Edgar Allan Poe Was Found in Someone Else's Clothes, Calling for "Reynolds." Nobody Knows Why.

On October 3, 1849, a printer named Joseph Walker was passing a tavern in Baltimore when he noticed a man in terrible shape. Semi-conscious. Confused. Dressed in a cheap, dirty suit that did not fit him and a battered hat.

The man said he knew a local doctor. So Walker wrote that doctor a note. It said there was a gentleman at the polls, "rather the worse for wear," who went by the name of Edgar A. Poe, and who appeared to be "in great distress" and "in need of immediate assistance."

It was Edgar Allan Poe. The author of "The Raven." One of the most famous writers in America.

Nobody knew where he had been for the last five days. Nobody knew whose clothes he was wearing. He never recovered enough to tell them.

Four days later, he was dead. And on his last night, he called out, over and over, a name that nobody has ever been able to identify.

"Reynolds."

A man trying to start over

By 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was famous, broke, and grieving.

He had become a literary celebrity in 1845 when "The Raven" was published. But fame had not made him rich. Writers were paid very little. Poe had spent years moving between Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York and Richmond, chasing editing jobs and magazine work, often in debt.

In 1847, his young wife, Virginia, died of tuberculosis. Poe was devastated. Over the next two years, his life became unstable. He drank heavily at times. A planned engagement to a poet named Sarah Helen Whitman fell apart.

But in the summer of 1849, things seemed to be turning around. He went back to Richmond, Virginia, the city where he had grown up. He gave well-received lectures. He reconnected with his childhood sweetheart, Elmira Shelton, now a widow, and the two became engaged. According to many accounts, he had also pledged to stop drinking.

He had plans. He wanted to start his own literary magazine, to be called The Stylus. He was going north to take care of business, and then he would come back to Richmond and get married.

The missing days

In late September 1849, Poe left Richmond on a steamboat bound for Baltimore. From there, he planned to travel on to Philadelphia and then New York.

Friends in Richmond said he seemed in reasonable spirits when he left.

He arrived in Baltimore. And then, for about five days, there is no reliable record of where he was, who he was with, or what he was doing.

He never made it to Philadelphia.

October 3, 1849

October 3, 1849, was an election day in Baltimore.

In 1849, elections in Baltimore were rough. Voting often took place in taverns. There were no voter ID rules. Political gangs were known to grab men off the street, get them drunk or drug them, change their clothes, and march them from polling place to polling place to vote again and again for their candidate. This was called "cooping," after the "coops," the rooms where victims were held.

That afternoon, outside a tavern called Gunner's Hall, which was serving that day as the polling place for the Fourth Ward, Joseph Walker found Poe.

Poe was barely conscious. He was wearing a suit that was cheap, worn and clearly not his. Poe usually dressed carefully, in black. These clothes were shabby and ill-fitting. He had a cheap straw or palm-leaf hat.

Walker's note went to Dr. Joseph Snodgrass, an editor who knew Poe. Snodgrass came, along with one of Poe's relatives, and they arranged for Poe to be taken to the hospital at Washington Medical College.

Four days

At the hospital, Poe was cared for by a young doctor named John Moran.

According to Moran's later accounts, Poe drifted in and out of consciousness for days. When he was awake, he was confused. He trembled. He hallucinated, talking to people who were not there, speaking to the walls.

He never became clear enough to explain what had happened to him. How he had ended up in Baltimore instead of Philadelphia. Where he had been for five days. Or why he was wearing someone else's clothes.

On the night of Saturday, October 6, according to Moran, Poe began calling out a name.

"Reynolds."

Over and over. Through the night.

Early on the morning of Sunday, October 7, 1849, at around five o'clock, Edgar Allan Poe died. He was forty years old.

According to Moran, his last words were: "Lord, help my poor soul."

No records

Here is the problem that has frustrated historians ever since.

All of Poe's medical records were lost. Including his death certificate.

Newspapers at the time reported the cause of death as "congestion of the brain" or "cerebral inflammation." Those were common phrases in the 1800s, and they were often used to politely cover up deaths caused by things like alcohol.

Dr. Moran wrote about Poe's death later in life, more than once. But his accounts changed over the years and added more dramatic details each time, so historians treat them with caution.

So we do not have an official cause of death. We do not have a reliable timeline for the missing days. And we do not know who Reynolds was.

The man who wrote the obituary

There is one more twist that shaped how the world remembers Poe's death.

On the day Poe was buried, an obituary appeared in a New York newspaper, signed with a fake name, "Ludwig." It began, "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died in Baltimore the day before yesterday." It went on to describe Poe as a man with few friends who wandered the streets in madness.

The author was Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a rival editor who had held a grudge against Poe for years.

And somehow, Griswold became Poe's literary executor, the person in charge of his works after his death. In 1850, he published a memoir of Poe portraying him as a drunken, drug-addicted, depraved madman. He even included letters that were later shown to be forgeries.

Many of Griswold's claims were lies or distortions. There is little to no evidence Poe was a drug addict. But Griswold's book was the only full biography for years, and his version of Poe shaped how people saw him, and how they saw his death, for generations.

The theories

So what killed Edgar Allan Poe? Researchers have proposed a long list of causes.

The first, and most common, is alcohol. Poe had a history of drinking, and at times even a small amount affected him badly. Some believe he fell off his pledge, went on a binge in Baltimore, and died of alcohol poisoning or withdrawal, which can cause confusion, trembling and hallucinations. But some researchers point out that people who saw him in Richmond said he was not drinking.

The second is cooping. Remember, he was found at a polling place on election day, in someone else's clothes. Under this theory, a political gang grabbed him, forced alcohol or drugs on him, changed his clothes to disguise him, and used him to vote again and again. He was then abandoned, sick and confused, outside the polls. This theory was first proposed in the 1870s, and it explains some of the strangest details. But there is no direct evidence that it happened to Poe.

The third is rabies. In 1996, a doctor reviewing Poe's symptoms suggested they matched rabies, which can cause confusion, fever and hallucinations, and progresses over a few days. Poe had pets. But there is no record of him being bitten.

Other proposals have included heart disease, epilepsy, an infection of the brain, carbon monoxide poisoning from the gas used for lighting, and others. Each has some supporters. None can be proven without the records that were lost.

And then there is Reynolds. Who was he? One candidate is Henry Reynolds, an official who may have been working at the polls at the Fourth Ward that day. Another is Jeremiah Reynolds, an explorer and writer whose ideas Poe had admired and used in his work. But nobody knows for certain whether Poe meant either of them, or someone else entirely.

The visitor

Poe was buried in Baltimore, in the churchyard at Westminster Hall. Today his grave is one of the most visited literary sites in America.

And for decades, starting around 1949, something strange happened there every year. On the night of January 19, Poe's birthday, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his face hidden by a hat and scarf, would slip into the churchyard and leave three red roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac on the grave.

He was called the Poe Toaster. Crowds gathered outside the gates to watch. His identity was never officially revealed. The visits continued for about sixty years. In 2010, he did not appear. The tradition of the original Toaster ended there.

What we still don't know

Edgar Allan Poe wrote some of the most famous mysteries in the English language. He is often credited with inventing the modern detective story.

And his own death is one of the great unsolved mysteries of American literature.

We know he left Richmond, engaged and hopeful. We know he arrived in Baltimore. We know that five days later, he was found at a polling place on election day, in another man's clothes, unable to explain himself. We know he died four days after that, calling out a name.

Everything in between is gone.

What do you think happened to Edgar Allan Poe? Alcohol? A political gang? A disease no one recognized? And who was Reynolds?