Strange Visitors, supposedly featuring words from the spirit world.
The 1869 book, Strange Visitors, claims to present actual words from the spirits of famous souls, all “dictated through a clairvoyant while in an abnormal or trance state.” The volume includes posthumous writings from Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Makepeace Thackery, Washington Irving, and as the headline suggests, Edgar Allan Poe.
Though the book lists no specific author, a later work titled, The Next World Interviewed, offers Mrs. S. G. Horn as the writer, and states in the preface that Strange Visitors was “by the same authoress.”
Poe, who died in 1849, was fortunate to be able to continue working through this obviously quite popular medium. And so, I present here, for possibly the first time since the publication of Strange Visitors, the final work of Edgar Allan Poe. Or, at least the final work of Edgar Allan Poe according this well-connected clairvoyant:
THE LOST SOUL
Hark the bell! the funeral bell,
Calling the soul
To its goal.
Oh! the haunted human heart,
From its idol doomed to part!
Yet a twofold being bearing,
She and I apart are tearing;
She to heaven I to hell!
Going, going! Hark the bell!
Far in hell,
Tolling, tolling.
Fiends are rolling,
Whitened bones, and coffins reeking,
Fearful darkness grimly creeping
On my soul,
My vision searing,
She disappearing,
Drawn from me
By a soul I cannot see,
Whom I know can never love her.
Oh! that soul could I discover,
I would go,
Steeped in woe,
Down to darkness, down to hell!
Hark the bell! Farewell! farewell!
Did Edgar Allan Poe write this poem from this grave? Probably not.
