'Ghost Detectives' head to Poe House

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BALTIMORE, May 5 (UPI) -- Paranormal investigators from "Ghost Detectives" are spending the weekend looking for spirits in mystery writer Edgar Allen Poe's former Baltimore home.

"The Poe House has always intrigued us," Steven Barry, one of the TV reality show's investigators, told The Baltimore Sun.

Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum curator Jeff Jerome told the newspaper he usually denies requests from people asking to spend the night in the museum, but he said he granted permission to the "Ghost Detectives" team because he hoped it would be respectful of the 180-year-old house, as well as its literary legacy.

"I thought, 'Why not?'" Jerome said, "as long as they spell Poe's name correctly."

The Sun said the investigators are also hoping to film at the Westminster Burial Grounds and catacombs where Poe is buried.

Among Poe's works are the poems "The Raven," "The Bells" and "Annabel Lee," and short stories "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Murders at the Rue Morgue," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Premature Burial" and "The Pit and the Pendulum."

An alcoholic who experienced staggering personal losses throughout his short life, he died in Baltimore from unknown causes in 1849 at the age of 40. His last days are the subject of "The Raven," a fictionalized thriller, starring John Cusack as the author, in theaters now.