Suspended animation in fiction which is indistinguishable from death. In American fiction, the first story to deal with suspended animation is the tale of Rip Van Winkle, a short story by American author Washington Irving published in 1819 as well as the name of the story's fictional protagonist. In the story, a British subject in the American colonies wanders into the Catskill Mountains in the years before the American Revolutionary War, and finds a group of fairies, whose moonshine he drinks. He then falls asleep for 20 years, and returns to his village in what is now the United States, finding his home town
Rip Van Winkle out of sight for 70 years. When he awakens, he finds a fully mature tree and learns he has a grandson. When nobody believes that he is Honi, he prays to God, and God takes him from this world. The story also bears some similarities to stories from east Asia, including the third century AD Chinese tale of "Ranka", as retold by Lionel Giles in "A Gallery of Chinese Immortals", and the eighth-century Japanese tale "Urashima Tarō". The Hindu story of Muchukunda from the "Bhagavatam" also displays many similarities to the story of "Rip Van Winkle". The story has been