How Edgar Allan Poe’s Bizarre Disappearance Became One Of America’s Greatest Mysteries

The date is October 3, 1849, and Joseph Walker is out for a stroll in the rain in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s an important day in the city, as a local election is taking place. Walker, in fact, is on his way towards Gunner’s Hall, a bar which has temporarily been transformed into a polling station. Along the way, though, he spots someone laid out on the street. This man appears to be disorientated, ill and in desperate need of help. Walker sets about aiding this poor soul, but then he realizes something shocking. This person is the acclaimed writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Walker wasn’t to know this at the time, but by this point Poe had been missing for the better part of a week. Nobody had heard from him since September 27, when he had set off from Richmond, Virginia, towards Philadelphia. He was planning to do some editing work there, but for some reason he never made it.

And here Poe was now in Baltimore, in a state of terrible health. He was barely lucid or indeed awake when Walker found him, and his clothes were tattered and torn. This was something that one of the writer’s friends remarked upon, having seen the outfit for himself. According to J. E. Snodgrass, “[Poe] had evidently been robbed of his [own] clothing or cheated in an exchange.”

Having re-emerged from his six-day disappearance, Poe was eventually transferred over to Washington College Hospital. Here, the medical professionals who examined him presumed that he’d slipped into this state as a result of intense drinking. Not a bad theory, of course, as the writer had sporadically struggled with alcohol throughout his life.

Sadly, a more detailed explanation of what had happened to Poe couldn’t be established in time. Within a matter of days the 40-year-old writer was dead, having never become clear-minded enough to tell anyone what had transpired. The nature of his premature demise, then, was a mystery worthy of one of Poe’s own tales.

Though his lifetime was short, Poe’s influence on American culture was still profound. His work helped to shape the modern forms of several genres, most notably horror, science fiction and detective fiction. Multiple acclaimed artists have named Poe as an influence on their own work, including Alfred Hitchcock, Salvador Dali and Charles Baudelaire.

From the moment Poe came into the world in 1809 his life was defined by hardship. At two years of age, his mother passed away. Later, during his adolescence, the first person he’d ever fallen for died; five years later, when Poe was 20, his foster mom perished. By the time he was a young man, then, Poe had already experienced so much loss that it inevitably affected his writing.

And the tragedies weren’t to end there, either. Poe’s spouse would later pass away aged 24, having succumbed to tuberculosis. It’s no wonder, then, that the macabre played such a huge part in the writer’s tales. Poe eventually found love again, though, becoming engaged to a woman named Elmira Shelton. Before they tied the knot, though, Poe lost his own life.

Poe had been due to arrive in Philadelphia the week before his death, where he was scheduled to do some editing work for a poet, Marguerite St. Leon Loud. He never made it, of course, and a note that Poe sent to St. Leon Loud turned out to be one of his final correspondences. This letter is now displayed at the Poe Museum in Richmond, Virginia.

At about the time that Poe was meant to travel to Philadelphia, there had been signs that he wasn’t in the best of health. The writer’s fiancée is said to have remarked that he didn’t look too good, so Poe sought the advice of a pal who was a physician. Dr. John Carter, for his part, warned Poe not to leave Virginia for Philly.

Poe, it seems, ignored the doctor’s recommendations and set off on his journey. But that’s when things start to get hazy. By September 28, 1849, Poe had ended up at Baltimore, having traveled there by ship. From here, though, he disappeared off the map, showing up five days later outside Gunner’s Hall in the city.

Walker, the man who discovered Poe in his sickly state, looked for help from Snodgrass, a friend of the writer’s. In his letter to Snodgrass, dated October 3, 1849, Walker remarked that Poe, “appears in great distress.” As such, Walker wrote, “...he is in need of immediate assistance.”

At some point during his journey, Poe had lost all the belongings that he’d taken with him. He apparently had no memory of at what point his bags had disappeared, but a number of weeks after he’d been discovered by Walker, his luggage resurfaced. One case was found in Baltimore, while another turned up back in Richmond.

In any case, Poe was left bereft of any possessions and he desperately needed help. Snodgrass tried to assist the writer, organizing for him to be admitted to Washington College Hospital. There, Poe’s confused state was assumed to have resulted from alcohol abuse, so he was held in a specific facility for this.

Chris Semtner oversees the Poe Museum, so naturally he’s done his research on the writer. Speaking to Smithsonian magazine in 2014 he commented on Poe’s relationship with alcohol. He said, “A lot of the ideas that have come up over the years have centered around the fact that Poe couldn’t handle alcohol. It has been documented that after a glass of wine he was staggering drunk. His sister had the same problem; it seems to be something hereditary.”

So, given his difficulties with alcohol and the fact that he was so disorientated before he died, you might think it’s safe to presume that Poe basically drank himself to death. But in actual fact, this theory has been thrown into doubt, not least by Poe’s own doctor John Moran, who categorically stated that this was not the case.

It could be argued, in fact, that the rumors about Poe’s drinking before his death may have been fabricated. One of the people who perpetuated this inebriation theory was Snodgrass, who was actually deeply against the practice. Following Poe’s death, he gave speeches about the nature of Poe’s demise to serve as warnings against imbibing alcohol. Perhaps he took advantage of the circumstances for his own ends?

In any case, Poe’s final days were spent in some distress and confusion. At one stage, according to a letter written by Dr. Moran, Poe had a conversation with “spectral and imaginary objects on the walls. His face was pale and his whole person drenched in perspiration.” Days later, Poe reportedly said aloud, “Lord, help my poor soul.” Then, he passed away.

Poe’s untimely death was attributed to “congestion of the brain,” yet a postmortem examination on his remains was never performed. As such, there were many questions posed by his demise that were never convincingly answered. The truth of the matter is an enigma that has now puzzled people for more than 170 years.

We still don’t know, for example, why Poe was discovered in the gutter dressed in clothes that weren’t his own. And we don’t really know for sure just why he was in such a confused state. As you might expect, though, there are plenty of theories about what happened. Some are pretty measured and plausible, while others are pretty out-there.

One idea about what happened to Poe suggests that he actually had rabies, which he may have acquired from his pet cat. This theory is actually less bizarre than it might first sound, as there have been recorded cases of rabies-infected individuals acting in unstable ways. But as an autopsy was never carried out, we may never know if this was really the case.

Others have speculated that Poe had actually been severely beaten before he died. In a piece written in 1872 a man named Eugene Dider laid out his thoughts on this matter. He suggested that an inebriated Poe “was robbed and beaten by ruffians, and left insensible in the street all night.”

Another mooted cause of Poe’s death was the idea that he was exposed to carbon monoxide and was consequently poisoned. This could have happened because of the gases used for illuminating rooms in those days leaking out. Not a crazy theory, but one that’s been widely dismissed. That’s because relatively recent tests on Poe’s hair suggest that he was never overly exposed to such gases.

Yet these same tests did illustrate that Poe had higher amounts of mercury in his body than normal. During his own time, there had been an outbreak of cholera, so it’s possible that Poe had been told to take medication loaded with mercury. Maybe he took too much and was poisoned, which could account for his disorientation. Having said all that, though, there wasn’t a necessarily lethal level of mercury in Poe’s body.

In recent years, the suggestion that Poe died from a tumor in his brain has gained some traction. This line of thinking is based on a rather gruesome story. Basically, 26 years after the writer had died, his body was exhumed. Obviously, the forces of decomposition had taken their toll by this point. But at least one witness to this event did claim that it sounded like something was inside Poe’s skull.

Whatever this object was, it couldn’t have been a brain. After all, the organ is among the first things to break down after a person has passed away. Tumors, on the other hand, may actually harden over time. So, maybe that’s what could be heard rattling around inside Poe’s head?

On the other hand, one of the more pedestrian theories about Poe’s death is that he’d simply been stricken with a bad flu. There are a few details that support this idea. First of all, his own fiancée and a doctor had noticed that he was ill before he left for Philadelphia. Plus, the weather was rough in Baltimore on the day he was found by Walker. Maybe the wet conditions made his flu worse and gave him pneumonia?

Yet another idea is that Poe was killed because of a family dispute. This thinking suggests that the writer arrived in Philadelphia as initially planned, but that he was greeted there by his fiancée’s brothers. These men threatened Poe and ordered him not to tie the knot with their sibling.

The theory goes that a terrified Poe donned a disguise and went into hiding. Then, as he tried to make it home to his fiancée, the brothers tracked him down in Baltimore. Here, they forced Poe to consume alcohol, which they knew could threaten his life. This account is certainly lurid, but it doesn’t seem to be one that historians take terribly seriously.

There is one theory, though, that does seem plausible and is widely accepted to be a strong possibility. And it all has to do with the fact that Poe was discovered by Walker in the midst of a popular vote. This, the thinking suggests, means that Poe may have been a victim of “cooping.”

Put simply, cooping was a practice used to rig elections. It involved gang-kidnapping an ordinary member of the public, dressing them up in different clothes, and forcing them to cast a vote for a given candidate. This process would be repeated several times, with a new outfit being used for each vote.

Fraudulent elections were pretty commonplace in Baltimore in the middle of the 19th century. As a matter of fact, the very place where Poe was discovered by Walker was specifically associated with cooping practices. So, at the very least, it seems like a strong possibility that Poe got caught up in such a scheme.

But would this necessarily explain Poe’s state of confusion? Well, maybe. Back in those days, people who voted in an election were then treated to some alcohol. For many, the promise of a stiff drink was a pretty strong incentive to get involved in the democratic process, after all. But if Poe was forced to vote several times, then all those drinks may have caused him to become gravely ill.

Towards the end of the 1870s a medical practitioner from Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University wrote a letter expressing his belief in the cooping theory of Poe’s death. In his note, William Hand Browne wrote, “The general belief here is that Poe was seized by one of these gangs, (his death happening just at election-time; an election for sheriff took place on October 4), ‘cooped,’ stupefied with liquor, dragged out and voted, and then turned adrift to die.”

Of course, nothing in the tale of Poe’s final days is clear-cut. There are other reasons besides a cooping ploy, after all, that could have accounted for his presence outside Gunner’s Hall. Most notably, he actually had lived in an area really close by. So, he may have been there for sentimental reasons.

This would make sense, as Poe had resided in the area as a child. And strikingly, two important people in his life had lived there with him. Both his brother Henry and his future wife had also called the neighborhood home, and both of them passed away at the age of 24.

So it’s perfectly reasonable to think that Poe may have been outside Gunner’s Hall for another reason besides cooping. But that just sums up the whole story of the famous writer’s death. There are just so many twists and turns that it’s really difficult to figure out the truth.

For what it’s worth, Poe Museum expert Semtner thinks that all of the arguments fall short in some way. As he put it to the Smithsonian magazine, “I’ve never been completely convinced of any one theory. And I believe Poe’s cause of death resulted from a combination of factors.”

The mystery of Poe’s demise, then, lives on. And it seems likely that a definitive answer will never be reached. But regardless, the writer has remained an intense source of fascination, even all these generations after his death. That’s most clearly illustrated, perhaps, by the odd fact that some of his hair is actually held at the Poe Museum.

Shortly after Poe died, people who visited his remains sinisterly managed to chop off some of his locks. They must have predicted that their odd keepsake would have been a source of morbid fascination down the line. But even this, of course, wasn’t the strangest thing to have befallen Poe, a man whose life and mysterious death was every bit as interesting as his own stories.