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Synopsis

Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later.

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce was born in a log cabin on 21st June 1842, in Horse Creek, Meigs County, Ohio, USA. He was the tenth of thirteen children, ten of whom survived infancy. His father, an unsuccessful farmer with an unseemly love of literature, had given all the Bierce children names beginning with 'A'. There was Abigail, the eldest; then Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius etc. So oddness was a part of Bierce's life from the beginning. Poverty and religion of the extreme variety were the two chief influences on young Ambrose's childhood. He not only hated this period of his life, he also developed a deep hatred for his family and this is reflected in some of his stories which depict families preying on and murdering one another. For example the unforgettable opening sentence of 'An Imperfect Conflagration' seems to sum up his bitter attitude: 'Early in 1872 I murdered my father - an act that made a deep impression on me at the time'.

Table of Contents

• An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge - (1890)
• The Moonlit Road - (1907)
• Haïta the Shepherd - (1891)
• The Secret of Macarger's Gulch - (1891)
• The Eyes of the Panther - (1897)
• The Stranger - (1909)
• An Inhabitant of Carcosa - (1886)
• The Applicant - (1892)
• The Death of Halpin Frayser - (1891)
• A Watcher by the Dead - (1889)
• An Imperfect Conflagration - (1886)
• The Man and the Snake - (1890)
• John Mortonson's Funeral - (1906)
• Moxon's Master - (1899)
• The Damned Thing - (1893)
• The Realm of the Unreal - (1890)
• Chickamauga - (1889)
• A Fruitless Assignment - (1888)
• A Vine on a House - (1905)
• One of Twins - (1888)
• Present at a Hanging - (1888)
• A Wireless Message - (1905)
• One of the Missing - (1888)
• An Arrest - (1905)
• A Jug of Sirup - (1893)
• The Isle of Pines - (1888)
• At Old Man Eckert's - (1901)
• Three and One Are One - (1908)
• The Spook House - (1889)
• The Middle Toe of the Right Foot - (1890)
• The Thing at Nolan - (1891)
• The Difficulty of Crossing a Field - (1888)
• The Affair at Coulter's Notch - (1889)
• An Unfinished Race - (1888)
• Charles Ashmore's Trail - (1888)
• Staley Fleming's Hallucination - (1906)
• The Night-Doings at "Deadman's" - (1874)
• A Baby Tramp - (1891)
• A Psychological Shipwreck - (1879)
• A Cold Greeting - (1888)
• Beyond the Wall - (1907)
• John Bartine's Watch - (1893)
• The Man Out of the Nose - (1887)
• An Adventure at Brownville - (1892)
• The Mocking-Bird - (1891)
• The Suitable Surroundings - (1889)
• The Boarded Window - (1889)
• A Lady from Redhorse - (1891)
• The Famous Gilson Bequest - (1878)
• A Holy Terror - (1882)
• A Diagnosis of Death - (1901)

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