A rival invented his madman reputation.

The New York Daily Tribune published an obituary for Poe written by a person going by the name "Ludwig" two days after Poe passed away. The story claimed, among other things, that Poe "walked the streets, in lunacy or melancholy, his lips moving in vague curses." In truth, Ludwig was one of the many enemies Poe created as a result of his own work as a critic: Rufus Wilmot Griswold, a writer, editor, and literary critic. The earliest biography of Poe, "Memoir of the Author," written by Griswold in 1850, is a damning work chock-full of lies and forgeries that continue to tarnish Poe's legacy today.

When Edgar Allan Poe passed away inexplicably, his literary adversary Rufus W. Griswold published a well-known obituary full of fabrications painting him as a crazy and a madman. The National Endowment for the Humanities is a key sponsor of Edgar Allan Poe: Buried Alive. National Endowment for the Arts, Joy Fishman, and Wallace S. Wilson have also contributed to this movie's funding.