Bizarre Historical Events That Sound So Absurd, It’s Hard to Believe They Actually Happened

The eerie coincidence between Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 novel and the real-life 1884 shipwreck involving the Mignonette is a chilling and macabre twist of fate. In Poe’s novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, shipwrecked survivors driven to the brink of starvation ultimately resort to cannibalism, sacrificing the young cabin boy named Richard Parker.

Decades later, the eerie parallel unfolded when the Mignonette sank, leaving four crew members stranded at sea. Facing starvation, the desperate survivors made a gruesome decision: they killed and consumed the youngest among them, also named Richard Parker.