https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_5UBjOS3l0&list=PLiHen0bvi4qN-Czrb_WjcZVI_DkRZ4XNO

The Masque of the Red Death - 1850 -
Written by: Edgar Allan Poe
Read to you by: Wiktor Reads

Baltimore. October 3, 1849. Election Day.

An employee of the Baltimore Sun named Joseph W. Walker headed toward Gunner’s Hall, a pub but on this day a pop-up polling location. Just before walking in, he saw a man.

The man was semi-conscious, dressed in second-hand clothes, and literally lying in a gutter. Walker examined him up close, thinking he might be dead. But he was alive. And he was none other than the poet Edgar Allan Poe.

He only lived four more days after being found, finally dying on October 7th. And he never regained enough consciousness to explain how he ended up in a gutter with soiled clothes.

Wait, wait. Let's start from the beginning here.

Let’s take this back a week. On September 27th, Poe left Richmond, Virginia and headed for Philadelphia to edit some collections for a friend and fellow poet, Mrs. St. Leon Loud. After Philadelphia he was slated to head to New York to pick up his aunt and head back to Virginia for his own wedding.

But he never got to Mrs. St. Leon Loud’s estate.

And he never made it to New York.

In fact, when Walker found him in the gutter in Baltimore, it was the first anyone had seen him since he left Richmond.

On his deathbed, he repeatedly called out for "Reynolds"—a figure who, to this day, remains a mystery.

So what happened? Well, we still don’t know. But there are some theories...

These are the most popular theories:

1. He was robbed and beaten. In 1867, a biographer suggested this and, in a nice time capsule of what 1860s medicine was like, even noted that “brain fever” typically follows beatings of this nature.
2. Cooping. What the heck is cooping you ask? Yeah, I did too. Apparently it was a fraudulent voting practice back in the day. People would get kidnapped, disguised, and forced to vote for a particular candidate. This theory purports that this was done to Poe several times and when paired with the pre-prohibition practice of polling places handing out drinks to voters as a reward, would explain his drunk-like state.
3. Alcohol poisoning. Apparently it was sort of a well known thing that Poe couldn’t hold his alcohol. So basically, this theory holds that he drank himself to death. Yikes.
4. Carbon monoxide poisoning. In 1999, a researcher hypothesized that indoor lighting from the 19th century was the cause of his delirious state and death. Meh.
5. Heavy metal/mercury poisoning. His hair was tested in the late 1990s and heavy metals/mercury were found. But they were 30 times l

"The Masque of the Red Death" by Edgar Allan Poe (1842).
Edit: NEW VERSION

This month I will be sharing the scariest, spookiest and creepiest stories I have uploaded to YouTube.

The Masque of the Red Death is eerily relevant some 140 years after it was written. It describes how a powerful prince deals with a deadly pandemic.

These readings are my passion, I make no money from them, but I pour my heart and soul into them. Hope you'll give them a listen and maybe share, leave a comment or like.

Thanks - and have a great one!

- Sam

>The red death had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal -- the madness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and termination of the disease, were incidents of half an hour.
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>But Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his crenellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts.
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>They resolved to leave means neither of ingress nor egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the "Red Death."
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>It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.
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>*It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven -- an imperial suite, In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extant is scarcely impeded. Here the case was very different; as might have been expected from the duke's love of the "bizarre." The apartments were so irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but little mo

I try again: Please, somebody

The reason why I am asking is because I hear a lot of stories about authors that wasn’t very successful by the time of their deaths and their work becomes classics afterwards so I am curious to hear how successful these authors were during their lifetime.

This is the second post in our new series, Short Story Sunday, where we'll read and discuss short stories from public domain. This week's short story is The Masque of Red Death - Edgar Allan Poe.

THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH.

THE “Red Death” had long devastated the country. No pestilence had ever been so fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar and its seal—the redness and the horror of blood. There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. The scarlet stains upon the body and especially upon the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress and termination of the disease, were the incidents of half an hour.

But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless and sagacious. When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince’s own eccentric yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, having entered, brought furnaces and massy hammers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was Beauty, there was wine. All these and security were within. Without was the “Red Death.”

It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth month of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence.

It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. There were seven—an imperial suite. In many palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to the walls on either hand, so that the view of the whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the ca

Does anybody have the script of Nevermore: The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe?