MUSCATINE, Iowa – On Halloween, it’s customary to dress up and pretend to be someone else.

For actor Duffy Hudson, it’s his life.

Hudson, 51, will be visiting Muscatine’s Musser Public Library on Thursday, Oct. 29, performing in the afternoon as Albert Einstein and in the evening as Edgar Allan Poe.

“They’re very fun characters and I have a blast with them,” Hudson said.

Hudson has been performing as Poe, the macabre storyteller, for seven years. He’s done his Poe presentation throughout the Midwest and the United States and performed last year at the West Liberty Public Library.

“It’s really different because, anymore, it seems like horror is more about a man with a bloody chainsaw,” Collins said. “What’s really scary is the terror that comes from inside your mind.”

Dressed in period garb, and adorned with a wig and mustache,  Hudson’s Poe shares his  life story from his struggling actor parents to the difficult life as a writer.  Hudson will also share Poe’s famous works, like “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” and short story “The Tell-Tale Heart.”

As Einstein, the great professor of physics, Hudson said he will help explain in a “fun, understandable way,” the theory of relativity made famous by Einstein, as well as biographical information.

“Poe is obviously very passionate and very powerful, nail-biting stuff. Einstein is a little more laid back but intense in its intellectual quality,” Hudson said. “I try to make it as interesting but easy to understand as possible. It’s a lot of fun.”