Poe-nus Material

October 7, 2025October 7, 2025 steveboilard2 Comments

Speaking of Edgar Allan Poe…today is the 176th anniversary of his death. In celebration of the occasion, I’m providing this bonus post. No need to thank me, but feel free to remember me in your will.

So, I spent last weekend in Baltimore–the city where Poe wrote several of his better-known works, and where he is said to have died under mysterious circumstances. (For an entertaining, alternative history explaining those and subsequent events in Poe’s life, please see my short story “Poe’s Last Lament.”)

Anyway, I was, as I say, in Baltimore, where every October a crowd gathers in the neighborhood, where Poe once lived with his wife and mother-in-law/aunt, to participate in the International Edgar Allan Poe Festival. Among other things, we drank a toast to Poe at his gravesite at Baltimore’s Westminster Hall, visited the catacombs beneath the church, and watched a burlesque performance by an Australian stripper whose precise connection to Edgar Allan Poe continues to elude me. I’m not making this up.

We also toured the beautiful and brooding Green Mount Cemetery (est. 1838), where a number of Poe’s relatives are buried. Green Mount is where I encountered the topic for this blog post. Take a gander at this headstone:

*A standard element of a regulation Ouija board, the phrase “goodbye” is especially apropos on a gravestone.*

Readers of a certain age might remember this design from the family game closet, where the Parker Bros. Ouija game was kept.

Turns out the Ouija headstone marks the mortal remains of the man who patented the Ouija board. Here’s a pic of the reverse side of the headstone:

Note that this headstone does not claim that Elijah Bond is the inventor of the Ouija board; he’s just the patentee. The full origin story of the Ouija board is quite convoluted, disputed, and fascinating, and I have now spent several days going down an Ouija rabbit hole. Here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

The “talking board” (which is the broad category the Ouija board fits into) has been around for over a thousand years….well before the establishment of the US Patent Office.

Talking boards became insanely popular in the US near the end of the 19th century and the early 20th century, during the heyday of Spiritualism.
A prototype of the Ouija board was made famous in 1886, when it was used to supposedly communicate with a long-dead spirit.
A few years later, Elijah Jefferson Bond–a Confederate veteran, inventor, and lawyer–sensed an opportunity and patented this version of the talking board. He called it Ouija. The Baltimore boarding house where he came up with the name still stands. Of course I had to visit it.

*The building where Ouija get its name. Note that the ground floor–once a boarding house–now hosts a 7-11 store.*

Bond sold the US distribution rights for the Ouija board to the Kennard Novelty Company.
A few years after selling the distribution rights, however, Bond started selling a knock-off version of the Ouija board that he called “Nirvana.”
And here’s where I really feel down the rabbit hole: Bond created a company in 1907 to sell his Nirvana board. And what was its name? The Swastika Novelty Company. These are words that I would never expect to go together.
Now, to be fair, the swastika would not come to be associated with the Nazis for another decade or two. But according to Wikipedia, the company wasn’t dissolved until 2014!

Sadly (?), Parker Bros (now owned by Hasbro) no longer produces the Ouija board as part of its regular lineup. But it does occasionally offer a specialized version as a movie tie-in. Therefore, it seems that your best bet might be to seek out an old, original one on eBay. You might even track down an old Nirvana version…but you’d have to explain to your friends that the swastika is “grandfathered in,” as it were.

*Modified Ouija board, with patent-evading design and pre-Nazi swastika.*

Please let me know if you know of any other trivia related to the Ouija board (besides the oh-so-obvious link to The Exorcist). And thus we end this special post related to Poe, Baltimore, and Ouija.

Poe-Tober is Upon Us

September 30, 2025September 29, 2025 steveboilard2 Comments

*Cover image from my forthcoming Edgar Allan Poe cocktail book. I’m not making this up.*

Well, here we are–on the cusp of another October with its promise of spooky decorations, pumpkin beer, and, ultimately, All Hallow’s Eve. And you know what that means: it’s the month that I turn over this blog to 31 days of Halloween-related content. In past years we’ve had reviews of Halloween snacks, Halloween candy, Frankenstein movies, my own serialized horror story, and other thematic content.

This is truly a magical season, as the weather (at least in my neck of the woods) changes from hot and dry to cool and misty. The days shorten, the sun hangs lower on the horizon, and wood smoke fills the air. The hub, not to mention the bub, of the so-called Winter Holidays is (barely) held in abeyance while we make this transition into fall. It’s my favorite time of year. And that’s why this blog celebrates the season through the whole month of October.

So, what’s on tap for this year’s October blog? I’m glad you asked. Beginning tomorrow, we’re going to present 31 Edgar Allan Poe tales, each paired with a bespoke cocktail related to the story. In each post I’ll give you a short excerpt from Poe’s original tale, a synopsis of the plot, a recipe for making the cocktail, and a “Poe-script” with some related trivia. I’ll even provide a link to the full text, just in case you’re such a Rube that you don’t already own a compendium of Poe’s works. This way, you can read the tale while sipping on your specialty cocktail.

One word of warning: I am not a trained mixologist. In fact, I’m pretty much groping in the dark with these recipes. All I can say is that I’ve created, tested, and refined each one until it is deemed drinkable…by me. (By way of full disclosure I should admit that most if not all of these drinks have earned a thumbs down by my wife. But she likes neither whiskey nor gin, so clearly her credibility in these matters is lacking.)

So, starting tomorrow, I invite you to spend the month enjoying my curated list of 31 Poe stories along with their associated, custom cocktails. As always, I welcome your thoughts, reactions, and hangover nostrums. If you’re not already subscribed to this blog, you can sign up below. And if you are already subscribed, spread the word! Make all your friends’ October Poe-tastic!

"A Dying WIsh" · Puns

Get Your Poe On

March 24, 2025 steveboilard5 Comments

*Excuse me sir–Do you have a minute to talk about Edgar Allan Poe?*

We now bring you the latest Poe News:

First: I have a new Poe book out! It’s a short story titled Poe’s Last Lament, and I’ve submitted it to Baltimore’s Poe Fest for their Saturday “Visiter” Awards competition. Alert readers will recall that my earlier short story, A Dying Wish, was a finalist at last year’s Poe Fest, but I didn’t make top honors. I’m hoping that this year justice will be served and I’ll bring home the medal. This year’s winner will be announced at Poe Fest on the first weekend in October.

But there’s no need to wait that long; you can get your own copy right now! It’s available on Amazon. Note that it’s available both in paperback and as an e-book.

In related news: I was interviewed about the book last month by the Poetastic Two on their Poecast. I’ve embedded the video below:

Finally: This Saturday (March 29) I’ll be reading Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “The Haunted Palace” as part of the Third Annual “Poe-It Like Poe” reading event. The four-hour Poe-a-thon will be livestreamed on YouTube, as various narrators from all across the country read a variety of Poe’s works. The event is sponsored by Poe Unplugged. If you want to catch my dramatic reading, you’ll need to tune in from 9:40 to 9:50 am PDT. After that: Nevermore! (Well, unless they post a recording…which they might…in which case I will post a link on this site.)

Halloween

More Ghosts

November 5, 2024December 29, 2024 steveboilard2 Comments

Even though Halloween has passed, I’ve got a few more ghosts to share. First, remember my picture of that rambling house in Placerville that was done up for Halloween?

Well, I passed it the other night and it looks wonderfully spooky.

*Amazing how a few colored lights can spookify a house.*

Second, remember that I had attended Poe Fest in Baltimore last month? Well, loyal reader Peter D found this (dubious) evidence of Poe’s presence among us in Berkeley, CA:

*One wonders how wise it would be to entrust your “brow and skin” to someone named Poe.*

But what I really want to focus on is a ghost from my own past: my grandfather Henry Boilard (i.e., my dad’s dad). I never met the man. What’s more, neither did my dad. Grandpa Henry shipped out in the merchant marine just days after dad was conceived, and Grandma Ruth never saw him again. His name was never spoken around our house, as dad could never forgive his father for abandoning the family.

That’s pretty much all I knew about Grandpa Henry until a dozen years ago. That’s when I was contacted out of the blue by someone in Vermont named Bonnie. Bonnie had come into possession of a letter that my grandmother had sent to Bonnie’s grandfather in the 1980s. Bonnie’s grandfather was none other than Henry Boilard.

By sending her letter Grandma Ruth was trying to track down the man who had once been her husband and who was the father of her son. What she did not know was that Henry had died years earlier, and the letter she sent was received by Henry’s widow, Margaret. And Bonnie, who is Margaret’s granddaughter, found that letter and contacted me. Perhaps a family tree is in order:

So far as I know, no one among the west coast Boilards knew that Henry founded a second family on the east coast.

So, Bonnie and I are cousins. Her mom, Mary, is my aunt (and my dad’s half-sister). Bonnie knew Grandpa Henry until he died in 1967. She has shared stories and even some mementos with me.

At almost the exact same time that Bonnie contacted me, I came across a dusty old stack of typewritten pages that turned out to be my grandmother’s unpublished memoir. In it she describes the early years of her life in great detail, including her courtship and brief marriage to Henry. I edited that manuscript and had it published. If you’re interested, more information is here.

Just a month or two ago, however, Grandpa Henry came back into the picture. For the second time in a decade I’ve been contacted from out of the blue by someone who discovered a letter. This time my correspondent was a man named Jason, who came across some hundred-year-old letters in the attic of his childhood home in Champlain, NY. The home had once been owned by a family named LaFountaine, and somehow they left behind a sheaf of love letters that had been sent to the teenage daughter, Angela. Can you guess the letters’ author?

Henry Boilard

Once Jason had discovered the letters in the attic he was kind enough to try to track down Angela’s descendants. In this effort he was unsuccessful, so he refocused his effort on the descendants of the letter’s writer. And that’s how I came into possession of a stack of brittle, yellowed, termite-chewed letters that Grandpa Henry had written to Angela LaFountain almost exactly a century ago.

*Grandpa Henry at time of enlistment in the US Navy, when he was only 16 years old. (He lied about his age.)*

It is taking me some time to carefully open each letter, digitally scan it, and transcribe it for posterity. Let me share, without further comment for now, a letter from November 1925–written within a few months of his enlistment photo, above. Transcriptions of all 17 letters are posted on the “Grandpa’s Letters” section of my website.

Champlain, N.Y.

Nov. 16, 1925

Dear Sweetheart

This is the first chance I have to answer your lovely letter, which I just received and I was very glad to get it too. You speak of troubles but what troubles do you mean? I don’t remember any. If I knew you folks wouldn’t have kicked me out I would have went after you last Saturday to go to Malene. I went with Uncle Leon and Trefflie to the auction on car’s [sic]. You asked me to tell you if I cared for you “Dear” you know well I care more for you than you do for me Sweetheart.

Well are you going to that card party tonight if you do look for me around there. I wish I could see you more often “Dear.” But you want to come up to my place some day it’s very lonesome here alone.

Sweetheart if you show this letter to anybody as you did the last time I’ll never [write] again. Leslie told me you showed it to him that very night so be careful this time or you won’t receive another, Darling.

Well I’ll have to close as this is getting late now.

Good night dear Angela.

From your very best friend,

With love and kisses, Henry Boilard

About a million xxxx

P.S. Don’t show this letter.

2024 Halloween treats · Halloween Cocktails

The Queen of Poisons

October 17, 2024 steveboilardLeave a comment

Once a year around this time I break out the absinthe. And then, after having a drink, I put the bottle away in disgust until the next year.

Attentive readers will recall my review of absinthe in 2022. That was straight absinthe which I drank via the”Bohemian” method. It wasn’t terrible.

The real attraction of absinthe is not the flavor (which is rather foul), but the appearance, the lore, and the association with the likes of Edgar Allan Poe and Oscar Wilde. Let’s take them one by one:

Absinthe is characterized by a bright green color, which is imparted from chlorophyll in its constituent herbs. It’s an otherworldly color which is perfect for Halloween.

Absinthe was popular among artists and other members of society’s fringe in the 19th century. It was considered the LSD of its day. Many claimed that the drink was highly addictive and promoted hallucinations and even, eventually, insanity. This led to its being banned in Europe and the US. Interestingly, this prohibition wasn’t lifted until 2007.

Absinthe is associated with some famous offbeat characters. It’s said that the drink was responsible for Van Gogh’s ear-lopping incident. It’s also said to have inspired some of Edgar Allan Poe’s more outre tales. (Interested readers can learn more here.)

Absinthe is also associated with Ernest Hemingway, who created a cocktail he called “Death in the Afternoon” (after his 1932 book about bullfighting). Here’s how Hemingway described the drink: “Pour one jigger absinthe into a Champagne glass. Add iced Champagne until it attains the proper opalescent milkiness. Drink three to five of these slowly.” I love a challenge–let’s make five of them!

Conceptual Soundness: As noted above, the mere inclusion of absinthe imbues the drink with Bohemian cred. But the addition of champagne seems an odd choice, especially for a two-ingredient cocktail. What’s more, the name, while perhaps evocative for a Halloween cocktail, seems to have nothing to do with the drink itself. 1 point.

Appearance: In a bit of reverse alchemy, this cocktail takes two attractive ingredients–bright green absinthe and pale gold champagne–and combines them into a sickly viridescent color reminiscent of lime Kool-Aid cut with cat urine. I can’t get behind this. Zero points.

Taste: The combination of brut champagne and absinthe is rather jarring. It’s like sucking on a lime immediately after brushing your teeth with Pepsodent. You simultaneously experience a sickly sweet taste on the front of your tongue while back around your adenoids a sour, citrus flavor is triggering your saliva glands. I haven’t experienced a taste like this since a fluoride treatment I received in the third grade. Zero points.

Ease of Preparation: Combining these two ingredients is simplicity itself. Absinthe might not be a staple in your home bar, though. And I daresay this cocktail might be too simple. There’s no complexity at all. I’ll give it two points, and that’s being generous.

Total Treat Score: 3 points, making this drink the worst we’ve reviewed so far!

Full disclosure: I only drank one of these, so technically I didn’t follow Hemingway’s directions which require you drink “three to five slowly.” If any of you is up for the challenge, please follow these directions to the letter and report back.