What ho! what ho! this fellow is dancing mad!
He hath been bitten by the Tarantula.
-All in the Wrong.

The picture used is "Eyed click beetle Alaus oculatus, Poolesville, Maryland, USA" by Henryhartley, licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en)

Dat Gullah accent, tho... What can I say, I am a white-boi Yankee by birth and never heard it growing up, so I don't really have any real-life reference point for it, only the phonetics of what Poe wrote into the text.

Swammerdam = Jan Swammerdam, a 17th century Dutch entomologist.

The Avoirdupois system of weights is the one the English-speaking world today is most familiar with, where 1 pound = 16 ounces. (To be contrasted with the less commonly used Troy system, where 1 pound = 12 ounces.)

Golconda is a city in India noted for its proximity to an extremely productive diamond mine that has produced many famous diamonds, not least of which the blue Hope diamond.

The cryptogram in the story, if you care to give it a try for yourself:

53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡)4‡);806*;48†8¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;

‡ = diesis
† = obelus
¶ = pilcrow

Follow along at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2147/2147-h/2147-h.htm#chap05

I wasn't paying close attention when I first set about this story and it was a lot longer than I was expecting. A two-hour long recording session. That hurt. Will have to give my throat a rest day after this.