There are Halloween events, and then there are the ones staged inside an 1887 Queen Anne Victorian with a reputation. PoeFest returns to the Villa Montezuma Museum in Sherman Heights this October, and it is exactly as gothic as that sounds.

Poe, Witches, and One Very Premature Burial

Write Out Loud builds the evening around the master of the macabre and the writers who followed him. Expect supernatural stories, witches, voodoo, and one of Poe’s most unsettling tales, The Premature Burial.

The Premature Burial is Poe at his most claustrophobic, which is a strange thing to sit with inside a house this old and this full of rooms. The performers move from space to space, so you are never quite settled either.

Nothing here is staged behind a proscenium or softened by a set. It is literature read aloud, in a house that already feels like it is listening.

Seven Readers Moving Through the Palace of the Arts

Veteran Poe performers Rhianna Basore, Manny Fernandez, Monique Gaffney, Eddie Yaroch, Walter Ritter, and Veronica Murphy all return, joined by Geoffrey Geisinger in his first year with the festival.

Rachael VanWormer and Veronica Murphy co-direct. Performances unfold throughout the museum rather than in one room, so the house itself does a fair amount of the work.

Jessie Shepard, the musician, spiritualist, and author behind the place, called it “The Palace of the Arts.” Murphy puts it plainly: the Villa is the right setting for exploring the mysteries waiting in the literature of the macabre.

Six Nights of it, Ending on Halloween

The run covers Fridays and Saturdays across the second half of the month, with three performances each night. The last one lands on Halloween itself, which is either excellent planning or slightly ominous, depending on your mood.

Three start times per evening means there is a version of this that fits a dinner reservation on either side of it. The late seating is the one to take if you want the house at its darkest.

Tickets are handled directly through Write Out Loud, by web or by phone. Sherman Heights sits just east of downtown, so this is a short trip for most of the city.

The Stairs Are Part of the Deal

The Villa Montezuma is a historic building, which means no elevator and plenty of original woodwork between you and the next story. Wear shoes you can climb in.

Write Out Loud has been reading literature aloud to San Diego audiences since 2007, reaching more than 30,000 people a year through Story Concerts, Poetry Out Loud, StoryBox Theatre, and more. PoeFest is the one they save for October.

See you there!

Six nights, three performances each, and a Victorian full of ghost stories waiting in Sherman Heights. Bring someone who scares easily. It makes the whole thing better.

📆 Fridays and Saturdays, October 16 – 31 | 6 PM, 7:30 PM, and 9 PM
📍 1925 K St., San Diego
ℹ️ Get all the details here

See you there, San Diego!