Sarah Long Writes

So after years of avoiding it, I’ve finally become addicted to StumbleUpon. Last night I tripped and stumbled over this intriguing–and pretty hilarious– article about 6 crazy coincidences in history. The first two on the list were what piqued my interest the most.

Of course, they both happen to involve Victorian-era writers who apparently have (at least subconsciously) very strong psychic abilities. The first–Edgar Allen Poe– wrote about a whaling ship lost at sea, its starving crew forced to draw lots to decide who would be eaten. An unlucky cabin boy named Richard Parker got the short end of the stick and (true to Poe-style) ended up being a hearty meal.

The book was “based on true events” in an effort to make it creepier. Little did Poe know that his story was actually a work of nonfiction, just written a few decades early. Forty-six years after the book was published, a sea disaster aboard the Mignonette forced the crew to draw lots and eat a real cabin boy named…Richard Parker.

Feeling the shivers yet??

How about a Titanic prediction? American author Morgan Robertson published his work of “fiction” entitled Futility, Or the Wreck of the Titan, in 1898. As Jacopo della Quercia— the author of the article–notes, the Titan, (which was also British-built) was described as “the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men,” “equal to that of a first class hotel,” and “unsinkable.”

Even stranger, both ships were approximately 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg off their starboard bows in the North Atlantic, in April, “around midnight.”

I had to read this part a few times over to fully let it sink in: Robertson wrote that the Titan sank “400 miles from Newfoundland” at 25 knots. The Titanic crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots. Even more similarities are described in the article.

Freaky much?

So could this be merely a very, very strange set of coincidences, or were there some kind of psychic predictions coming through the authors’ writing? Could they have perfected time travel? Or what if, as mentioned in my last post, these authors created some kind of reality that intermingled with our own? What do you think?

Anyway, this article has some other fascinating stories of strange coincidences that I definitely suggest you check out!