Short Stuff: Poe Toaster

For at least sixty years a mysterious person (or persons) showed up at Edgar Allen Poe’s grave to toast the master on his birthday. No one ever found out who this legendary figure was.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh and
there's Chuck, and it's just the two of us, just
a couple of a couple of hanchos, a couple of ombres,
just doing our thing, rattling off facts in a superspeedy
manner with a limited amount of time. So this is
short stuff, so we don't want to waste time with

(00:24):
long intros saying unnecessary thing right exactly? Uh so the
po toaster. Huh is this the beginning of our spooky content? Yes,
it is, if that's okay with you. Yeah, it's our
favorite month. I love October, I love Halloween. I've been
sitting on this one since last year. Actually, have you

(00:46):
heard of this guy before? Now? And and obviously I
didn't just ask Chuck everybody if he's sort of ed
Growl and Poe. We're talking about a corollary to the
po legend. Everybody knows about Poe, the master author, the
creator of the short story um, believed to be the
first person to ever write a genuine detective story, Ed

(01:08):
Gralan Poe. Everybody knows about him. We're not talking about
just him, no, but we are talking about his dead body, Yeah,
which Pope would love. Oh, he would totally love it
he died, and he probably would even love dying under
mysterious circumstance. There's no way he didn't. He was probably like,
as they were dragging him out of the street, he
was probably like, this so great. Well, he was forty

(01:30):
years old. This was an eighty nine and he was
buried in Westminster Burying Ground in Baltimore, where he made
his home. And it was kind of not a big
deal at the time as far as you know, paying tribute.
He had an unmarked gray for a while. Finally a

(01:52):
relative stepped up and said, can we at least get
you know, his name carved into something. He just showed
up with a stick and carved it in the dirt.
It he may have, yeah, but yeah, it was. He
was still fairly obscure enough that he yeah, he was
able to first be buried in the on Mark grave.
But some local academics started to recognize the man's genius

(02:14):
and they actually held like an early go fund me
to to create a monument for pose Um grave actually,
and they were successful finally in eighteen seventy five, that's right,
So they had a monument carved it was Um. He
was actually moved. It was dedicated on a on a
space a little more befitting one of the great authors
of his time. And they, you know, they exhumed him,

(02:37):
moved the body, and about ten years after that his
wife and his mother in law were buried along with him,
which is sort of key in this story. And hopefully
he wasn't like a Fred Flintstone type where that would
have really bothered him to have his mother in law
so close by for eternity. Instead, I have the feeling
that it was a very sweet gesture, sure so that

(03:01):
you would think, well, that's it there there, That's the
most you could possibly say about pose remains laying in
the ground at a grave. Not true. That was the
case from about eight to eighteen forty or nineteen forty nine,
i should say. And then allegedly on that year, the
centennial of his death, UM, he was visited by somebody

(03:25):
who came to be known as the Poe Toaster, a
mysterious stranger who showed up at his grave on his
birthday January nine every year, dressed in an all black suit,
a white scarf, and a big black, wide brimmed hat
to cover his face. And created this ritual out of

(03:46):
whole cloth that eventually attracted the notice of people in Baltimore. Yeah,
so what would happen is this man presumably would show
up with a bottle of cognac and literally toast po
and leave three red roses along with that bottle. Uh,
they are not. And this would happen sometime between usually

(04:08):
midnight and six am. So it was even led more
to the creepiness of the whole thing. Yea, and no
one did anything about it. No one said, hey, grab
that guy and let's see who it is, get his
rip off that hat and expose him. Right, it's Roy Kane.
But um, so what happened was, well, first of all,
we should address the cognac. No one was exactly sure

(04:30):
why he toasted with kognac, even though I read very
quickly on the Internet that Poe loved kognac. Wasn't in
his stories. Yeah, he supposedly loved it, but couldn't afford
it unless someone else was buying, because you know, he
didn't he didn't get rich, right, So yeah, a lot
of people are like, well, he should be using a
mantiato because obviously the cask of Amontiado is one of

(04:52):
his great stories. I don't know why he would be
using cognac. Apparently now we do know why. You just
solve that mystery for me, Chuck, Thank you. What about
those roses? So he would leave three roses on the grave,
like you said, and they've people have come to believe
that that's a gesture to to Um to give a
rose to each of the people who are buried beneath
that monument, Poe, his wife, Virginia, and his mother in

(05:15):
law Maria. UM. So that one's probably the likeliest explanation
of that. Should we take a break? I think we should, Um,
but first will reveal the identity of the po Toaster
after this. How's that for a cliffhanger? Pretty great? So

(06:01):
I totally lied on the cliffhanger. Um. No one knows
who the Poe Toaster is as far as we can tell,
and we certainly don't, so there will be no revealing.
We just wanted to keep you tuned in. Well, I mean,
there is one guy who claims he was the Poe Toaster,
and two thousand seven, a ninety two year old man
named Sam Porpora claimed it was him. He was a

(06:22):
former ad executive and he in nineteen sixty was made
history in Westminster Presbyterian Church, which was apparently in disrepair
at the time and kind of just full of people
getting drunk and you know, uh, not treating the graves
with respect. So he claims he did it as a
promotional thing to sort of raise money in publicity, and

(06:45):
it was he and his tour guides. Uh, this gentleman
Jeff Jerome, who was the curator of the Poe Museum.
I think his quote was there are holes big enough
in his story you could drive a mack truck through.
So I couldn't find those holes. I couldn't, Like, I
looked everywhere and I couldn't find him specifically saying why
he did not think it was him. Well, so Jeff

(07:07):
Jerome has kind of become like the de facto historian
of the Poe Toaster because he ran the po Historical
Society for a while or the Poem Museum. I'm sorry, um,
and a lot of people put a lot of weight
into what he says. He claims that he had worked
out a um signal with the po Toaster so that

(07:28):
the po Toaster would signal him and let him know
that he was the real deal, because over the years,
there were right, there were, um, there were what are
known as photoasters who people who pretended to be the
Poe Toaster after the thing be kind kind of became
a big deal, um starting in the seventies. Um, so
that Jeff Jerome at least would know it was the

(07:49):
real article. Um. But he swears up and down and
most people believe him that he has no idea the
actual identity of the Poe Toaster. The only interaction he'd
had with the po Toasters at was grave on these
specific nights over the years. Yeah. And I wonder why
Sam Porpora would come forward and claim to be such
so late in life. And they even asked him that

(08:10):
in this article, and he said, like why he came
forward and he went, I don't know. Uh, yeah, that's
not a very good Yeah that that's a big hole
in your story right there. To not have a motivation. Yeah,
if you're somebody who who starts out and here's the
thing like this, This whole Poe Toaster thing became a

(08:31):
kind of a cause celeb in in Baltimore and places
outside of Baltimore. People would show up and there'd be
little groups of onlookers who would watched this thing every year. Um,
and like you said, very coolly, never tried to find
out who it was. They just respected it from and
watched from a distance. Um. So it kind of became
like this this cool thing. But this guy was doing

(08:52):
this for decades before it became a cool thing. So
of course there's some sort of motivation behind all this,
And people who do stuff like they have a motivation
behind everything they're doing. There's some larger meaning or some
something to what they're doing. So, yeah, he would I
don't believe the poet Toaster would have come forward just
for I don't know. Well, I mean, he said he

(09:13):
said why he did it. He didn't say why he
came forward and invited that he was the Poe Toaster. Yeah,
I don't buy that kind story. Who knows I buy it.
I think it makes sense as a former ad guy.
But at any rate, the and he was on the
scene as well as the historian of the church, so anyway,
I think it's Uh. I think there's a lot of
credence there. But at any rate, the the gentleman, whoever

(09:36):
it was, would leave these notes occasionally, and one note
in said the torch will be passed it to be
read in creepy Vincent Price voice when read out loud. Uh.
And then there was one that said the toaster had died,

(09:57):
and there was a theory, and I think Jeff Jerome
buys the theory that, um, the torch was passed to
his sons because they kind of did a uh they
were sort of lackadaisical about how spirited they were with
their efforts. Let's just say that was that was a
really diplomatic way to put it. Yeah. Sometimes they would

(10:17):
show up in street clothes, and from what I've gathered,
like the the minimum criteria for being the Poe toaster
is that all black suit, white scarf and a huge hat.
That's yeah, there's a certain amount of dapperness that needs
to be brought to this. And showing up in like
jeans and vans and like a you know, Counting Crow's
T shirt, that doesn't cut it, buddy, Although the Crows,

(10:41):
Counting Ravens maybe Baltimore maybe maybe. Uh So. One of
these notes though that supposedly was left by one of
the sons, if you buy that theory, was a prediction
of the Super Bowl in two thousand one, that the
giants would beat the ravens. So if if it was
his sons, then I totally see how Jeff to Rome

(11:04):
would be like, they're not doing a great job exactly. So. Um.
So finally, in two thousand nine, I guess that's twenty years.
Ten years, yes, ten um, ten years after the torch
was passed, After the original Poe Toaster died allegedly, Um,
they just stopped showing up all together. And they didn't

(11:24):
show up in two thousand and ten eleven, and then
finally in two thousand twelve, when they didn't show one
more time. Um, Jeff Jerome said, well, I guess I
have as much cloud as anybody. Being the curator of
the Poem Museum, I'm gonna officially declare this tradition ended forever. Yeah,
but not so, because he turned on his heels four

(11:45):
years later and in said, you know what, let's just
throw a big party. Uh, we're gonna audition Poe Toasters.
And this is where the story really like. It's disappointing
to me. I wish they would have just let it die.
It's this mysterious weird thing, is it the raffle. Yeah,
they have a raffle. They have a po themed cake

(12:06):
that you can win, um, you know, hundreds of people.
They toast apple cider, and I don't mind them honoring Poe,
but it just I think they could have just divided
it and not made it part of the Poe toasting
thing that came and went yeah, yeah, I have to
I have to agree. I like that it's a I

(12:27):
like the idea of what they're doing. I like the
toast with apple cider like, but I think, yeah, maybe
hold it at the local library or something, because it
really smacks of like the kind of event you would
hold at a local library. Yeah, and it's during the daytime.
I don't think we mentioned which I mean, if it's
not between midnight and six am, then just get out
of here with that. True, But it does give the

(12:49):
Poe Toaster an excuse to do some day drinking of
cognac once a year at least or apple cider. Yeah,
supposedly the po Toaster does does drink yex still a tradition. Yeah,
so I don't. Did you say that they held auditions
for the new pot toaster. I did, And the new
pot Toaster plays the violin, though added a little extra flare. Yeah,

(13:11):
maybe you know what's gonna happen is they're going to
hear about this and then make us honorary po toasters,
and we're gonna be way into it. Yeah right exactly.
I'm gonna wear a Counting Crow's T shirt and I
learned to play the violin, all right, So that's it,
everybody the pot toaster. This is one of those legends
where I hope we never ever find out who it was,
because I think that's wildly appropriate in this case. Okay,

(13:34):
ad executive, Well, since Chuck said ad executive, that's the
secret word for short stuff to be out. Stuff you
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