♪ ♪ CHRISTOPHER: It's a miserable, dreary, melancholy day at the Poe Museum.

Perfect day to visit.

Poe's life was never settled.

He bounced around from city to city, but never really stayed in places for too long.

The place he spent longer than any other city was Richmond, Virginia, where he spent a third of his life and a lot of different cities claim him, but this is the city that Poe claims.

He wrote that, "I know I'm a Virginian because Richmond is a place I call home."

LUCY: Hi, welcome to the Poe Museum.

LAUREN: Hi.

LAURITA: Oh, hi.

Thank you.

LUCY: I'm Lucy.

LAUREN: I'm Lauren.

LUCY: Lauren, nice to meet you.

LAURITA: Laurita.

LUCY: Laurita, nice to meet you.

LAURITA: You too.

LUCY: So I can tell you about this enchanted garden.

LAUREN: Ooh.

LUCY: So the garden itself, it's created with Poe's poetry in mind, especially his poem, To one in paradise, it starts out, "Thou wast that all to me, love.

For which my soul did pine, a green isle in the sea, love, a fountain and a shrine, all wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, and all the flowers were mine."

LAURITA: Oh.

LAUREN: Oh.

LUCY: So, if you look at all the ivy that surrounds this green aisle, this ivy was taken from Poe's mother's grave.

LAUREN: Oh wow.

LAURITA: Oh wow.

LUCY: So this ivy itself is about 100 years old.

Pretty crazy.

LAUREN: Oh, wow.

Okay, ivy looking good for 100 years.

LAURITA: I agree.

LUCY: And I think the coolest part about the garden, all these bricks that make up the pathways and then the bricks that make the shrine itself, those are taken from the Southern Literary Messenger.

That's where Poe started his career.

We've kind of Frankensteined all these different pieces of Poe's life together in this garden itself.

LAUREN: It's funny 'cause whenever I think of Poe, I always think of like the dark, dreary and like scary poems.

I never think of like the beautiful, the gardens, the love.

LAURITA: His soft side.

LAUREN: Right.

LAURITA: Yeah.

LUCY: Poe was a romantic.

So we kind of try to embrace that as well as the dark, creepy, spooky stuff.

LAURITA: Very nice.

CHRISTOPHER: If you visited the Poe Museum back in 1922, you would've entered through that little house back there.

The Old Stone House, the oldest house still standing the original city limits of Richmond already then was full of Edgar Allan Poe pieces and now it's a display about his childhood, the place he used to dream dreams no mortal ever dared or dream before.

LUCY: So there are lots of really cool pieces here inside this exhibit.

But my favorite is of course Poe's bed.

LAURITA: Ooh.

LAUREN: Mmm.

LUCY: This is the bed that little Edgar slept in as a child and according to a childhood friend, Poe's biggest fear growing up was to wake up in the middle of the night to see a man standing at the foot of his bed.

LAUREN: That would be my fear too.

LAURITA: Mine too.

(laughter) LUCY: So you can almost imagine the night terrors, perhaps the nightmares that he had while sleeping here, perhaps they inspired his tales of terror much later in life.

Poe basically invented the psychological horror genre.

LAUREN: My favorite.

I love it.

LAURITA: That is your thing.

LAUREN: I love it so much.

LUCY: He was the first to write stories where the true monster is not something that sleeps under the bed, but it's perhaps the person sleeping next to you.

LAURITA: Whoa.

CHRISTOPHER: It's not a history museum, it's not an art museum, it's a literary museum.

It's a museum about something you can't really display, the imagination, the written word, thoughts.

LAUREN: So Poe definitely wrote things that are up my alley.

I love a good horror, true crime type of thing.

Is there anything in the house that has any like paranormal?

LUCY: So we do have a lot of people ask whether the museum itself is haunted.

You can't say officially one way or another, but I've had experiences, other people have had experiences.

LAUREN: Do you think it's Edgar Allan Poe's spirit or somebody else's spirit?

LUCY: So we've had lots of different ideas.

Some people say they see a little boy, others say it's a family.

Well, thank you both so much for coming.

We're so grateful to have you here.

LAURITA: Thanks.

LUCY: I hope no spirits follow you home.

LAUREN: Me too.

LAURITA: Ooh.

I'll go first because if the spirits are following... LAUREN: Girl.

LAURITA: I want her to be the one in the back of that.

(laughter) (meows)