Charleston Gothic: Part 4- Tekeli
Pleasing Terrors
Mike Brown
4.9 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2026
⏱️ 61 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
CHARLESTON GOTHIC Episode 4: Tekeli
The Charleston Library Society has survived fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, and war—emerging each time with its treasures intact. Among those treasures: the world's most complete archive of Charleston newspapers from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
In this episode, we enter the stacks where a ghost named Hinson is said to wander, where Henry Timrod's blood-stained manuscript bears witness to a poet's final days, and where a century-old scholarly article waited decades for someone to understand what it revealed.
What was Edgar Allan Poe really searching for when he visited Charleston's archives during his time at Fort Moultrie? For over a hundred years, the legend said he came looking for pirate treasure—the buried gold that would inspire "The Gold-Bug." But a 1922 discovery by a Texas scholar suggested something far more personal.
Following threads that connect the Poetry Society of South Carolina, a Harvard-trained philologist, and the vanished stage of the Charleston Theatre, we trace Poe's footsteps to a secret hidden in plain sight—one that may unlock the strangest passage he ever wrote.
The answer lies where it has always been: in the newspapers, in the archives, in the advertisements for a play called Tekeli.
Sources:
Books
- Allen, Hervey. Israfel: The Life and Times of Edgar Allan Poe (1926)
- Allen, Hervey and DuBose Heyward. Carolina Chansons (1922)
- Allen, Hervey and Thomas Ollive Mabbott. Poe's Brother: The Life and Poetry of William Henry Leonard Poe (1926)
- Downey, Christopher Byrd. Edgar Allan Poe's Charleston (2020)
- Kopley, Richard. Edgar Allan Poe: A Life (2025)
- Mabbott, Thomas Ollive, ed. Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, Volume 1: Poems (Harvard University Press, 1969)
- Poe, Edgar Allan. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)
- Ravenel, Beatrice Witte. The Arrow of Lightning (1926)
Academic Articles
- Law, Robert Adger. "A Source for 'Annabel Lee'" Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 21 (April 1922)
- Peeples, Scott and Michelle Van Parys. "Unburied Treasure: Edgar Allan Poe in the South Carolina Lowcountry." Southern Cultures (2016)
Newspapers & Periodicals
- Charleston Courier (December 4, 1807)
- Charleston Courier (March 22, 1811)
- Charleston Mercury (2011)
- News and Courier (February 6, 1889)
- News and Courier (1938)
- Southern Patriot (July 25, 1833)
- Russell's Magazine
- Southern Literary Messenger
- Texas Review / Southwest Review
Archival & Primary Sources
- Charleston Library Society archives
- Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Volume 21 — inscribed "Gift of author, Oct. 1934"
- Surveyor's plat for Captain William C. Hammer (February 16, 1867)
- Affidavit dated September 5, 1745 (Cid Campeador treasure deposition)
Plays
- Hook, Theodore Edward (libretto) and James Hook (music). Tekeli; or, The Siege of Montgatz
Television
- "Time Enough at Last." The Twilight Zone (1959)
Reference Works
- South Carolina Encyclopedia (entry on Henry Timrod)
Interviews & Personal Communications
- Christopher Byrd Downey (conversation at Owlbear Café)
- Danielle Cox, Digital Historian, Charleston Library Society
- Scott Peeples, phone interview
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Some stories were never supposed to be told. |
| 0:11.0 | Stories that exist in the twilight, |
| 0:15.0 | between science and the supernatural, |
| 0:18.0 | between history and horror, stories that speak of terrifying things, stories |
| 0:26.3 | that you want to hear, stories that you need to hear, stories that will sink their teeth |
| 0:33.6 | in and never let you go. My name is Mike Brown, and this is Pleasing Terror's. |
| 0:47.3 | Pleasing Terror's Podcast, Episode 50, Charleston Gothic Part 4. |
| 0:55.5 | Tekely. |
| 1:07.7 | The Charleston Library Society at 164 King Street stands as a bow arts monument to the persistence of knowledge. |
| 1:14.4 | White stucco facade, arched windows, and the date 1914 carved into the freeze overhead. But the institution within those walls is far older than the structure |
| 1:20.7 | itself. It was founded on December 28, 1748, by 19 young men, merchants, lawyers, and a wigmaker, who wanted to keep up |
| 1:32.1 | with the latest scientific and philosophical developments arriving from Great Britain. |
| 1:37.8 | Their stated goal was to save their descendants from sinking into savagery. |
| 1:43.8 | The Society is the third oldest subscription library in the United States, |
| 1:48.6 | after those in Philadelphia and Newport. |
| 1:51.9 | In its early decades, it served as more than a repository of books. |
| 1:57.0 | It became an intellectual incubator, the mother institution from which other Charleston landmarks emerged. |
| 2:03.6 | The College of Charleston traces its origins to the society's advocacy in 1770. |
| 2:11.6 | The Charleston Museum, founded in 1773, and often called the oldest museum in America, |
| 2:19.3 | began as a collection of natural history specimens assembled by society members. |
| 2:24.3 | But survival has never come easily. |
| 2:28.3 | In 1778, a great fire swept through Charleston and consumed nearly the entire original collection. |
... |
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