When Fiction Becomes Reality

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Edgar Allen Poe thrilled many with his tales of horror and other thrilling stories. In 1838 he published his only novel titles “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”. It was a story about the crew of a ship that wound up stranded on the ocean. The crew members were starving and decided to draw straws to see which crew member they would sacrifice for food. The loser’s name was Richard Parker Fast forward 46 years to 1884 when a yacht “Mignonette” managed to make it through a deadly storm but unfortunately afterward sank. The crew members were stranded with no food. They decided to sacrifice a 17-year-old crew member who had drunk salt water for his thirst and was now in rapidly declining health. Since they were anxious to get food they chose not to wait for the boy to die in case his body got infected during death. So they stabbed him and ate him. This was a true story but very similar to the novel Poe wrote and it gets even weirder because the boy’s name was Richard Parker. Isn’t that the strangest and spookiest tale you’ve ever heard?