Charleston Gothic: Part 4- Tekeli

Charleston Gothic: Part 4- Tekeli

From Pleasing Terrors by Mike Brown

January 12, 2026 · 1h 1m · Episode 50

About this episode

This episode explores the Charleston Library Society and its historical treasures, including ghost stories and literary artifacts.

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…

Topics covered

  • society
  • culture
  • history
  • literature
  • ghost stories

Keywords

  • Charleston Library Society
  • ghost named Hinson
  • Henry Timrod
  • blood-stained manuscript
  • scholarly article

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Charleston Gothic:, The Gold-Bug, Tekeli, Poe's Brother, Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, The Arrow of Lightning, A Source for 'Annabel Lee', Unburied Treasure: Edgar Allan Poe in the South Carolina Lowcountry

Places: Charleston, Texas

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