Encountering the Poe Toaster
Oct 13th, 2009 | By Bruce Goldfarb | Category: History, People, Quirks
Poe's monument by the Fayette Street gate
Early in the pre-dawn morning of January 19, 2009, my son, Phillip, and I saw the Poe Toaster, the person who leaves cognac and three roses at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.
Not only saw him, but we talked with him. And had our picture taken with him.
But we didn’t know it at the time. Only recently Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum, confirmed that the person we met was indeed the Toaster.
For more than 60 years, on the anniversary of Poe’s birth, an unknown person has snuck into the Westminster Burying Ground at Fayette and Greene for an unusual and personal tribute. Documented to at least 1949, the event remains one of the few genuine mysteries to survive this cynical, hyper-connected age.
Poe's original burial spot
My experience with the Poe Toaster dates to 1983, when Jerome invited me – and three Towson State students – to spend the night of January 18 locked in the catacombs beneath Westminster church. We were the first group of people to ever see the Toaster.
I brought a tape recorder to document the evening, and made a segment for NPR’s “All Things Considered” the next day [listen to the mp3]. The 1983 visit has been described elsewhere.
The topology of the area has changed dramatically since then. A law school building completed in 2002 now seals off two sides of the block. The wall surrounding the cemetery ranges from around seven to 12 feet in height. Paths wind between vaults throughout the cemetery. You can walk around, and in some cases under, parts of the buildings. The cemetery property offers countless places to hide and perhaps walk unobserved, teases with hints of possible modes of entry and escape.
A walkway within the cemetery
With each passing year, the crowds around Westminster grow larger and rowdier. There are readings and freaks dressed in costume, bottles passed around to ward off the chill. The university police have stepped up their presence, assigning extra patrols to keep the crowd in check.
People mill up and down the street and cluster around the gates in the hopes of seeing something. They never do. Wrapped in blankets sitting cross-legged on the cold Fayette Street sidewalk, they strain to peer beneath a walkway to discern movement deeper in the cemetery. They never do.
Occasionally a drunken youth will clamber over the wall, only to be politely escorted off the property by Jerome, who remains in the church with a handful of friends to act as witnesses and defenders of the Toaster’s tribute.
The whole event is shrouded in mystery, speculation, red herrings and misdirection. Some sidewalk veterans claim to read meaning into whether Jerome has the church lights on or off, whether window shutters are opened or closed. They’re wrong, but it makes for good idle chatter as the frozen hours slip by.
Crowds at the Greene Street gate
Jerome will exit Westminster at some point to let people know that the Toaster has come and gone, confirm that the cognac and three roses are safely inside, and then graciously decline to give the time of the visit or answer any other questions. He is deliberately evasive – some claim misleading – about details of the visit to thwart those who might interfere with or harass the Toaster.
He locks the church door and gate and drives away, leading to another round of speculation among the watchers that Jerome is lying or trying to divert attention. The crowd begins to thin after Jerome leaves for the night. A few people last until dawn. Nobody has ever seen a thing.
The questions remain: Who is doing it, and why? How long has it been going on? What may be the most baffling question of all: How is he able to get in and out of the cemetery without ever being observed by the crowd? It’s an illusion on a grand scale worthy of David Copperfield.
Last fall, while writing about Poe for Where magazine, I revisited the burial grounds to walk around and take pictures. I’ve walked the cemetery inside and out, crawled on my hands and knees through the catacombs and in the spaces beneath the walkway and parsonage. One can go in a dozen different directions, but none lead away from the property unobserved by the crowd.
I stood at the wall at the western boundary behind Poe’s old grave, in the area where the Toaster stood that night in 1983 and in one swift, smooth and effortless motion vaulted over to the other side. The worn brick wall is taller than my height. I look for a foothold, try to hoist myself to no avail. How did the Poe Toaster get over – or through – this wall?
Not that it matters anymore. It’s just one of those unknowns that add to the mystery. Over the years the Toaster has changed his route, changed his methods and approach. Only the specific gifts of roses and cognac remain the same. It isn’t even the same Toaster anymore, since the original one (or was he?) apparently passed away a few years ago and the tribute is apparently being continued by one (or more) of his children.
Based on what he has gleaned and inferred, Jerome thinks the Toaster doesn’t even live in Baltimore. Many people openly suspect that Jerome is the Toaster or knows who he is.
He isn’t, and he doesn’t. You have to take my word for that.
While walking through the cemetery last fall, I noticed something that could be a clue that explained a lot, or it may have meant nothing. For obvious reasons, the details of what I found have to remain secret.
Being the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth, when January 2009 rolled around the mob around Westminster was larger than usual. I parked the family van at the curb within view of one particular spot. Phillip and I kept an eye on this spot for the rest of the night, taking turns to make sure at least one of us had it within sight at all times.
There was Fred Blonder, who works at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, spending his fifth year waiting for the Poe Toaster. I met two friends who drove up from North Carolina for the occasion, a young professional couple from Columbia, MD, and a bearded, pipe-smoking Poe enthusiast from Philadelphia. One person with binoculars stakes a position at the northeast corner of Fayette and Greene and stays there all night, year after year.
A diminutive 20-something guy told me he was passing through Baltimore on a cross-country trip. The fact that it was Poe’s birthday was a happy coincidence. I asked, Where are you going next? “I have no idea,” he said. “I didn’t expect to be here now, but here I am.” He snapped pictures of Poe’s monument next to the gate at Fayette and Greene, and of people he befriended on the sidewalk.
Sam Kosko is another regular. Wearing a parka and thick rectangular glasses, Kosko stands silently in the curb lane of Fayette Street, making copious notes on lined ring-binder paper. I say hello, and he declines to speak or acknowledge my presence. He scribbles and hands me a scrap of paper: “Please do not speak to me between 12 midnight and 6 a.m. Sam Kosko.”
At around 1:30 a.m., word filtered through the crowd that somebody climbed over the fence into the cemetery, only to be intercepted and chased away by Jerome.
Forget about it. A campus security station is just inside the door to the right
As the hours passed, Phil and I spent more time in the van warming up. We watched people wander up and down the block.
Some time later, a black cat strolled down Greene Street – a detail which if fictional would be hackneyed and trite. But there it was, dodging in and out of parked cars. In retrospect, the appearance of the black cat may have been a diversion.
Shortly afterward, a telltale shadow indicated that something was afoot. Phillip went across the street to investigate. He arrived in time to see a man already within the cemetery property, who turned with a finger to his lips and shushed Phil. By the time I showed up, he was gone.
I looked around. Incredibly, although people have been up and down the sidewalks all night, nobody else was in the immediate vicinity except Phil and the guy traveling cross-country. Within moments, the interloper re-emerged from the cemetery. At first he gestured with his fingers to his lips again, and then announced, “I can report that there is no cognac at the old grave.”
The gate is always locked
He was tall, with dark hair and a round fleshy face, in his late 20s or early 30s. He wore a long dark coat and grey leather gloves. The material of his trousers seemed to have an iridescent effect like sharkskin, shimmering with colors, although it may have been purplish velvet playing tricks under the funky sodium vapor streetlight.
As the man exited the cemetery, Cross-Country Guy knelt and took a picture – me, Phillip and this fellow, who I thought was an inebriated fence-jumping jackass.
“Dude,” I said to him, “that’s not cool.”
“Yes, that is not cool,” he replied. “I apologize.”
We mingled with the crowd for a while. About 15 minutes later Jerome appeared at the wrought iron fence and announced that the Toaster had already visited. There’s no need to stay in the cold anymore, he said. Goodnight.
Some people claimed that Jerome was lying in order to disperse the crowd. Phil and I decided to take him at his word and call it a night.
It wasn’t until we were in the van driving home when Phil and I compared observations and began to wonder what we’d really seen. There was no shortage of strange people around Westminster that night, but I think I would have remembered somebody wearing shimmering trousers. I don’t recall seeing the man before our encounter, and he definitely didn’t linger around afterward.
There were a half-dozen other nagging facts. Jerome chased away one fence-jumper but not ours. Although Jerome never said when the Toaster visited – it could have been anytime during the previous three or so hours – if you accept that it takes Jerome a few minutes to get the cognac and roses from the grave and close up for the night, the timing is about right.
Too many things seemed to indicate that this was not a chance encounter. Was it just coincidence that the man was at the exact location suggested by my discovery months earlier?
In late summer, Phil and I visited the Poe House and Museum and talked with Jerome about what we saw in January. Our information was consistent with the Toaster’s visit, he told us. Until that moment, Jerome himself didn’t know how the Toaster entered and exited the cemetery.
Countless people around the world would give anything to meet the Poe Toaster, maybe ask a question or two, maybe at long last lift a corner of the veil of mystery. I had my chance, and I blew it.
Photos by Bruce Goldfarb
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