of like furrowing your brow. The rack? The rack. The rack is a method of torture in which the victim is tied to a wooden structure

featuring a system of cranks. As the cranks are turned, the ropes restraining the victim tighten and then the limbs of the victim are stretched and pulleds. I know what you're talking about now that you say that. Yep. Oh, people are sick. The people who came up with this shit? Oh, my God.

Well, there's more. But wait, there's more. The strapido or reverse hanging is a method in which the victim's hands are tied behind their back. The body is suspended by a rope attached to the wrists. And the addition of weights would add intensity and pain. So their shoulders would often be dislocated. And if it was continued for a prolonged period of time, it would result in their death. Or there's the wheel where a wagon wheel or something similar would be used as a fastening point for a victim.

the victim would be spread over it and beaten and where the kind of the prongs of the or spokes of the wheel connected or made contact with the body and someone would beat them. It would break their bones. It was horrific. So anyway, that's enough about torture methods via a la Spanish Inquisition, but it was a very real thing. It happened to many, many, many people. And of course, it's easy to see kind of where Poe may have gotten some of the parallels for the pit and the pendulum. So what does that story remind you of? Not the Spanish Inquisition, the pit and the pendulum story. The first thing I thought of, and then it went into a totally different thing was the episode that I did last year in the Diades Maritos,

where it was like there was this seven altars where they go through all these different states to try and make it to the afterlife. but it obviously went in a very different direction, but they had to go through, like, all these obstacles. So when he was, like, escaping and the rats were chewing, I'm like, is this some type of obstacle to get through to things? But I don't think it's what you were thinking of. No, not at all. I was thinking of the classic movie Saw and subsequent films.

Oh, God. No, my mind did not go there. That was bad. Maybe that was some inspiration, though, from Saw to add some of their sick. Well, if you think about it, because like someone is trapped in a room with all of these different torturous things happening to them and somebody is watching them. Yeah. Go through all that shit. Like that's the first thing I thought of.

I was like, wow, this kind of reminds me of Saw. It was the original Saw. Edgar Allan Poe, original Saw. That's right. Is he named Saw, like the actual guy in the movie? I don't know. The most thing I remember about that dude, he's like, Do you want to play a game?

Yep. That guy. Next up is another short horror story, and it's called Baranese. And this one's kind of so messed up. Good. It was published in 1835, and the quote I chose from it is, how is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness, from the covenant of peace, a simile of sorrow.

But as in ethics, evil is, a consequence of good, so in fact, out of joy, is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of today, or the agonies which are, have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been. So this short story was Poe's first short horror story, and it's pretty gnarly. It tells the tale of a man named Egus, who is engaged to his cousin, baronese. Here we are. Of course, the cousin. He suffers from periods of what appears to be a type of dissociation. condition, and he also has a condition called monomia, which causes him to fixate on objects. The particular target of this fixation in the story happens to be his wife's teeth.

Okay. Or his wife to be, I should say, they're not married yet. His cousin. His cousin's teeth. So, Berenice is young and beautiful, but soon she comes down with a sort of degenerative disease, which causes her body to fail and wither, but her teeth remain perfect. The story tells of Igis obsessing over her teeth and imagining himself holding them and examining them. I mean holding them.

Keep them in her mouth. They don't stay there for long. So a servant for the family informed him that Bernice had passed and was soon to be buried. And shortly after the news, he awakes or comes to from a dissociative state covered in mud and gore with a box on a table next to him. Alongside it, a dirty shovel leans against the wall. A servant for the family approaches him and shares the news nervously that Baranese's grave had been violated and that her body had been mutilated. And with a twist, she was still alive. Inside the box.

Hey, I thought she died. Yeah, but he suffers from a lot of kind of delusions. So from what I gather, I did not read this in its entirety. I just read excerpts. But from what I gather, I think maybe he imagined someone. telling him that she was dead. So whether or not he buried her alive and then did what he was, I'm about to tell you, or whatever.

Either way, there's also themes of being buried alive that we'll talk about later. That's not really the main focus of this one. But either way, so he's like, oh shit, he looks at himself covered in mud. There's a shovel. He has no idea what happened. He looks at this box, opens it up, and out comes oral surgery instruments and 32 perfectly freshly pulled teeth. So that's the story. Wait, and she's still alive at this point? She was still alive in the story when she was buried and her teeth were pulled out of her head. Yes, to answer your

question. That's horrific. That's awful. So interestingly, at the time of this writing, Poe was living in Baltimore when an article was published in the paper that reported grave robbery, which we've talked about before in my Birkenhair episode, however long ago. But in this particular article, they were talking specifically about robbers that had been stealing teeth from corpses for use indentures. And that article was published in the Baltimore Saturday visitor in 1833, and this story was published two years later. So whether or not he got inspiration from real-life events for this twisted tale, who knows, but it seems maybe not like a coincidence. Imagine you get, like, I go to a lot of different oddity shops, and I see a lot of different, like,

antiquities and a lot of them have to do with teeth. Like there's always teeth involved, human teeth. And I've seen a lot of just like dentures and things. And I've never thought of maybe them coming from a corpse. Well, I, yeah, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, I've never thought of that either. Like, you can make them.

You can make dentures. You don't need to rip them out of dead people. It's disgusting. I'm sick. I'm absolutely sick. Well, didn't George Washington have wooden dentures? Yeah, I think so. There's like a leap from like fake to real and then now we're back to fake, but they're realistic fake.

But somewhere in the middle there, there was, they were from dead bodies apparently. Yeah. Just eat your mush and keep your gums. So you don't need these. Blu-blah. Okay, I'll move on. I'll move on from the teeth. Okay, we're going to go on to something else.

This was probably my favorite one. So this is another horror story from 1842, and it's called The Mask of the Red Death. The quote from it is, There are cords in the hearts of the most reckless, which cannot be touched without emotion, even by the utterly lost to whom life and death are equally jests. There are matters of which no jest can be made. This is a horror story that was originally published as The Mask of the Red Death, a fantasy.

And of course, I'm going to tell you what it's about and perhaps what inspired it. Again, this is the other one that it reminds me of something in present day that I don't think you're going to close me on. You're never going to get this. Like, I don't know if you're going to connect this to what I'm thinking of at all, but I just have to throw it out there. So you're preemptively thinking of it. I didn't know I was being quizzed today. I'm nervous. Don't be nervous.

It's fine. I'm a bad tester. I'm a bad tester, you know. You're asking two plus two, but it's on a test and I have no idea. No fucking idea. Well, all right. Never heard that before. You're not going to get it, so don't worry.

In this story, it tells of a man named Prince Prospero and follows him through his attempts to avoid a deadly plague known as the Red Death, which causes the victims to bleed from their pores and die in agony. He and other wealthy nobles lock themselves away from the general population in their abbey, which is a large building, in hopes of separating themselves from the sick and the dying. During their seclusion, they have a masquerade ball throughout men, of the rooms in the building, and at some point, an uninvited guest kind of sneaks their way in.

And by the time he's detected, he is noted to be dressed in tattered clothing, and he's just dripping with blood. So when the prince tries to kick the man out, it's discovered that there's actually no man underneath this costume, and the prince's face starts gushing with blood. So he's infected. Everyone gets infected. It's all over. So the story could potentially have stemmed from Poe's own experience with disease. A decade earlier, he survived the cholera epidemic of 1832. Symptoms were different than what is described in this story, obviously different from the red death, and includes severe vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration prior to death if someone is to contract cholera. During the time that Poe was infected, over 800 people lost their lives to this

disease in the city that he was living in at the time, which was Baltimore. And one of his best friends from Virginia actually died of the disease as well. But most interestingly, at the height of this epidemic, over 2,000 people threw a masquerade ball in Paris at, let me try this here. Le The Theater de Verratis, which is one of the oldest Parisian playhouses in the world to celebrate what many thought was the end of the world. So it's kind of like an apocalyptic party. Like we're all going to die. So like let's just party. So celebrate. I bet that party was. Wild. Wild. Wild. Like, because what if you know you're going to die, like, you have no inhibitions and there's no boundaries. You can do whatever you want. Exactly. So the story of, or one of the stories from this party appeared in a June 1832 article in the New York mirror, complete with an account of a person attending this party in a costume of skeletal armor and bloodshot eyes. So it's like, it's almost the same thing. Yeah. Oh, wow. Mm-hmm. That's so interesting. It's so interesting. So this whole story, and do you have any guesses before I just tell you, I have little to know faith that your mind went where mine did.

What this? No. No. Okay. So my first initial thought was the red wedding scene in Game of Thrones. Do you watch Game of Thrones? Yes, but I have not. Someone actually talked to me about the red wedding scene recently, and I don't think, I think I slept through. that because they were mentioning it and they were talking about it. I was like, yeah, I've never seen that before and they were like, you would remember it if you've seen that. So I think I fall asleep during shows every time I watch them. So I think it was a thing that I fell asleep through. You can't fall asleep to Game of Thrones show. How do you, do you even follow anything? I actually started on the last season. What? I know the world is right now. They're like, yeah, how did you even know anything that was going on? And the answer is I didn't,

but I thought it looked cool. Okay, so you partially watched Game of Thrones. I started. I re-watched it from the beginning after. Okay, but somehow you missed one of the most iconic scenes in the entire series. Correct. Great. We're on the same page now, so you're not going to understand what I meant.

But that's okay. That's okay. Maybe you'll get part two of this. So originally that was my first thought was the Red Wedding. Like, they're locked in this room. Like, there's a ton of bloodshed and whatever, but it had nothing to do with disease. And so when I was really thinking about it, what I was really trying to conjure up, and I had to look up this specific episode, it's season seven, episode one, which means nothing to you. But when Aria poisons all of the phrase, remember she like.

Yeah, I saw that. I remember that part. Yes. Okay. Yes. I saw that part. Yeah. So she, like, poisons all of them in that room and they all start, like, hacking up blood and dying and like all of that.

Yeah. Locked in a room. And so that's kind of what I thought of when I read this poem or short story. But anyway, so I would just be so interested if any of this have, like whether it be saw or, you know, that particular scene, if there's any sort of correlation at all with some of these stories. If they were inspired by it from these stories. Yeah. Interesting. All right.

Next up is the murders in the Rue Morg, which was a short story published in 18. The quote is, in investigations such as we are now pursuing, it should not be so much asked what has occurred as what has occurred that has never occurred before. Described as the first modern detective story and first published in 1841, the murders in the room morgue is about a brutal double murder that takes place in Paris. The narrator describes reading about a crime in the paper and meeting a man named Dupin, who takes a great interest in it and its subsequent investigation. One night, neighbors hear a horrific scream from an apartment building. The police finally gain access to it and discover a totally disheveled scene. There's locks of hair, bloody razors, and a rifled through safe. They soon find a young woman stuffed in the chimney and another body, that of the young woman's mother in the courtyard outside of the building. She was badly beaten

and her throat was cut so severely that her head almost fell off when her body was moved by the police. The dupin character essentially analyzes the scene and picks up on things that the police either mishandled or didn't notice about it. It is believed that Poe was inspired to write the story based on the life and career of a real guy. He was a reformed ex-criminal turned police officer and his name was Eugene Francois Vodouc, who is regarded as the first private detective in history. Francois had, okay, I keep writing Francois or Eugene.

I don't know which one is his first name. Each source is it's either Eugene Francois or Francois Eugene. But he had a really rough upbringing in the late 1700s, and he was in and out of trouble in jail for most of his adult life. He operated as a spy and later was appointed by the police force to operate and lead a specialized security unit, and his efforts reduced crime in Paris for a big chunk of time. He later went on to become a private investigator in 1833 founded the Office of Information, which was a combination of a combination of a,

detective agency and a private police force. And that office is considered to be the first known detective agency. And this guy, Francois Eugene, Eugene Francois, filled it with a staff of mostly ex-convicts like he was. So the parallels of this amateur sleuth type character, the setting of the story in Paris and the subject of the story, which is crime, all can be seen as parallels in both Eugene Francois's story and the, the murders in Rue Morg. And by the way, Rue is street in French. So it's not like murders in a morgue named Rue. Okay. I see what you're saying. Is that where your mind went? Because that's where mine did. You're like, no, I don't even know what you were talking about. So also, Dupin, who is one of the main characters in this story, is even referenced in Arthur Conan Doyle's

classic character Sherlock Holmes during Sherlock Holmes' first appearance in the literary world in 1887 in a story called A Study in Scarlet. So it's interesting that Sherlock Holmes's character referenced Poe's character who probably found inspiration from Francois Eugene. Like it's all connected. I was just going to say it's interesting how all of this is connected and it's not just like solely made up. Right. Exactly. Does life imitate art or do you? Does art imitate life? That is the question. That is the question.

Okay. And then this is the last story that I chose. And it is called the premature burial. It was another short horror story and published in 1844. The quote that I chose is the boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends and where the other begins? Human centipede. What?

I'm sorry. What did you just say? I said human centipede. Have you seen that? Yes, I have. And that's why when you said who is to say where one begins and where one is. Fucking sick. I haven't seen that movie.

I don't think you could pay me to see that movie. It's just creepy, right? It's not scary. It's not, it's not, I mean, it's kind of scary. The concept is terrifying. It's mostly just disgusting. Like, you're watching it and you're like, what sick mind thought of this as a horror movie? The sick mind that knew another.

sick mind like yours. Watch it. I watched it. And even, I would even say the storyline in it is a little crazy. Just because there's so many parts where you're like screaming at the TV, like, just leave. Like I remember there's this one specific scene where the guy, are these girls escaped? The guy's chasing him. And they're in this bedroom that has this huge sliding glass door that leads outside in a way. And instead, they grab a lamp to get ready to, like, fight this guy. And it's just, there's just so many points in the movie where you're like, you know what, you could have got away.

Just, he's going to sew your mouth to the other persons. Just, it's happening now because you didn't listen to it. Was this an early 2000? I feel like I saw this at like Blockbuster, like early 2000s. Let's see. We're derailing. We're derailing, but it's in. important. There's three of them. Oh, good. It came out April 30th, 2010. The third one or the first one?

The first one. The second one came out in 2011. The third one came out in 2015. And then they made another one. That's not the humid centipede, but it's called Tusk. Okay, I do. I did not see Tusk, but I know it's with Justin Long. Is that guy? Yep, you're right. Yeah, it is with Justin Long. You're right. Okay, well, I'm disappointed that it was created so recently because I feel like that's, I don't know. You got to go watch it now. I just feel like it's disgusting and you'll hate that you saw it, but it just, it's like one of those things that you just have to do, you know? Says who? No one has ever said. Okay, I'll add it to the list that my Cassie list that any time I'm like, hey, you have to do this or watch this. They're like, uh-huh, and you never, ever do it.

Just as like a blatant, like, slap in my face. You're like, yeah, sure, I'll do it. And you just don't. Same. I forget. I'll add it. No, you don't. And I tried to watch up and I fell asleep.

How do you get through anything without falling asleep? I don't, usually. Oh, okay. We're going so off the rails. I'm sorry to anyone who's listening to this. Anyway, Edgar Allan Poe. And the premature burial. Yes.

this one in my opinion totally exemplifies why Edgar Allan Poe's writing transcends time and generations because it taps into a really real a very real fear and specifically in this story it's taffapobia which is the fear of being buried alive okay yes definitely a fear he has two other writings that deal with this subject as well it's kind of a common theme in his writings but this story is told by an unnamed narrator that lives with a condition called catalepsy, which is a medical condition characterized by a trance or seizure with a loss of sensation and consciousness accompanied by rigidity of the body. So essentially, this condition will sometimes make a person appear dead when they're not. That's terrifying. The narrator in

this story is petrified that with this condition, he would be mistaken as dead. and then subsequently buried alive, and goes on to tell many fictional stories of people who experienced just that, including one of a young bride who was thought to be dead, was then buried, only then to be discovered by her past lover who dug her up in hopes to take some of her hair as a keepsake. And was like, oh, you're actually alive. I mean, I guess that's really lucky, but I'd also be like, ew, when I die, you're going to unburry my corpse.

What is wrong with you? But I'd be like, but thank you for coming. But thank you for coming. Thank you for being here. And actually, it goes on, like, they run away together and it's a whole thing. But anyways. So it turns out kind of cool. But, yeah, it's creepy.

It's like, oh, you wanted a block of my hair? You couldn't have that before? Well, no, he couldn't have because he, she was married to someone else, even though she didn't want to be. She was really in love with this other guy that dug her up. It's complicated. It is complicated. But at least he wasn't going in to pull out her teeth.

Fair. There's that. Better one for sure. So even though this is a very real fear that people have, it's kind of like deeply ingrained in the human condition, I feel like. It was actually pretty valid back in Poe's time. Many people died at home and were buried pretty quickly without going through an embalming process.

And sometimes people were wrongfully pronounced deceased, only to wake up buried in a coffin. Despite rigorous testing, according to their abilities at the time, which weren't a whole hell of a lot, they included pinching people's nipples really hard, sliding me up. That would do a lot of things to me, including waking me up. They would also slide sticks underneath people's nails. Like, hey, are you alive? I guess if you're not. I guess if you're not. waking up to this stuff. Inserting various instruments of rectums just to like test their reactivity. There's a lot of things that people were like, hey, are you alive or what?

If you're not reacting to these things, like whose fault is it really that you got buried? Okay, but if you're in a coma. You know what I mean? Okay, yeah, yeah. So there are many real accounts of people wrongfully pronounced deceased and subsequently buried. There are accounts of grave attendance hearing screams of the wrongful buried and then coming to like dig them up and save them. And this fear gave rise to early safety coffins, which were coffins fitted with a mechanism that allowed the occupant to signal that they

have been buried alive by ringing a bell that would hopefully be heard by someone above ground. This was so common that they put a bell. Yes. Yes. Wow. Some coffins even had movable glass pains that could be inspected periodically for condensation, like if someone was breathing on the glass. And others even had tubes inserted so that local priests of the area would go by periodically and sniff the ends of the tubes to check them for signs of putrification. And if there was no odor coming from the tubes or if they heard sounds coming from the tubes, that they would then dig up the people and investigate what's going on. Wow. I really had to restrain myself from delving into all of the different stories of wrongful burials, different types of safety coffins,

etc. Like, it's just so, so interesting. Yeah. But I did do a little, one other little blurb. So in 1843, a year before this story, the premature burial was published, life-preserving coffins were patented and would spring open with the slightest movement of the occupant inside, which I do get the core of that whole thing. Like, I understand the thinking at the time, giving the knowledge that the people had of natural decomposition processes, which was not a lot. Because as we know now, through decomposition,

corpses move and shift and change as that process is going along. So I'm sure that all of that movement likely led to a lot of false alarms because if it's like a hairpin trigger, the slightest movement and alarm goes off, you know. Yeah. And this fear of being buried alive was so real that the society for the prevention of people being buried alive was founded in the late 1800s. That's terrifying. So I understand why people were so afraid. I'm less afraid of that happening now. Well, of course.

Yeah, of course now we have a medical advancements, like the stethoscope for one. Very simple. Yeah, you can check for a heartbeat. Yeah, exactly. So obviously medical advancements and even different processes, like obviously, I know not everyone goes through the process of getting either themselves or their loved ones embalmed and things like that. Obviously, that's a surefire way to know if someone's dead or not.

But at the time, you know, you just died at home. You get buried right away because you don't want to start decomposing in the house. And mistakes happen. And there's been a lot of different accounts of people getting exhumed for one reason or another. And the bodies will show like wounds on the hands. From trying to escape. Yeah, escape. Maybe they should have just let people decompose for a couple days before they buried them.

Which I think was, I mean, this society for the prevention of people being buried alive. They were the advocates. One of their recommendations was truly waited out, wait until they start like smelling for lack of a better elegant, more elegant term. Yeah. So anyways, those are the little story, the small stories that I chose. But going back to Edgar Allan Poe himself, he died on October 7th of 1849.

A couple days prior, he had been found on the streets of Baltimore reported. delirious in distress and was wearing clothes that were not his own. He was taken to the Washington Medical College where he passed away. Reports vary, but some claim that he kept repeating the name Reynolds over and over, even though no one knew what he was talking about. And others say that his final words were, Lord help my poor soul. His cause of death can only be speculated at this point as no medical record of his time at the hospital or even his death certificate have survived to this day. However, different newspapers at the time reported the cause of death as either cerebral inflammation or congestion of the brain, which apparently were pretty common terms back in the day to

describe other conditions. It was kind of like an umbrella term to describe other things such as alcoholism or other medical conditions. And he was 40 years old at the time of his death. So he was pretty young. He was pretty young. He lived a really hard, short life. But also he did, I mean, he really really.

cranked out a lot of beautiful works of writing that clearly I remember today and studied today. Everyone in America, at least I can speak for, in almost every high school at least discusses him at some point. And of course, he's renowned internationally as well. And back to the historic site, it celebrates something called Potober, which has a whole month, obviously of October, that has special programs that are conducted throughout the month that include candlelight tours throughout the historic home. There's different Ranger-led talks about Edgar Allan Poe and his life and his work. There's events where you can even test your decoding skills, which I kind of interpret as

kind of like an escape room type of deal because Poe was very into cryptography and creating ciphers and puzzles. And he even wrote an entire story called The Gold Bug, which was centered. around the solution to one. And fun fact, he published a ton of them. And one of them, well, two of them actually, remained unsolved for very long after his death. And the last one was finally decoded and solved in the year 2000. Wow.

Yeah. Like that's so recent. It's 22 years ago, but still, like our lifetime. It seems very recent. And especially comparatively to when it was penned, I'm sure. There are also different events. at the Westminster Hall and Burying Grounds in Baltimore, Maryland, where he is buried, including different historic walks, ghost hunts, poe death exhibits, and tours of the catacombs

under the burial grounds and church. And just a little side note, yesterday. Yeah, yesterday I put up like a little question and answer thing when I was bored at the airport. And we got a couple of questions of people like, we all know what is on Cassie's lists, what is on yours? And do tell. I froze. I was like, uh, I don't know. I don't know. And I did. I thought about it for a while, but there is one thing that's definitely on there and probably in the top three to five. And that is going to

the catacombs in Paris. And I know we've talked about that before. I think privately, I don't think we ever talked about it on the podcast, but that's definitely something that I've always really, really wanted to see in person. So if I can't get there, I think I'll settle for the one in Baltimore to start. So maybe I already have an idea of how we could go to the catacombs, which I'll discuss soon with you after this recording. Okay. I'm nervous. I'm like, I already know how we're going to go. If you want to go, let's go. Great. Okay. Well, I guess we'll end it there so you can tell me. But I really hope that the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site may be one of those events I just talked about, or hopefully one of his stories that we talked about are now on your list to either go do or read.

Well, that's it on Edgar Allan Poe and his terrible tales and the conclusion of Danielle's dark English class. We'll see you on Thursday for Trail Tales. And in the meantime, enjoy the view. But watch you're back. Class dismissed. Get out of here. Thank you for joining us again this week. If you have a trail tale you'd like to share, send us an email at NPAD Stories at gmail.com.

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