Read on Twitter
Edgar Allan Poe's death was as mysterious and fascinating as one of his own stories. He died young, aged 40. To this day we do not know why.
Wikipedia: "Theories as to what caused Poe's death include suicide, murder, cholera, hypoglycemia, rabies, syphilis, influenza, and that Poe was a victim of cooping. Evidence of the influence of alcohol is strongly disputed."
Poe died on October 7th, 1849, which in itself is interesting because if you've paid close attention to the stories, you know many are set in October, and the number 7 recurs throughout his work.
Sept 27 he left Richmond VA, en route to NYC and a week later turned up at Ryan's Tavern in Baltimore in the early morning, delirious, disheveled, & in apparent distress.
He was assumed to be "in a state of beastly intoxication" and put in the hospital's drunk ward on (probably) October 3rd. Poe was in the hospital from the 3rd to the 7th. Nobody stays drunk that long. The only person to see him was attending physician John Joseph Moran.
Moran gave conflicting accounts as to the timeline of events and what Poe said, and has been generally considered untrustworthy. At one point he claimed
Poe's last words were "Lord, help my poor soul." But on another:
Poe's last words were "Lord, help my poor soul." But on another:
"The arched heavens encompass me, and God has his decree legibly written upon the frontlets of every created human being, and demons incarnate, their goal will be the seething waves of blank despair."
This last sounds like something made up by somebody imagining something grandiose a famous poet might say. But who knows. Moran said he tried to cheer Poe by saying he'd be with friends soon, & Poe asked if the friends would shoot him with a pistol. That sounds more like it.
At one point during his raving, people thought Poe was calling out "Reynolds." Possibly it may be Jeremiah Reynolds, an arctic explorer who inspired Poe's 'Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym'; another candidate is a Judge who Poe may have met on election day, Henry R. Reynolds.
This brings up the infamous "cooping" theory. This was a kind of election fraud where you'd be kidnapped, taken to a room somewhere & fed liquor, then marched out at intervals in different clothes to vote for the same candidate multiple times.
I don't know how Poe got tied to this idea, but it was observed when he was found that he didn't seem to be wearing his own clothes. There's no medical records, no death certificate, nobody knows too much for sure.
Maybe Freemasons killed him in revenge for his story "The Cask of Amontillado," which depicts a horrifying revenge enacted against a Freemason. Poe was taking advantage of the Masons bad press in light of the Morgan Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Morgan_(anti-Mason)
Poe was buried in Baltimore the next day. Few attended. One attendee described the weather in terms that seem perfect in their own right: "It was a dark and gloomy day, not raining but just kind of raw and threatening."
1875 Poe's grave, in poor condition (a derailed train destroyed that part of the cemetery) was moved; there was confusion about where the graves were & they had to dig around. They knew his because the skull was in excellent condition & his forehead was recognized immediately.
Adding insult to mortal injury was a man named Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a poet & editor with whom Poe had had a falling out, but who somehow conned his way into becoming Poe's literary executor. He wrote a slanderous obituary under a pseudonym.
Griswold's portrait informed Poe biographies for decades, painting a picture straight out of one of the latter's stories: raving, mad, melancholic, antisocial, drug-addled & drunk, even evil. In the long run, it probably generated more interest in his work.
But unfortunately, it means that we still don't quite know this central character in American letters. Like Poe's own "purloined letter," he remains hidden in plain sight.