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BALTIMORE – Is this tradition "nevermore"?

A mysterious visitor who left roses and cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe each year on the writer's birthday failed to show early Tuesday, breaking with a ritual that began more than 60 years ago.

"I'm confused, befuddled," said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum. "I don't know what's going on."

The tradition dates back to at least 1949, according to newspaper accounts from the era, Jerome said. Since then, an unidentified person has come every Jan. 19 to leave three roses and a half-bottle of cognac at Poe's grave in a church cemetery in downtown Baltimore.

The event has become a pilgrimage for die-hard Poe fans, some of whom travel hundreds of miles. About three dozen stood huddled in blankets during the overnight cold Tuesday, peering through the churchyard's iron gates hoping to catch a glimpse of the figure known only as the "Poe toaster."

At 5:30 a.m., Jerome emerged from inside the church, where he and a select group of Poe enthusiasts keep watch over the graveyard, and announced to the crowd that the visitor never arrived. He allowed an Associated Press reporter inside the gates to view both of Poe's grave sites, the original one and a newer site where the body was moved in 1875. There was no sign of roses or cognac at either tombstone.

Jerome said the Poe toaster has always arrived before 5:30 a.m. There was still a chance the visit could occur later in the day, but Jerome said he doubted the person would risk a public unveiling by performing the task in daylight, when other visitors could be there.

"I'm very disappointed, to the point where I want to cry," said Cynthia Pelayo, 29, who had stood riveted to her prime viewing spot at the gate for about six hours. "I flew in from Chicago to see him. I'm just really sad. I hope that he's OK."

Pelayo and Poe fans from as far as Texas and Massachusetts had passed the overnight hours reading aloud from Poe's works, including the poem "The Raven," with its haunting repetition of the word "nevermore." Soon they were speculating, along with Jerome, about what might have caused the visitor not to appear.

"You've got so many possibilities," said Jerome, who has attended the ritual every year since 1977. "The guy had the flu, accident, too many people."

Tuesday marked the 201st anniversary of Poe's birth, and Jerome speculated that perhaps the visitor considered last year's bicentennial an appropriate stopping point.

"People will be asking me, 'Why do you think he stopped?'" Jerome said. "Or did he stop? We don't know if he stopped. He just didn't come this year."

There have also been recent controversies over which city should be regarded as Poe's rightful home, with some making the case that the remains perhaps should be moved to Richmond, Va., Philadelphia or Boston, cities with their own Poe legacies.

Jerome said he thinks it's unlikely the dispute is connected to the Poe toaster's no-show. If anything, Jerome felt the visitor might have weighed in on the controversy by leaving a note with the roses and cognac, as has been done in some previous years.

One such note was left in 1993, when the visitor wrote: "The torch will be passed." Years later, another note indicated the man had died in 1998 and had handed the tradition to his two sons.

Sam Porpora, a former historian at Westminster Presbyterian Church, where Poe is buried, claimed in 2007 that he was the original Poe toaster and that he had came up with the idea in the 1970s as a publicity stunt. Jerome disputed Porpora's claims by citing a 1950 article in The (Baltimore) Evening Sun that referred to the annual tribute.

Poe was the American literary master of the macabre, noted for poems and short stories including "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Pit and the Pendulum." He is also credited with writing the first modern detective story, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which appeared in 1841.

He died Oct. 7, 1849, in Baltimore at the age of 40 after collapsing in a tavern.

As for the fate of his annual visitor? That's a new mystery.

Jerome said he will continue the vigil for at least the next two or three years, in case the visits resume.

"So, for me," he said, "it's not over with."

PORT-AU-PRINCE (Reuters) – Haiti's voodoo priests are objecting to anonymous mass burials as an improper way to handle the tens of thousands of dead from the earthquake -- and have taken their complaint to President Rene Preval.

Dumping the dead in hurriedly excavated mass graves without proper rites is seen as desecration in a country where many believe in zombies -- dead bodies brought back to life by supernatural forces who could persecute the living.

Haitian officials say so far at least 50,000 bodies have been dumped in mass graves outside the shattered capital, Port-au-Prince, in what they view as the most efficient way to dispose of the fast-rotting corpses from Tuesday's disaster.

"It is not in our culture to bury people in such a fashion," Haiti's main voodoo leader, Max Beauvoir, said in a meeting with Preval.

Local radio is broadcasting messages for Haitians to put bodies recovered from under the rubble of collapsed buildings on the street for collection by garbage and other trucks.

"The conditions in which bodies are being buried is not respecting the dignity of these people," Beauvoir, who was educated at City College of New York and the Sorbonne in Paris, said in the Preval meeting this weekend.

More than half of Haiti's 9 million people are believed to practice voodoo, a religion with roots in Africa. Some 80 percent also are Catholic and most Haitians see no conflict between the two.

Five days after the earthquake, scores of untouched corpses, now bloated and stinking, remain on streets. Red Cross officials have repeatedly said no one should fear disease from dead bodies after the earthquake that is believed to have killed up to 200,000 people.

"I don't understand why everyone is worried about a disease risk," Haitian Red Cross President Michaelle Amedee Gedeon told Reuters. "Do we have cholera in Haiti? No. Do we have the plague in Haiti? No. Rodents, water will not get contaminated. The only bad effect from the corpses is the smell."

On Sunday, more bodies appeared overnight, with locals saying they were thieves burned and shot by lynch-mobs, gangs and police. They said about 20 people were killed like that.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Anthony Boadle and Bill Trott)