WESTMINSTER BURIAL GROUND, BALTIMORE — JANUARY 19, 1949 — Moments after another midnight dreary, in the bleak and bleary hours when ravens cry and hearts beat in terror, a lone figure steps into the Gothic gloom. Dressed in black, with a scarf hiding his face, he carries a silver-tipped cane.

Alone in shadow, the ghostly figure winds through the gravestones to arrive at the stone reading: “Original Burying Place of Edgar Allan Poe.” Then the man pours a glass of cognac and drinks a toast. Without another word, he sets three long-stemmed roses on the grave. And vanishes. Until next year. . . And the next. . .

Writers’ graves are often pilgrimages. Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts is littered with pencils and pens. Emily Dickinson’s grave in Amherst is frequently topped by pebbles. An empty whiskey bottle can usually be found on Faulkner’s grave in Mississippi. But only Poe, master of horror and intrigue, earned his own midnight mystery.

The Poe Toaster became a legend in these parts. Beginning with that first visit in 1949, the 100th anniversary of Poe’s mysterious death at the age of 40, the lone figure came out of the darkness each January 19 — the author’s birthday. Always with a bottle of cognac, always Martell. And three roses, left on the grave in the same pattern.

Who was he? Would he come again the next year? Would he ever reveal his identity? His motive?

“People will always be talking about it,” said Jeff Jerome, former curator of Baltimore’s Poe House. “It brought so much international attention to Baltimore, to the Poe House, to the Poe grave. It will live on in people's memories. People will always be asking, 'You know that guy who used to leave cognac and roses? Whatever happened to him?'"

Throughout the 1950s, the Poe Toaster had the graveyard to himself. But because Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” created the modern mystery story, a search for clues soon began. The first was the bottle left on the grave each January 19.

Why cognac? Poe was a legendary drunk, perhaps dying of alcohol poisoning, but his characters imbibed wine and sherry. The Spanish sherry called amontillado haunted one of his most famous stories, where a demented man walls his enemy into a wine cellar, brick by brick. Why not amontillado?

"The cognac, we think, is simply a favorite of the toaster,” Jerome said. And roses? Always three. Always laid the same way. One each, Poe fans guessed, for his aunt Maria, his beloved child bride Virginia, aka “Annabel Lee,” and Poe himself. But beyond the play on words — a “poetaster” is an inferior poet — who was the Poe Toaster?

In the mid-1970s, the search expanded. Jerome and friends began hiding in the church near Poe’s grave, waiting. And always, sometime after midnight. . .

“We had no thought of confronting him,” Jerome said. “People have called me up and said they don't want to know who he is. This is a nice mystery, and there aren't a lot of mysteries left." Yet Jerome somehow gave the Toaster a secret signal to distinguish him from imposters. On into the 1990s, the Toaster gave the signal, made the toast, left the roses, and vanished.

Then in 1993, the man left a note. "The torch will be passed." Soon, Baltimore saw changes in the annual tradition. A Toaster showed up, did the usual, but left cryptic notes.

In 2001, the note referred to the upcoming Super Bowl between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Ravens. “Darkness and decay and the big blue hold dominion over all. The Baltimore Ravens. A thousand injuries they will suffer. Edgar Allan Poe evermore." (Despite the curse, the Ravens won.)

Poe wasn’t much of a football fan, so what was this? Many guessed that the Toaster had passed on, leaving the tradition to a son or sons. A few years later, a note claimed that French cognac was unworthy of Poe. Many took this to be a slam at France for opposing the Iraq War.

“The sons didn’t always take the tradition as seriously as their father,” a local journalist wrote. “Sometimes the Toaster showed up in street clothes. Sometimes notes were left that were completely off target.”

Finally, in 2007, the Toaster’s note was so discouraging that Jerome refused to share it. By then, a dozen or more were waiting near the grave. The mystery could not last.

In 2009, the 200th anniversary of Poe’s birth, the Poe Toaster came and went with no note, just cognac and roses. For several years, despite the occasional appearance of “Faux Toasters” who strode boldly up to the grave, the tradition seemed as dead as Annabel Lee.

"I more or less resigned myself that it was over," Jerome told the Baltimore Sun. "What I'll miss most is the excitement of waiting to see if he's going to show up."

Then in 2015, the Maryland Historical Society auditoned new Toasters. Still anonymous, the new Toaster played the violin as he led a procession to Poe’s grave in 2016. Toasting with cognac, the man intoned a Latin phrase. And left.

The tradition has only grown since then, also growing more commercial. These days, a local tourist board hosts the “Poe Toaster Murder Mystery” that sends dozens through the graveyard in search of clues for the mysterious killer of the Toaster himself.

A few have stepped forward claiming to be the original Poe Toaster, yet none knew the secret signal. The mystery continues. Quoth Poe: “There are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.”

IN SEARCH OF THE POE TOASTER