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
Walling Van Winkle Walling Van Winkle Walling Jocobse Van Winkle (1650–1725) was an early settler of the Northern New Jersey area and the namesake for the town of Wallington, New Jersey, where he had built a home. He was the son of Jacob Walingen (sometimes spelled Waligh) (b. 1599 d. 8/17/1657). Jacob along with his brother Simon Waligh (b. unknown d. 3//1649) were the first of the Van Winkle family to arrive in America from the Netherlands in 1630. The brothers were given parcels of land to farm from the Kiliaen van Rensselaer estate which included Papscanee Island. Simon purchased a plantation on