Since I was young, there was just something about the stories of Edgar Allan Poe that compelled me. I don’t know if it was the way he could foist a surprise on the reader. Or the way he portrayed loss with such touching tenderness. More recently I discovered the details of his life and his bizarre and unexplained death. It was this as much as his writing that compelled me to follow in the footsteps of E. A. Poe. For many years, E. A. Poe shared this little home with his grandmother, Elizabeth Cairns, his first cousins, Virginia and Henry Clemm, and his aunt, Maria Clemm. For perspective, the main…