The Poe Toaster Uncloaked....Maybe

Every year on the anniversary of Edgar Allen Poe's death, a mysterious person enters the Baltimore graveyard where Poe is buried. The person is dressed in black and leaves a bottle of cognac (some accounts say a half-bottle) and three roses on the grave. His visit draws a crowd, who rarely bother the guy (I think a couple of years ago, they tried to paparazzi him and find out his identity, but haven't done that recently). Above is a picture of the fellow, looking rather dapper. He's known as the "Poe toaster" (so strangely close to "poetaster," yet so different).

Well, now a spry fellow named Sam Porpora has come forward to claim that he created the concept of the mysterious visitor to Poe's grave. Porpora was an historian of the Westminster Presbyterian Church where Poe is buried, and says that he drummed up the idea as a promotional gimmick, and one of his "tour guides" became the person who made the annual visits to the grave. BTW, for a long time, Poe's actual grave was rather neglected and had no headstone, and the good citizens of Baltimore were responsible for raising the money for his monument.

There are some discrepancies in Porpora's story, according to the CNN news story linked here, and so I think the real tale behind the mysterious stranger will remain as cloaked in mystery as one of Poe's stories, at least for now.