Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most well-known horror authors out there. As you have seen before, I have been digging into his work quite a lot and he is slowly becoming one of my favorite authors. But today, I wanted to talk about something different.

Poe had written many short stories and poems, but he also wrote one novel. A novel by the name of “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”. In it, four men are shipwrecked and out of food. Because of that, they have to result to cannibalism and eat Richard Parker – the cabin boy.

Fast forward 46 years, a yacht by the name of Mignonette sinks, but the crew managed to survive. A captain, two sailors, and a young cabin boy. After days of drifting along the water with no food or water in sight, the men began to think of how they could survive. They knew that one of them had to die, and after seeing the poor state that the boy was in, they decided to kill and cannibalize him. His name was Richard Parker:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens

Now, of course, I’m a very skeptical man, but even if I was, I find it hard to believe that Poe somehow managed to predict the future and the only way to tell what he knew was through a novel. Even so, such a coincidence is a very creepy occurrence. Especially since it happened so soon after the publication of the book. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

What do you think? Is it a coincidence or did Poe really find a way to tell the future?