I. (Isaac) Mitchell

Born in Albany around 1759 and dying in 1812, Isaac Mitchell was an American writer, journalist, and newspaper editor. He worked in New York publishing and is associated with papers including the Poughkeepsie Guardian, the Albany Republican Crisis, and the Poughkeepsie Republican Herald.

His lasting claim to fame is The Asylum, or Alonzo and Melissa, a Gothic-flavored sentimental novel first published at the start of the nineteenth century. The book became his best-known work and is still noted as an example of early American popular fiction.

Reliable pages found for him offer only limited biographical detail, and I couldn't confirm a suitable portrait from those sources. For many listeners, that bit of mystery fits the mood of the work he is best remembered for.