The Poe Toaster

The story behind the mysterious visitor at Edgar Allan Poe's Grave every January 19

Aug 05, 2026

Hello and welcome to Mourning Pages, a newsletter about writing, reading, and the creative life. If you’ve ever heard something new and thought, “there’s a story there,” you’re in the right place. Check out my debut novel, Doll Parts, and Accidents Never Happen (1/12/27) from Sourcebooks Landmark. Thank you for being here.

This story is about the Poe Toaster, a fascinating part of Poe lore and Baltimore history that I hope you’ll find as fascinating as me.

IN SEARCH OF THE POE TOASTER — The only image of the Poe Toaster (Life Magazine)

January 19, Baltimore, Maryland, Westminster Hall and Burying Ground—picture it.

Picture the foreboding iron gates and the brick perimeter wall. Narrow brick paths between the graves. Not a secluded, wooded graveyard. We’re downtown, in a dense city neighborhood. An old place. A city full of ghosts.

It’s bitter cold and it is Edgar Allan Poe’s birthday.

Add in fog and a figure emerging from its icy haze through the cemetery gates, because this is that kind of story. The man holds three roses and a partial bottle of cognac, leaves them on Poe’s gravestone at midnight to toast the famous and beloved writer, and then disappears back into the winter mist.

This tradition continued from 1949 to 2009 (or until 1998, depending on which version of this story we’re telling). The identity of this mysterious visitor, referred to as the Poe Toaster, was never known.

It’s one of those Baltimore tales, but also part of the Poe legacy, long after his mysterious death. I love that no one ever found out who the Toaster was. Seriously. No one knows. It’s hard to remain anonymous anymore. And I love that for years (decades!), people waited at the cemetery to get a glimpse of this man anyway.

I grew up hearing about this yearly memorial and believe me when I tell you there’s a story here.

Tell-tale letdown: Poe gravesite visitor again a no-show - masslive.com

The Story

While there are differing accounts of when this yearly tribute began, the documented year is 1949 (that was the first mention in the Baltimore Sun). A man wearing “black clothes with a white scarf and a wide-brimmed hat” is all that anyone knew about the guy (Source).

Why three roses? It is assumed that the roses represent the three people buried beneath the monument: Poe, his wife Virginia Clemm Poe, and his mother-in-law Maria Clemm).

Why cognac, especially a partial bottle? That part isn’t known. I like to think they poured a little out on the ground, as one does, to honor their homies.

Rabbit hole side note: Apparently pouring booze on the ground as tribute goes waaay back? I’m not just talking about Tu-pac’s 1994 “Pour Out a Little Liquor.” In fact, “The Greeks fully embraced this ritual by giving it a more modernized spin: Rather than using water, milk, or honey like other cultures, the Greeks preferred to pour out wine to both remember the dead and honor Greek gods and heroes” (source).

Cognac itself isn’t representative of Poe. Maybe that was a personal choice from the Toaster. Amontillado, the obvious choice, may have been a bit harder to procure. And now I’m picturing the drive-thru liquor stores around Baltimore, the Poe Toaster driving up to buy a bottle and getting a free lollipop for his kids in the backseat, like at the bank. Ahhh, childhood memories.

Of course, people leave all sorts of tokens on gravestones beyond the traditional flowers. Sylvia Plath’s tombstone is famous for the attention it attracts and Susan B. Anthony gets the gift of “I Voted” stickers each year (images below). As a writer and human, I am VERY INTERESTED in these memorials and how they are maintained, but let me return to the original story.

Sylvia Plath headstone image via Emily Van Duyne

How the Poe Toaster Stayed Anonymous

Let me introduce you to Jeff Jerome, curator for the Poe House and Museum in Baltimore. In 1976, Jerome became aware of this annual tradition and decided to wait up all night on January 19th to witness the mysterious visitor that he’d heard stories about. He was not disappointed. After that, Jerome stayed at the cemetery each January 19 from midnight until dawn to see the Toaster. And, it is said, he made sure the cognac “did not go to waste” (Source).

Another rabbit hole/side note: I do not know Jeff Jerome, but I found him on Instagram and though I won’t post links to the images here, I was delighted to find MANY photos of him in restaurants holding crab claws up near his face. I personally prefer to hold crab claws between my fingers like Wolverine, but I think this Jeff Jerome guy and I might get along.

Anyway, by now, crowds had started to gather each year outside the cemetery, hoping to catch a glimpse. Jerome waited with a small group (“his inner circle”) to watch the Poe Toaster and make sure he could make his tribute in peace and quiet. I don’t know why this makes me so emotional, but I would like to think there are others who would respect a person’s privacy in this way even today. No camera flashes or message boards or podcasts devoted to the mystery. Just let the man do this thing!

But it gets stranger

In 1993, a note was left for Jeff Jerome, that said “the torch will be passed.” Sometime after, it was reported that two men were taking turns at visiting the cemetery each year to keep up their father’s tradition. It wasn’t until 1999 that a new note showed up on the tomb stating that the original Poe Toaster had died prior to that year’s vigil.

In 2001, according to “Toasting Poe: The Tradition of Baltimore’s Poe Toaster,” one of these younger individuals visited the gravesite and left the following note: "The New York Giants. Darkness and decay and the big blue hold dominion overall. The Baltimore Ravens. A thousand injuries they will suffer. Edgar Allan Poe evermore."

That they paraphrased “The Cask of Amontillado” or another of Poe’s work is not as bizarre as using that moment to predict the Super Bowl. And they were wrong! That’s the kicker. The Ravens won that year, which was a very big deal for the city of Baltimore.

One last side note: I don’t want to over-explain Baltimore football here, but I am surprised very often to learn that not every one knows that the Ravens team name is a Poe reference and that the mascot is named Poe. So, now you know that fact, too.

But then, in 2010, the Poe Toaster’s yearly visits stopped (Source).

In 2012, after a few years without another sighting, Jeff Jerome declared the Poe Toaster tradition finished. The end of an era. Or was it?

The Poe Toaster, Now

While some people have claimed to be the Toaster or other imposters (“Faux Toasters”) attempted to leave tokens on Poe’s tomb to keep the tradition alive, the mystery remains unsolved. Who was the Poe Toaster? We may never know. I personally have a huge capacity for not knowing things and am happy to keep it that way.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to share this next part, but I think I have to. It’s my least favorite part of the Poe Toaster story.

In 2015, auditions were held in Baltimore for an anonymous new Poe Toaster, someone hired to keep the tradition alive and “make his inaugural toast in January of 2016 as part of a larger Birthday Celebration to Poe” (Source).

Picture that cemetery now. An official celebration with hashtags, musicians, raffles, Poe-inspired beer, all promoted using Poe-themed publicity. And the newly minted Poe Toaster plays a violin, struts through the graveyard, and says some stuff in Latin as part of the event.

I get it. Why not get the community involved and make it an official celebration? Let’s have fun with it. I am just resistant to change. What makes this story so irrestible is the mystery. At least for me. And what’s the alternative? To let the tradition die?

No, that wouldn’t work either.

The Real Story Here

To me, the story here is of course about Poe, his life, his death, and his beloved work that readers still love today. But it is also a story about family and legacy and memorializing the dead. It’s a story about a city where ghosts are honored.

I love that someone appreciated Poe’s work so much that he made this tradition part of his life’s mission until his death. Picture that. Year after year, for decades. And then his children kept up the tradition. You have to guess that his children were driven more by honoring their father than by honoring Poe. I wonder what their house was like. Were they read “The Raven” and “The Fall of the House of Usher” before bed when they were little? Was their house full of Poe tchotchkes (like these salt and pepper shakers at Cracker Barrel—thanks Alexandria Faulkenbury)?

As it turns out, I have been living with this story my whole life. Curious. Lowkey obsessed. And since there is very little written about it (shout out to Laura Lippman’s In a Strange City), I wrote a whole novel about the Poe Toaster. Fictionalized, of course.

Well, it isn’t only about the Poe Toaster. My novel, Accidents Never Happen (forthcoming January 12, 2027—right before Poe’s birthday, not on accident)— involves the mystery of the Poe Toaster, but that isn’t the total story.

It isn’t a spoiler to share this part because it appears on the back of the book: “A killer is prowling the streets, one who leaves a calling card every time a body is found: dead roses and bottle of sherry, the same gift the infamous Baltimore Poe Toaster leaves every year at the poet's grave.”

I wanted to write a story about sisters and family secrets. Legacy and storytelling and what it means to call a place like Baltimore home. And also: ghost tours, dive bars, and the 1980s.

As Julia May Jonas says in LitHub, “There is an argument that every novel is a novel of obsession, or at least preoccupation.” Not just obsession but interests, fixations, the looping themes that fill a writer’s creative well.

As I rethink what direction to take this newsletter, I know it will center around storytelling and stories like this. I don’t know if there’s anything that interests me more.

Thanks for reading and thanks for being here.

—Penny

More information about the Poe Toaster: