Charleston, South Carolina — the epitome of southern graces and dubbed “the most polite and hospitable city in America” by Southern Magazine. It’s a place of elegance and slow, poetic speakers—the heart of the American South. But beyond the rainbow colored row houses, the huge city market, and the horse and buggy tours—there’s a secret few know about.
Once upon a midnight dreary, the infamous Edgar Allan Poe had his heart broken by a beautiful southern belle. Or so the story goes.
But it wasn’t she who broke off the romance but her father. And she’s still around to tell the tale. Well, sort of.
Legend goes that Charleston’s most seen ghost—the lady in white—just may be Poe’s Annabel Lee.
My husband and I walked through the overgrown cemetery with our guide and a small group one dark night this past August. The air was thick with humidity—and more than a little fear. The Unitarian Church in Charleston, built in 1772, is the second-oldest church in the city. Old church means old graves, and another detail: due to their beliefs, the Unitarians do not maintain the cemetery grounds. So, in the darkness, surrounded by overgrown trees, creeping vines, and tall grass, our guide whispered tales of Charleston’s most famous ghost. To add to the eerie atmosphere, he mentioned that she had been seen just a few days earlier by another group he led.
You have to understand, I’m no stranger to ghost tours. In fact, I’ve done so many that I’ve lost count. But this one felt different. Our guide was so confident that we’d see something that I began to worry we actually might.
I’m one of those people who love a good ghost story, but I never want to see anything. I’m in it for the thrill, not the reality.
So, from the moment we stepped into the cemetery, I was ready to bolt. But we couldn’t. We were fenced in by a tall gate separating us from the city, and the dark kept us huddled together, trusting our guide to help us navigate around the resting souls beneath us.
The church only allows one ghost tour inside the cemetery each night. And that night… it was ours.
My heart pounded in my ears, and I struggled to concentrate as the guide continued. He told us there were three possible identities for the ghost, but it wasn’t until he mentioned a young soldier and a woman named Anna Ravenel that things got serious. The two had fallen madly in love, meeting in secret whenever they could. But Anna’s father, believing the soldier wasn’t good enough for his well-bred daughter, forbade the relationship. Undeterred, the couple continued their secret rendezvous at the cemetery. When her father found out, he had the soldier transferred from Fort Moultrie to a fort near Baltimore.
While he was away, Anna fell into a deep depression and eventually became ill. By the time the soldier returned, Anna had passed away. Her father, blaming him for her death, refused to let the young man mourn at her grave. In fact, he had six graves dug and refused to erect a headstone, so the soldier wouldn’t know which one contained his beloved.
The soldier, who had enlisted under an assumed name, was never truly suited for the army. He eventually became known for his real talent—writing—under his true name: Edgar Allan Poe.
As our guide recited Poe’s Annabel Lee, we all froze.
Then our guide began reciting the “Annabell Lee” poem and all of us froze.
It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of ANNABEL LEE;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.
I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea;
But we loved with a love that was more than love-
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her highborn kinsman came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulcher
In this kingdom by the sea.
The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me-
Yes!- that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud by night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.
But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we-
Of many far wiser than we-
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.
For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling- my darling- my life and my bride,
In the sepulcher there by the sea,
In her tomb by the sounding sea.
As he spoke the words, we saw movement in the pitch-black cemetery. A white foggy image emerged. At first, I thought I was seeing things—wondering if my imagination was playing tricks on me. But then I saw the people next to me pointing and whispering, clinging closer each other. Then my husband leaned in and asked, “Do you see that?”
Goosebumps, y’all. My breath caught as the figure swayed to the rhythm of our guide quoting the poem from memory.
I couldn’t believe my eyes, and even as I’m saying it right now, I wonder if it was real. How could it be? It seems like such a strange event that my mind has mentally catalogued it as “can’t be true.”
Afterward, our guide escorted us out of the cemetery, but many of us stopped to photograph where we believed we saw her—the lady in white—remembering her lost love. I have an iPhone and it took a live photo—for those who don’t know what that is, it’s a photo that records movement while you’re taking the picture. The flash was on, so you can see the flash brightening in the photo and eventually snapping. There was no one in front of me or beside me. My husband was behind me. And the picture looks like nothing unusual—Spanish moss hanging in a tree. A grave stone. Darkness. But the live shot caught something else. A dark figure—the body black but the head almost fazes out. So strange. I saw it in my phone as I took it and then nearly ran out of the cemetery, not wanting to stay in there another minute.
Poe’s life was riddled with turmoil and death. He survived the death of his mother, foster mother, and wife. The common theme of the death of women in his works likely points to these losses.
“Annabel Lee” was the last complete poem written by Poe and was published after his death in 1849.
Critics have often pondered who Annabel Lee was—the most believed candidate being his wife who died two years prior. But the poem says that she was a “maiden” therefore unmarried. Some believe he was speaking of a childhood sweetheart, Sarah Royster. But then there’s our Annabel story. We know historically that Poe was stationed in Charleston in 1827.
Or perhaps, the poem served as Poe’s longing for love and how it felt so lost for him—losing so many he cared for. He’s once stated, “the death, then, of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world.”
Or maybe he’d been carrying this secret love in his heart all those years and sensing his own near death decided it was a tale that needed to be told. If Anna of Charleston really was who the poem was about, I can’t help but wonder what other strange and sad events Poe must have lived through. Was he not only a man of deep thought, macabre works—but also a man of secrets and brokenness?
If you ever have the pleasure of visiting Charleston, I hope you’ll take a little ghost tour in the Unitarian cemetery.
Whoever Annabel is, she’s not lost in some unknown grave anymore. Poe made certain she’d live on—their love forever immortalized by his words.
