It’s appropriate that during the month of Halloween we’re also remembering the death of Edgar Allan Poe on October 7th in 1849. But, just like one of Poe’s own detective thrillers, fans of the pioneering author are still wondering about Poe’s demise. Exotic theories abound, but my favorite explanation emerged in the 1990s: it illuminated Poe’s last days by explaining that the author had contracted rabies while living homeless on the streets of Baltimore. There are lots of ideas here, but rabies is my fave…

October 7th, marks Poe’s deathday, and in honor of his macabre sensibility, we visit the morbid mystery of how Edgar Allan Poe died…

Most of you have probably heard some version of the story. On October 3, 1849, a compositor for the Baltimore Sun, Joseph Walker, found Poe lying in a gutter. The poet had departed Richmond, VA on September 27, bound for Philadelphia “where he was to edit a volume of poetry for Mrs. St. Leon Loud,” the Poe Museum tells us. Instead, he ended up in Baltimore, “semiconscious and dressed in cheap, ill-fitting clothes so unlike Poe’s usual mode of dress that many believe that Poe’s own clothing had been stolen.” He never became lucid enough to explain where he had been or what happened to him: “The father of the detective story has left us with a real-life mystery which Poe scholars, medical professionals, and others have been trying to solve for over 150 years.”

Check out all of the theories at Open Culture and watch this biography about the writer to get in the mood for the spookiest of seasons…

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive all of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.

Petey Greene was a pioneer of shock radio and television who became the voice of his black community in Washington, DC from the 1960′s — the 1980′s. He achieved international fame for his hilarious, outspoken, outrageous rants and interviews and for his tireless activism for civil rights, poverty rights and the rights of prisoners.

Greene was raised by his grandmother and dropped out of high school before enlisting in the army and fighting in the Korean war. Greene found little opportunity when he came home from the war and he gradually drifted into crime and alcoholism. Greene was convicted of the armed robbery of a grocery store in 1960 and sentenced to ten years in penitentiary.

In a sense, going to jail was Greene’s big break: During his incarceration Greene became a prison DJ and vowed to change his life and never be in prison again. Greene became famous throughout the cell blocks for his hilarious broadcasts and he eventually won a parole when he convinced a fellow prisoner to climb to the top of a water tower so Greene could talk him down and “save his life.”

Greene struggled on the outside, but this time he persevered, becoming both a pillar of his community and the broadcast celebrity portrayed in the 2007 film Talk to Me, starring Don Cheadle.

Cheadle narrates this PBS Independent Lens special about the man and his mighty mouth: Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene pictures our hero reveling being as potentially offending as he is positively affecting — keep your eyes peeled for Greene eating a watermelon, Howard Stern in blackface, and a parade of celebrities who built their own careers on Greene’s influence and generosity.

Adjust Your Color: The Truth of Petey Greene (2008) from GodsConnect2 on Vimeo.

Stay Awake!

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel where I archive most of the videos I curate at Insomnia. Click here to check out more Counter Culture posts.