How Edgar Allan Poe’s Bizarre Disappearance Became One Of America’s Greatest Mysteries

The date is October 3, 1849, and Joseph Walker is out for a stroll in the rain in Baltimore, Maryland. It’s an important day in the city, as a local election is taking place. Walker, in fact, is on his way towards Gunner’s Hall, a bar which has temporarily been transformed into a polling station. Along the way, though, he spots someone laid out on the street. This man appears to be disorientated, ill and in desperate need of help. Walker sets about aiding this poor soul, but then he realizes something shocking. This person is the acclaimed writer Edgar Allan Poe.

Walker wasn’t to know this at the time, but by this point Poe had been missing for the better part of a week. Nobody had heard from him since September 27, when he had set off from Richmond, Virginia, towards Philadelphia. He was planning to do some editing work there, but for some reason he never made it.

And here Poe was now in Baltimore, in a state of terrible health. He was barely lucid or indeed awake when Walker found him, and his clothes were tattered and torn. This was something that one of the writer’s friends remarked upon, having seen the outfit for himself. According to J. E. Snodgrass, “[Poe] had evidently been robbed of his [own] clothing or cheated in an exchange.”

Having re-emerged from his six-day disappearance, Poe was eventually transferred over to Washington College Hospital. Here, the medical professionals who examined him presumed that he’d slipped into this state as a result of intense drinking. Not a bad theory, of course, as the writer had sporadically struggled with alcohol throughout his life.

Sadly, a more detailed explanation of what had happened to Poe couldn’t be established in time. Within a matter of days the 40-year-old writer was dead, having never become clear-minded enough to tell anyone what had transpired. The nature of his premature demise, then, was a mystery worthy of one of Poe’s own tales.