The Poe Museum

Last Friday evening (Friday the 13th, oooooo) we went to an after-hours VASPER tour of the Poe Museum. Our tour guide was very informative and mentioned lots of details that I didn't know. It's always a gamble when you go to a museum that you've been to 58 times, because it won't be enjoyable if you don't learn anything new. But I love hearing different tour guides' perspectives and the random different things that they happen to mention.

New-to-me facts about the museum

• The Poe Museum was opened in 1922 and originally called the "Poe Shrine."-- The lovely garden at the Poe Museum was designed based off of descriptions in Poe's writings. They tried to include as many flowers and other plants as possible that he mentioned specifically in his works, and the layout of the garden is from the following excerpt from his poem To One in Paradise:
  
  Thou wast that all to me, love
  For which my soul did pine-
  A green isle in the sea, love,
  A fountain and a shrine,
  All wreathed in fruit and flowers
  And all the flowers were mine
  
  The legend is that Poe wrote that poem describing a place that he and his girlfriend Elmira would sneak off to somewhere in Richmond, before he left for UVA. Bricks from the old Southern Literary Messenger building were used in the construction of the garden area.


• The bust of Poe at the far end of the garden was actually stolen from the garden in 1987. The Poe Museum received a phone call saying that the bust had been taken to a now-defunct bar on the southside called the Raven Inn. When the person from the Poe Museum got there, it was sitting on the bar. The bartender said that a guy dressed like a cowboy with long, blonde hair brought it in. People had been buying it drinks all week. The collar of the bust was damaged, so the Poe Museum had the bust repaired and placed in the small room off to the side of the main room in the Old Stone House. A replica is what sits in the garden today.

Paranormal experiences reported at the Poe Museum

• The most common paranormal occurrence claimed to happen at the Poe Museum is the presence of ghostly small children. They have only been sighted a few times, but sounds of their footsteps and laughter are heard more often.


• At Elmira Shelton's house in Church Hill, a neighbor says that she "feels Poe's presence" every time she walks past the place.


• One morning as a museum employee was opening the museum, he opened the door to the small room too forcefully and it banged into the wall. From the ceiling came a few knocks in response. He knocked back on the wall, and more knocks responded. When he searched the upstairs, no one was there.