Which events in Edgar Allan Poe's life influenced his stories?

It is easy to see that Poe's alcoholism and probable drug use influenced his writing. The hallucinatory aspect of Poe's stories seems to have probably been fueled by mind-altering substances. The stories by which he is best known—"The Black Cat," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Cask of Amontillado," among others—all narrate dreamlike events disconnected in some sense from reality. In addition, some of the characters in these stories are described as being under the influence of alcohol or drugs. In "The Black Cat," the narrator attributes his mental aberration to alcohol, to the "fiend Intemperance," and asks rhetorically: what disease is as bad as alcohol? The terminology is insightful, because in Poe's time, alcoholism was still not generally recognized as a disease, but primarily viewed as a moral failing. Though Poe was not an abusive man, his knowledge of how substance-taking can cause someone to become abusive was probably based on personal experience.

Poe's own marriage to his young cousin, Virginia Clemm, was the basis for the poem "Annabel Lee." The hopelessness Poe must have felt about both his own life and Virginia's are conveyed in the tone of the poem. In general, the desperate tone of Poe's work as a whole is evidence that he suffered from severe, chronic depression throughout most of his life.

Poe's mother died of tuberculosis, a disease then referred to as consumption because it seems to horribly consume its victims, when Poe was not yet three years old. This disease causes people to cough up copious amounts of blood, and it was essentially a death sentence to those who caught it in the nineteenth century. Poe actually watched his mother die, hacking up blood, an experience that we can only imagine would have left impressions that he could never escape.

After his mother's death, he was taken in by Mr. and Mrs. John Allan, as Mrs. Allan was a fan and friend of his mother. She loved little Edgar, and he called her "Ma." A few years later, she, too, died of tuberculosis. When he was twenty-nine, Poe married his cousin, who was just thirteen, and she eventually died of tuberculosis in her mid-twenties. All of these women were beautiful and loving toward Poe, and all of them died horribly and tragically.

His experiences likely shaped his story "The Masque of the Red Death," where a terribly bloody disease kills its victims in the most horrible manner. Women in Poe's works also tend to be beautiful and dead—such as Lenore in "The Raven" or "Annabel Lee"—showing how he tended to think about women in general: as lovely angels who are fragile and cannot survive the world.

Many of the major events in Edgar Allan Poe's life are reflected in his fiction. The basic elements of his biography start with his birth in 1809 to actress Elizabeth Arnold Poe and less successful actor David Poe. Poe's mother died in 1811 and Poe was fostered by John Allan. Poe went to school in both England and the United States but incurred heavy gambling debts in his first year of university, leading to a break with Allan. In subsequent years, Poe began a pattern of gambling and substance abuse, supporting himself as a journalist and writer, but always in precarious financial circumstances. 

Poe married Virginia Clemm, who was his cousin and only 13 years old at the time in 1836. Virginia died in 1847 at the age of 24 and Poe died shortly thereafter in 1849 at the age of 40.

Poe's marriage to his very young cousin is echoed in many of his works, where he either praises young girls as sexually attractive, or writes about the death of young women. 

"The Fall of the House of Usher" combines the theme of incest with the death of the young sister to whom Roderick is attracted. Dying young women also appear in two of Poe's best known poems, "Annabel Lee" and "The Raven." In "Eleonora" a young man wishes to marry his cousin. In "Ligeia" the young female heroine has, like Poe's wife, contracted a lingering illness that leads to her death. "The Oblong Box" starts with the death of a young wife.