Novelist Edgar Allan Poe published a terrifying survival story in 1838 about a shipwrecked crew who brutally cannibalized a young cabin boy named Richard Parker to avoid starving to death on the open ocean.

A closer look

Novelist Edgar Allan Poe published a terrifying survival story in 1838 about a shipwrecked crew who brutally cannibalized a young cabin boy named Richard Parker to avoid starving to death on the open ocean. Nearly fifty years later, a real-life yacht named the Mignonette tragically sank, leaving four desperate survivors stranded in a lifeboat until they eventually killed and ate their seventeen-year-old cabin boy, whose actual name was incredibly also Richard Parker. This completely horrifying coincidence makes it seem like Poe possessed some sort of dark, prophetic ability to accurately predict the most grim, disturbing maritime crimes decades before they ever actually happened. Frankly, if you are ever invited on a boat trip and notice someone named Richard Parker on the passenger manifest, the only logical historical response is to immediately cancel your vacation and lock yourself inland