FICTION → REALITY

In 1838, Edgar Allan Poe published a strange and unsettling novel—his only full-length work of fiction. Buried deep within it was a grotesque survival scene: four men adrift at sea, drawing lots to decide who would die… and a victim named Richard Parker.

Forty-six years later, in 1884, that exact story unfolded in real life.

Four men.

A lifeboat.

Starvation.

A fatal choice.

And a real cabin boy—also named Richard Parker.

In this episode of Time Slipped, we trace the impossible overlap between Poe’s forgotten novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and one of the most infamous maritime survival cases in history—Regina v. Dudley & Stephens—a trial that still shapes criminal law today.

Was this just an extraordinary coincidence?

A case of fiction inspiring reality?

Or something stranger—an echo in time, a narrative repeating itself with disturbing precision?

We explore survival cannibalism, moral collapse at sea, and four theories that attempt to explain how a death could be written decades before it happened. Along the way, we uncover why the name “Richard Parker” keeps resurfacing in maritime lore—including its deliberate resurrection in Life of Pi.

This is a story about hunger.

About stories that refuse to stay fictional.

And about the unsettling possibility that reality sometimes follows a script.

Welcome back to Time Slipped—

where the past leaves fingerprints on the future.

🎙️ New episodes every week.

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Time Slipped is written, narrated, and sound-designed by Nikki Rich. Subscribe, rate, and review to keep the anomalies coming.

"Galactic Rap" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), Licensed Under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/by/4.0/