***"WRITTEN IN STONE: 150 Years of Story at the Poe Monument" EXHIBIT TICKETS ON SALE JULY 1, 2025***
Edgar Allan Poe died under mysterious circumstances and was buried in 1849 in a hasty, unmarked grave in the back corner of Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore—an ignominious ending for a storyteller whose life and writing shocked the world. In true Poe fashion, the story doesn’t end with the body in the ground.
Nearly 30 years post-mortem, his grave forgotten and untended, a Baltimore schoolteacher and her students took it upon themselves to rewrite Poe’s story. With pennies, persistence, and the power of public sentiment, they raised the funds to build a proper monument—though not without controversy, complications, and no shortage of gothic drama. Even famed poets Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Walt Whitman weighed in, drawn into the literary storm surrounding Poe’s legacy. Over time, the once-overlooked grave became a pilgrimage site for fans, scholars, and the mysterious figure known only as the Poe Toaster, who for decades left cryptic tributes in the dead of night.
Poe Baltimore, The Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore, and Enoch Pratt Free Library present an exhibit commemorating the 150th anniversary of Poe’s monument, the extraordinary events that brought it to fruition, and the eerie tales that followed. Explore rarely seen artifacts from Poe’s second funeral (and third burial!), including the original 1875 ceremony program, accounts of mislaid bones, and unsettling claims that the wrong man lies beneath the stone. Learn about the many cenotaphs that were proposed and abandoned, and the strange posthumous journey of Poe’s wife, Virginia—her remains shut in a box and kept under a bed for years before she was finally reburied beside her darling “Eddie,” a tale as haunting as any he ever wrote.
"Written In Stone" unearths 150 years of strange stories, shifting memory, and the enduring question: how do we honor a man whose life—and death—remain forever shrouded in mystery?
Exhibit and programming are part of the 2025 International Edgar Allan Poetry Festival & Awards: PoeFestInternational.org
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