Pleasing Terrors

A wax figurine forgotten in museum storage. A book of poems that prophesied a ghost. A woman on a beach who found something she wasn't looking for. In the final episode of the Charleston Gothic series, the investigation returns to where it began — the Dock Street Theatre — and follows the last of three trails through Charleston's tangled relationship with Edgar Allan Poe. Along the way, a century-old literary vision resurfaces, a forgotten poet speaks truths the city wasn't ready to hear, and the question that launched the series finally gets its answer.   Sources referenced in the episode: Books Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe by  Hervey Allen (1926) Carolina Chansons: Legends of the Low Country  by DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen (1922) The Arrow of Lightning by Beatrice Witte Ravenel (1926) The Dreamer: A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe  by Mary Newton Stanard Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston  by Christopher Byrd Downey Poe's Brother: The Poems of William Henry Leonard Po

Episode 51: The Unfortunate Pirate For over a century, "Annabel Lee" has been read as Edgar Allan Poe's final love poem—a haunting elegy to his child bride Virginia, written months before his death. But what if we've been wrong about the poem's true subject all along? In this episode, Mike follows a trail of evidence from a forgotten 1827 tale about a murderous pirate to the windswept shores of Sullivan's Island, where Poe was stationed as a young soldier. Along the way, he uncovers a family accusation that pursued Poe his entire life, a poem he was forced to burn, and the testimony of a woman who nursed him through his darkest hours. What emerges is a radical reinterpretation of America's most famous poem of loss—and a story about what it means to defend someone you love when the whole world has turned against them. The grave of Annabel Lee has finally been found. It was never where anyone thought to look.   Sources Referenced in Episode 51: The Unfortunate Pirate Primary Sources & Archival Materials Ell

CHARLESTON GOTHIC Episode 4: Tekeli   The Charleston Library Society has survived fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and war—emerging each time with its treasures intact. Among those treasures: the world's most complete archive of Charleston newspapers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.   In this episode, we enter the stacks where a ghost named Hinson is said to wander, where Henry Timrod's blood-stained manuscript bears witness to a poet's final days, and where a century-old scholarly article waited decades for someone to understand what it revealed. What was Edgar Allan Poe really searching for when he visited Charleston's archives during his time at Fort Moultrie? For over a hundred years, the legend said he came looking for pirate treasure—the buried gold that would inspire "The Gold-Bug." But a 1922 discovery by a Texas scholar suggested something far more personal. Following threads that connect the Poetry Society of South Carolina, a Harvard-trained philologist, and the vanished sta

Find the grave of Annabel Lee and you find the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe!   In this episode, a hand-drawn map pulls us through a locked iron gate into Charleston's most overgrown churchyard, where legends gather like mist and names disappear into leaves. A lady in white wanders the paths. Sixty-four people have collapsed before this very gate.   We follow the trail of Annabel Lee—the girl Poe loved, or invented, or summoned—and uncover the stranger story beneath the legend: a visiting scholar who survived war and exile, stood before Juliet's Tomb in Verona, and quietly planted a grave that may never have existed.   The map points toward a burial—but the real treasure may be hidden elsewhere. What if the grave was a lie but the lie was true?   Sources:   The Ghosts of Charleston by Julian Buxton Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston by  Christopher Byrd Downey   A History Lover's Guide to Charleston by Christopher Byrd Downey   Unburied Treasure: Edgar Allan Poe in the South Carolina Lowcountry

In this episode, we follow the Annabel Lee legend backward: from modern ghost tours to nineteenth-century poetry, from pirate treasure maps to academic footnotes, from Sullivan's Island beaches to a forgotten corner of a graveyard. What emerges is not a simple ghost story, but an obsession—shared by scholars, storytellers, and an entire city convinced that something precious was buried in the South Carolina Lowcountry and must be found.   Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston by  Christopher Byrd Downey   Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle By C.G. Jung   Unburied Treasure: Edgar Allan Poe in the South Carolina Lowcountry Scott Peeples, Michelle Van Parys Southern Cultures, Vol. 22, No. 2     Haunting Poe: His Afterlife in Richmond and Beyond by Christopher P. Semtner   Nevermore! Edgar Allan Poe- The Final Mystery by Julian Wiles   The New York Evening Post   The Charleston News and Courier The Sullivan's Island Edition of The Gold-Bug by Edgar Allan Poe, Frank Durham and Eliz

  The Descent has led us to Charleston, and to a haunted historic theatre where we finally uncover a clue—one that may bring us closer to the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe. Sources:   The Ghosts of Charleston by Julian Buxton   Charleston Ghosts: Hauntings in the Holy City by James Caskey   Complex, archetype and symbol in the psychology of C.G. Jung by Jolande Jacobi   The Mad Booths of Maryland By Preston Kimmel   The Afterlife of Edgar Allan Poe by Scott Peeples   Nevermore! Edgar Allan Poe- The Final Mystery by Julian Wiles

In this episode we visit the most haunted house of Edgar Allan Poe and then retrace his path to the threshold of a secret world. Sources that were either referenced directly or consulted during the writing of this episode:     Ghosts of Philadelphia by Charles J. Adams III   A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak   The Final Days of Edgar Allan Poe: Nevermore in Baltimore by David F. Gatlin   True Tales of the Unknown: The Uninvited, published in 1989 and edited by Sharon Jones   The Ghostly Register by Arthur Meyers   The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City by Scott Peeples   The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe   Haunting Poe: His Afterlife in Richmond and Beyond by Christopher P. Semtner   The Poe Shrine: Building the World's Finest Edgar Allan Poe Collection by Christopher P. Semtner

In this episode we continue our search for the ghost  of Edgar Allan Poe and retrace his path through the final, ill-fated months of his life.    Sources that were either referenced directly or consulted during the writing of this episode:   Ghosts of Philadelphia by Charles J. Adams III A Mystery of Mysteries: The Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe by Mark Dawidziak True Tales of the Unknown: The Uninvited, published in 1989 and edited by Sharon Jones The Man of the Crowd: Edgar Allan Poe and the City by Scott Peeples Haunting Poe: His Afterlife in Richmond and Beyond by Christopher P. Semtner The Poe Shrine: Building the World’s Finest Edgar Allan Poe Collection by Christopher P. Semtner

In this episode we embark on a search for the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe, guided by Henry David Thoreau and the mystery of the Hollow Earth. Our quest begins with a visit to a haunted saloon and an apartment building that is hiding a dark past.

The conclusion of the three part series which combines history, ghosts, true crime and fairytales.

The second episode in a three part series about one of Charleston's lost stories. It is a true story that combines history, true crime, ghosts and fairy tales. 

This is the first in a three part series about one of Charleston, South Carolina's lost stories. It combines history, ghosts, true crime,  amd fairytales.

This episode features the untold story of the origin of King Kong.

This episode tells a story about pirates and a haunted dungeon.

This episode tells the story of the Charleston mermaid.

This is a story about a German fairytale and a brutal murder in northwestern Georgia.    Suggested reading: The Corpsewood Manor Murders In North Georgia by Amy Petulla

This a story about the Titanic, Victorian sex trafficking and a mummy's curse.        

Haunted houses, midnight witchcraft and famous murder in historic Savannah, Georgia.

In this episode I visit some of Savanah's most haunted locations.    Suggested Reading: Haunted Savanah: America's Most Spectral City by James Caskey Haunted Savannah by Georgia R. Byrd

Harry Houdini and the Halloween Séance.