Times House News
For your Times in Jim Thorpe
Edgar Allen Poe visits the Rex House on Jim Thorpe’s historic Race Street
Last weekend’s lightning-streaked October sky was the perfect spark to ponder Halloween and other-worldly possibilities.
Come midnight Friday, those possibilities will become reality on historic Race Street in Jim Thorpe, when Edgar Allen Poe will relinquish his grave for the beckoning Rex House, 29 Race Street.
The Friends of Historic Race Street will illuminate exquisitely carved pumpkins at 11:30 p.m. to make this particular midnight not quite so dreary.
Portrayed by Race Street resident and literary historian Edward Moran, Poe will entertain the audience with a midnight reading of The Raven and other works, once the clock in the courthouse tower strikes 12.
It won’t be the first occasion of someone or something sojourning from the grave to the Rex House.
At the bewitching hour of 3 a.m. one summer night in 1980, a 500 pound granite ball rolled from atop the Edward Rex monument in the Mauch Chunk Cemetery, on a half-mile descent across the Switchback Trail, down from the Heights, across Broadway and finally to Race Street, where the Rex family had lived for decades and operated a coffee warehouse in what is now the Times House Bed and Breakfast.
The Rex House at 29 Race Street is home to Three Mountains Gallery and acclaimed artist David Watkins Price. Price’s recently released eBook Voices of the Hollow Maze was inspired not only by his experiences in his Stone 
Row home but also by the rolling of the infamous granite ball, now housed in the Chapel of the Resurrection at the Mauch Chunk Cemetery.
Three Mountains Gallery will be open to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 27 and Sunday, Oct. 28. for a showing of prints from the artist’s eBook. Glass art jewelry by Jayne Persico will also be displayed and available for purchase.
With drawings, etchings and 19th century images, Voices of the Hollow Maze, by David Watkins Price, is an elegy for Mauch Chunk, a town that is no more. Published as an eBook by Amazon.com, it tells the story of a young printmaker, who buying a house at the 
bottom of a dark valley discovers it to be haunted. The haunting takes the form of voices heard in the house after the printmaker falls down a tiny stair that climbs to the attic, the night his friends play with the Ouija Board.
An old lady from the historical society suggests he write the words down. “Writing words down is an offering of some kind,” she says, “an offering to things unseen.” Writing the words down, the printmaker is no longer afraid and a town lost in the past is reborn as a diamond place, a place people come, after they’ve experienced the “cosmic terror.”
For more information, call 267-934-9393 or visit http://www.facebook.com/JimThorpeHistoricRaceStreet
Advance reservations required for Edgar Allen Poe’s visit to the Rex House, 29 Race Street, on Friday, Oct. 26. Refreshments will be served. Tickets: $5 donation.
Three Mountains Gallery, 29 Race Street, will be open to the public for a showing of prints and etchings by artist David Watkins Price, author of Voices of the Hollow Maze. Voices of the Hollow Maze is available online at Amazon.com
While on historic Race Street, be sure to check out St. Mark’s Episcopal Church as well as the unique businesses on the most romantic street in the Poconos.
Selena Mazmanian of 13th Moon Creations, 31 Race Street, is launching her Remembering Mauch Chunk line of artisanal soaps reminiscent of the town’s rich history. They include Victoria with milk, roses, wine and silk, Molly Maguires beer soap, Switchback oatmeal, milk and honey soap with activated charcoal, and Café Noir chocolate coffee soap. Coming soon…Millionaire’s Row with champagne and strawberries. For more information, visit www.13thMoonCreations.com
The last tours of the season of historic St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 21 Race Street, will be held from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Oct. 27 and 28. Listed on the National Historic Register, St. Mark’s Church features beautiful Gothic architecture and Tiffany windows. Be sure to ask your tour guide about the ghost of Mary Packer Cummings and the spot where the Civil War widow fainted at the exact moment her husband was killed in action. Donation: $5 per person. For more information, visit http://www.stmarkandjohn.org
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