A bizarre tradition surrounding American author Edgar Allen Poe seems to have ended. From NowPublic.com:

An unknown visitor made a tradition of visiting Edgar Allen Poe's grave in Baltimore every year on the writer's birthday. This year, January 19 came and went, and no sign of the black-clad Poe Toaster.

Every year since the 1940's on Poe's birthday, January 19th, the so-called "Poe Toaster" brings a half-full bottle of Martell cognac and three roses. No one knows who the Poe Toaster is. Reporters have tried to stalk him with no success, and at one point an employee with Baltimore's Westminster Church claims to have staged the whole ordeal as a hoax (but he's never been able to keep his story straight).

This is the second year in a row the Poe Toaster missed Poe's birthday. From CNN:

The tradition began on January 19, 1949, according to the Edgar Allan Poe Society. The last visitation came two years ago, on the 200th anniversary of the birth of Poe, the author of such dark classics as "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Telltale Heart," "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," and the poem "The Raven."

I don't think we'll ever know who the "Poe Toaster" was, or why they did it. But it's a testament to Poe's dark legacy that he mysteriously inspired someone two hundred years after his birth. So we shall end with that iconic and spine chilling line from Poe's classic poem, "The Raven":

Quoth the visitor, "Nevermore."

More From 95.7 KEZJ