Westminster Hall and Burying Ground

Westminster Hall and Burying Ground in Baltimore is where Poe is buried, where a mysterious figure toasted his grave with cognac and roses every January 19th for 70+ years before vanishing in 2009, and where a church built directly over existing graves in 1852 created catacombs that are now haunted by a body snatcher named Frank.

For over 70 years, a figure in black visited Edgar Allan Poe's grave at Westminster Hall on January 19th, Poe's birthday, between midnight and dawn. He carried a silver-tipped cane, poured a glass of Martell cognac, raised a toast, arranged three red roses on the monument, and left the unfinished bottle behind. Then, in 2009, he stopped coming. Nobody ever found out who he was.

The three roses were for Poe, his wife Virginia, and his mother-in-law Maria Clemm, all originally buried at Westminster. A 1999 note left at the grave read that the original visitor had died and passed the tradition to "a son." The son kept it up for about a decade. After three straight no-shows, cemetery curator Jeff Jerome officially declared the Poe Toaster tradition dead in 2012. The identity of both the original visitor and his successor remains unknown.

Westminster Hall and Burying Ground sits at 519 West Fayette Street in Baltimore, on the grounds of the University of Maryland School of Law. The burial ground was established in 1787 by the First Presbyterian Church. In 1852, Westminster Presbyterian Church was built directly over the existing graves, its brick piers straddling headstones and vaults. The result looks like catacombs: a dim network of brick arches and stone tombs beneath the church floor, with graves that were never moved because the church was literally constructed on top of them.

Poe was buried here in October 1849 after his bizarre death at 40. His original grave toward the back of the cemetery was unmarked. In 1875, a Baltimore schoolteacher launched a "Pennies for Poe" campaign and raised enough money for a proper marble monument. Poe's remains were relocated to face Fayette Street, and the tradition of leaving pennies on the monument continues. The original burial spot is marked with a headstone engraved with a raven.

The cemetery holds generals from the Revolution and the War of 1812, early Baltimore politicians, and over a thousand other burials dating back to the 1780s. You can read the history of the city on the headstones here.

The ghosts are specific. Lucia Watson Taylor, who died at 16 in 1816, has been seen kneeling and praying at her own grave, wearing a white gown with long dark hair. General John Swann appears near his plot and orders visitors to leave. A 19th-century groundskeeper chases loud visitors through the tombstones, his voice echoing between the graves. Poe himself has been spotted near his monument, and visitors claim he's spoken to them (though nobody has shared what he said that sounds verifiable).

The catacombs add another layer. "The Chesapeake Book of the Dead" documents a ghost named Frank, believed to be a body snatcher who raided these graves to supply Johns Hopkins University with cadavers for dissection. Frank is heard in the dark passages beneath the church, still plundering tombs that are now empty.

Body snatching was a real and documented problem in 19th-century Baltimore. Medical schools needed cadavers, and the law didn't provide enough legal sources. Graveyards near medical schools were prime targets. Westminster's proximity to what became a major university campus made it vulnerable, and the brick-pier construction of the church, which created accessible spaces beneath the floor, would have made the graves easier to reach than most.

The burial ground is open for tours, including catacomb tours that run seasonally. It's a functioning events venue now too: Westminster Hall hosts weddings, concerts, and lectures in the same space where bodies were buried, stolen, and (if Frank is any indication) are still being argued over. Poe's grave sits at the front of the property, facing the street, visible to anyone walking by. The cognac and roses are gone, but the pennies keep showing up.