The Poe Walka walking tour

Vince Wilson, who wrote this walk, at Poe's original burial place.

For years I walked people from the lobby of the Lord Baltimore Hotel to Edgar Allan Poe's grave. This is the same walk turned around, for anyone who would rather start with the dead and finish at the bar. Your phone points the way with a compass and a hand-drawn map, and each stop opens up when you're standing at it.

You begin inside the Westminster Burying Ground: Poe's two graves, the facts of his death and the twenty-six theories about it, the Poe Toaster, Frank the Body Snatcher and his whiskey barrels, and the ghosts people still report there, one of them on my own recorder. Then a bonus detour to Davidge Hall, and east through the theatre district, the Hippodrome, a vaudeville house that was very nearly a parking garage, and the corner where Houdini hung upside down over fifty thousand people, before you finish under the lucky ceiling of the Lord Baltimore Hotel.

This is a self-guided walk, not an in-person guided tour, and it does not include entry to the catacombs beneath Westminster Hall, which are open by guided tour only. The burying ground is open from dawn to dusk, seven days a week, unless announced otherwise; check westminsterhall.org for announcements. Enter by the gate on Fayette Street, the only entrance in use. Keep to the sidewalks and cross at the lights. Your location is read only by your own phone. A shared link does not transfer admission.