Edgar Allan Poe Museum

Housed in the oldest building in Richmond (built 1754), the museum contains the largest collection of Poe memorabilia in the world. Richmond was Poe's childhood home.

The Edgar Allan Poe Museum occupies the Old Stone House, built circa 1740 by German immigrant Jacob Ege, making it the oldest original residential building in Richmond. The structure remained in the Ege family for over 150 years until 1911, when Preservation Virginia saved it from demolition. Though Poe never lived here, the master of macabre once stood guard outside as a fifteen-year-old Junior Morgan Rifleman when the Marquis de Lafayette visited the Ege family in 1824. The museum opened in 1922 and now houses the world's largest collection of Poe's original manuscripts, letters, and personal belongings.

At least four distinct spirits haunt these centuries-old grounds. The most frequently reported is Jonathan, a playful ghost child from the Ege family era who races through the Old Stone House with phantom footsteps. Staff have seen him in the back bedroom wearing knee-length pants and a light-colored shirt, and he was known for playing with shop supplies when the building served as the gift shop. Psychic investigations have detected a mysterious woman who comforts Jonathan, and she has appeared to startled museum staff. A second pair of blonde ghost boys materialize in the Enchanted Garden, where they have photobombed wedding pictures and been spotted playing with the museum's resident black cats, Edgar and Pluto. These mischievous youths are blamed for throwing a nail at a visitor's head while her back was against the wall, and for pinching unsuspecting guests.

The shadowy figure believed to be Poe himself lingers near his most treasured possessions—his walking stick and his wife Virginia's hand mirror. He has been captured in photographs standing behind tour groups as if listening to the guide, and visitors report seeing a man in a top hat walking through the garden at night. One morning, staff discovered a recent shipment of Poe bobbleheads mysteriously unpacked and perfectly lined up. The pen on Poe's desk is never in the same place each morning; no matter where staff position it, by dawn it has moved to the center of his papers, as if the writer continues his work.

The museum's most unsettling encounters occur on the original staircase salvaged from John and Frances Allan's home at 14th Street, where Poe lived as a foster child. Frances adored young Edgar, but John Allan despised him, eventually disinheriting him entirely. Visitors have felt a hand pressing firmly on their backs at the top of these stairs—one woman was pushed so forcefully she nearly fell, while another who tripped felt an invisible force grab her arm. Staff believe this hostile presence is John Allan's spirit, still angry that people have come to celebrate the foster son he tried to forget. Disembodied footsteps echo through the building, unexplained knocks emanate from inside solid stone walls, and voices have been captured on tape.

The museum's black cats, Edgar and Pluto (named for Poe's tortoiseshell cat Catterina and the cat in his famous story), were discovered as strays in the Enchanted Garden in 2012. They often react as if being petted by invisible hands, nuzzling at empty air. Some believe these felines are spiritual ambassadors, greeting both living visitors and the museum's resident ghosts. In an eerie coincidence, black cats were found in the garden the last time townspeople saved the museum from demolition—some say they are Poe and his beloved Virginia, eternally watching over his legacy.