Following the eerie script of an annual play performed flawlessly for decades, a mysterious black-clad stranger visited the grave of Edgar Allan Poe Wednesday, leaving behind his annual tribute of three red roses and a bottle of cognac.Annual Mystery Visits to Poe's Grave Span 50 Years
For more than half a century, a man wearing a black hat, black overcoat and white scarf has appeared between midnight and dawn Jan. 19 in the gothic graveyard at Westminster Church to toast the author on his birthday.
In a tradition true to the spirit of the author famous for his eerie tales, no one knows the identity of the visitor or has ever guessed the origin or true meaning of the ritual at the grave where Poe lies buried alongside his wife Virginia and aunt Maria Clemm.
This year, the stranger -- believed by some to be a son of the man who originated the ceremony in 1949 -- drank his toast at about 2 a.m., paused briefly with his hand on the obelisk tombstone and disappeared like the "dream within a dream" that was Poe's mournful image for the transience of human life.
The crowd that usually gathers outside the churchyard's brick wall to catch a glimpse of the visitor was kept indoors by freezing temperatures.
"Everybody always wants to know who the guy is," said Jeff Jerome, curator of Baltimore's Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, who has held a vigil for the stranger inside Westminster Church each year since 1978.
"But to quote Poe himself: 'There are some secrets that do not permit themselves to be revealed.' And this is one of them."
Born in Boston in 1809, Poe is best known for his poem "The Raven" and for darkly conceived stories such as "The Telltale Heart," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
Poe, who was orphaned at age 2, led an adult life marred by physical and mental debility, alcoholism, drug use and poverty. He lived in Baltimore for eight years from 1827 to 1835, and died there a wasted man on Oct. 7, 1849, at the age of 40.
Jerome said the roses left behind at the grave are obvious tributes to Poe, his wife and his aunt.
But the cognac's role in the ritual is a mystery. The curator maintains
that Poe never mentioned the liquor in any of his stories, poems, essays
or letters.
[Source originally published: January 20 2000]
