Many years ago, (late 1950s?) I read in Yankee magazine that the Edgar Allen Poe story "The Cask of Amontillado" was based on an event in Poe's life. The article went something like this: Poe had joined the Army and was stationed at Fort Independence in Boston Harbor. While he was there he heard a tale about a very unpopular officer at the fort that had been walled into a room by some of his men and left to die. When the fort was modified for harbor defense in WW1, the engineers saw a room indicated in the original drawings that did not seem to exist. They broke through the wall at the point where the drawings showed a room and found a skeleton dressed in an Army uniform of the 1830s. Can this be verified or is it BS?
posted on Jan 27, 2006 - 10 answers