A mysterious nocturnal visitor who used to visit the grave of American poet Edgar Allen Poe on his birthday failed to appear for the third consecutive year. After waiting up all night, the curator of the Poe museum officially declared that the night-time tradition was over. Each year since 1949, the 100th anniversary of Poe’s birth, an often-times cloaked individual left a bottle of cognac and a few roses at the foot of Poe’s tomb, usually at night. No-one has ever been able to identify the mystery visitor.
The original yearly visitor apparently died in 1998, but passed the pilgrimage on to his two sons. More than the 5,000 people visit the house every year where the author of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ spent part of his life. Poe-best known as a master of mystery and the macabre and the inventor of detective dramas-died in 1849 at the age of 40.
