Edgar Allen Poe is still dead. But he's a jilted dead now.

Edgar Allan Poe's birthday was yesterday. He would have been a spry 202 years old if a pesky thing like death didn't get in the way when he was forty years old.

Starting in the 1940s, someone randomly started showing up at Edgar's burial plot in Baltimore every birthday. Doing their best B-level comic book villain impersonation, this mystery person dressed in black with a wide-brimmed hat and white scarf, and began leaving roses and a half-empty bottle of cognac at Poe's grave.

This continued for fifty years until 1993--when, unexpectedly (or out of boredom), the mystery man left a note saying, "The torch will be passed." In 1998, another note was left stating the mystery man had died, but that his sons would take over the tradition.

Well, joke's on us--because no one showed up yesterday to leave roses and cognac. No one showed up last year either.

Let me re-phrase that. People showed up--fans of Poe, fans of the macabre, fans of late-night tailgating and leftover alcohol. Three dozen people showed up to be exact, just not the mystery man or his son/s.

Who's to blame? I'm going to blame the cops. They probably saw a shady looking character wandering around a neighborhood at two in the morning dressed in black with an open container of booze, and decided he needed to sober up. The poor Edgar Allan Poe mystery man has probably been in the county lockup trying to explain this one to his attorney.

"You just gotta believe me! The half-empty bottle of booze was for Edgar Allan Poe! Yes--that Poe! Uh-huh, I know he's dead, but you don't understand what I'm trying to say..."