Bokelskere.no

A short story collection of weird and ghostly tales – filled with uncanny mystery - by Ambrose Bierce, a renowned American writer, journalist, satirist and poet. His writing is mainly realistic or naturalistic and often concerns war, but I’m only interested in his supernatural short stories. Especially since I’ve heard that his literary output and influence on supernatural literature is comparable to Edgar Allan Poe. (They have a very different literary style, though!)

Even though Bierce was a skilled and experienced writer, most of his stories are either a bit too tidy and systematic or structurally uneven, cryptic and confusing. To me, he seems to be forsaking or downplaying striking prose, imagery and atmosphere for suspense, unsettling speculation and surprising and/or grim endings. Not always, but most of the time. That’s what I personally liked most about his stories, though; horrifying events, deaths, strange beings and psychological state of minds shrouded in mystery, violence, deterioration and poetry.

“Oh God! what a thing it is to be a ghost, cowering and shivering in
an altered world, a prey to apprehension and despair!” (42)

My take is similar to Lovecraft’s in that he says that “Bierce’s work is in general somewhat uneven. Many of the stories are obviously mechanical, and marred by a jaunty and commonplacely artificial style derived from journalistic models; but the grim malevolence stalking through all of them is unmistakable, and several stand out as permanent mountainpeaks of American weird writing.” (Page 63 in Supernatural Horror in Literature: And Notes on Writing Weird Fiction)

In addition, he points out that "Bierce seldom realizes the atmospheric possibilities of his themes as vividly as Poe […] Nevertheless the genuineness and artistry of his dark intimations are always inmistakable, so that his greatness is in no danger of eclipse.” (65)

His stories, alongside Poe’s, could be described as proto-weird fiction, predating the The Weird Tale and classic weird fiction by just a few decades. He is worth a read if you are interested in the development of that kind of literature, that classic spooky horror stuff - especially about ghosts and other supernatural creatures lurking in the dark. My favorites are “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” (1886), “The Damned Thing” (1893) and “Moxon’s Master” (1899). Each of them are pretty cool and brings something fairly new to the table, so definitely go check those out.

The cover illustration of my luxurious deluxe edition from Pushkin press is pretty stylish, by the way! I love that shiny, almost unearthly glowing orange, the terrified man holding a candle behind a window and what appears to be barb wiring trying to break in and invading the whole frame of the front, seemingly alive and deadly. This is a keeper.

A short review of each story:

The Damned Thing - (1893) - 6

A very early example of the classic horror trope of (view spoiler). (SEE what I did there?) The explanation behind this one is actually more science based, though, than supernatural, which I think is pretty neat.

It's is divided into four chapters/parts. (Bierce seems to like dividing his narratives into different parts and viewpoints.) In the opening scene, there are seven people gathered around a man’s corpse for an inquest into the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death. One witness arrives to give testimony under oath. His name is William Harker, and he recalls, unsettlingly: “Nothing that I had ever seen had affected me so strangely as this unfamiliar and unaccountable phenomenon”(15).

That phenomenon is the Damned Thing!

And then we simply listen to Harker’s account about what happened to Hugh Morgan. What’s interesting is Harker visited Morgan “to study him, and his odd, solitary way of life” because Morgan “seemed a good model for a character in fiction” (13).

I agree. Morgan is like every human being in the face of powers beyond their apprehension. Simply because we lack perspective, the prerequisite knowledge, or because human senses have their limitations, because we lack the technology, the right instrument to measure such things. Lovecraft must have drawn some inspiration from this piece! I mean, “there are colors that we can not see” (25)!?

That’s what I like about this one. I liked that this story is short, but effective and suspenseful! Bierce keeps us guessing, keeps us wondering and questioning and peering out of our windows and into the night, fearful of unseen things lurking in the forest.

We so rely upon the orderly operation of familiar natural laws that
any seeming suspension of them is noted as a menace to our safety, a
warning of unthinkable calamity. (16)

The Moonlit Road (1907) - 5

A ghost story and a murder mystery presented in three parts from three different perspectives: The mother, the father and the son. I won't spoil anything else, but I really liked the way Bierce set up the narrative. There's such a stark difference between the three people and perspectives, and key elements of the event is revealed by each of them, making the story a very engaging read. I liked the prose too; it's like the words are uncomfortably distorted in some way, as if they’re spoken through a thick ghostly veil.

Standing upon the shore of eternity, I turn for a last look landward
over the course by which I came. There are twenty years of footprints
fairly distinct, the impressions of bleeding feet. They lead through
poverty and pain, devious and unsure, as of one staggering beneath a
burden --

Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow.

Ah, the poet's prophecy of Me -- how admirable, how dreadfully
admirable!”

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (1890) - 3

I read this at university for a short story class. I distinctly remember a guy falling into the water and people shooting at him. The ending definitely surprised me then, and since it's been ages since I last read it, it surprised me again now! I don't think I really liked it at the time, and I still don’t. It’s sad and intense, sure, but I’m not that into war and guns and swimming. In my dust jacket, it says it's "among the most famous American stories ever written". Very well. That doesn’t make me like it more than three stars.

These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part
of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and
feeling was torment. (57)

The Death of Halpin Frayser (1891) - 5

I'm not sure what to make of this one, but I found it fascinating. It's a fairly psychologically complex and elaborate story. Quite Freudian, one could argue, even if it's written before that guy’s theories became a thing. The atmosphere is dreamy, feverish and most of all weird. The supernatural element too. I can't tell what that was. Was it a ghost, a zombie, a vampire, a witch or a manifested nightmare?

Over all was that air of abandonment and decay which seems nowhere so fit and significant as in a village of the forgotten dead. (91)

I couldn't give it a full rating simply because there were too many moving parts and too much that I didn't understand, but I enjoyed the way it was written. Poetic and creepy. And that poem was chef's kiss!

From among the trees on either side he caught broken and incoherent
whispers in a strange tongue which yet he partly understood. They
seemed to him fragmentary utterances of a monstrous conspiracy against
his body and soul. (72)

The Suitable Surroundings (1889) - 3

A boy is venturing into the woods and finds a spooky house. Cut to the day before and some men are having an interesting conversation about literary enjoyment; that a work needs to be read under certain circumstances to have its full effect. Especially horror stories.

I liked the premise, and their conversation was interesting, but the execution confused me. I misunderstood what happened on my first reading. Thankfully, someone else helped me by pointing out what the deal was.

“There are certain emotions which a writer can easily enough excite
[…] But for my ghost story to be effective you must be made to feel
fear – at least a strong sense of the supernatural […] I have a right
to expect that if you read me at all you will give me a chance; that
you will make yourself accessible to the emotion that I try to
inspire.” (106)

Initially I gave it two stars, and it’s a four-star tale, to be fair, but I ended up on three stars because it didn’t grab me on the first read as it’s supposed to.

The Middle Toe of the Right Foot" (1890) - 2

A haunted house story, I think. Nothing grabs me, and again I'm in the dark as to what happens. There’s no atmosphere, no build-up. No mystery. But there's a duel to the death with knives by a pair of forgettable characters. And then there's a ghost and someone dies. I guess. Oh well.

In the blaze of a midsummer noonday the Old Manton house was hardly
true to its traditions. It was of the earth, earthly. The sunshine
caressed it warmly and affectionately, with evident disregard of its
bad reputation. (128)

Moxon’s Master (1899) - 5

Speculative writing at its best. Much like “Frankenstein”, I’m urged to pose these questions: What is life, intelligence, instinct, reason, sentience, free will, cause and effect? Is consciousness an illusion? Are machines and humans the same in any significant way? I think Bierce alludes to the theory of panpsychism, but still he seemed to be way ahead of his time with this science fiction story with a dramatic gothic vibe to it. A chess playing robot in 1899? Dangers of AI? What a pleasant surprise!

The theme has, unsurprisingly, been explored thousands of times since, but it must’ve been very innovative at the time, and I still think the story has aged well.

Consciousness is the creature of Rhythm. (143)

An Adventure at Brownville (1892) - 4

A man sits on a fallen tree and observes a family of lizards one night when he hears two voices – “a woman’s, angry, impetuous, rising against deep masculine tones, rich and musical”. (153) He doesn’t know who they are, but they are acting very strange. There are a lot of unanswered questions about them throughout the story, and you never quite figure out who they are or what they’re doing. This is another one of those stories where you’re in the dark as to what really happens and what kind of supernatural being the characters are encountering. It’s both frustrating and intriguing at the same time.

But a moment later I heard, seemingly from a great distance, his fine
clear voice in a barbaric chant, which as I listened brought before
some inner spiritual sense a consciousness of some far, strange land
peopled with beings having forbidden powers. (162)

The Eyes of the Panther (1897) - 2

A woman refuses a marriage proposal and insists that she is insane and/or possessed because of something that happened to her mother. I think. And there’s a scary panther there, or not. And someone might be a werewolf, or it might just be a subconscious instinct or desire. Bierce is being too convoluted again, and not in a good way.

Surely in such a mind imagination once kindled might burn with a
lawless flame, penetrating and enveloping the entire structure. (184)

The Spook House (1889) - 4

A family mysteriously disappears from a plantation house in 1858. A year later, two men are forced to take shelter there. The story is about what they experience inside, and let me tell you, it’s some gruesome and nasty and eerie stuff! Lovecraft actually said

This apartment was suffused with a faint greenish light, the source of
which I could not determine, making everything distinctly visible,
though nothing was sharply defined. (195)

An inhabitant of Carcosa (1886) - 6

My favorite! A man from the ancient city of Carcosa awakens in a dreamy, unfamiliar, hostile environment. Very weird, poetic and atmospheric, which is what I love the most. That ending is so perfect!

This story seems to have served as inspiration to several notable authors, for instance Robert W. Chambers, who used the same setting for The King in Yellow. I wish Bierce had written more like this, but alas, it seems to be an exception.

So old seemed these relics, these vestiges of vanity and memorials of
affection and piety, so battered and worn and stained -- so neglected,
deserted, forgotten the place, that I could not help thinking myself
the discoverer of the burial-ground of a prehistoric race of men whose
very name was long extinct.

New words:

Inquest = a legal or judicial inquiry, usually before a jury, especially an investigation made by a coroner into the cause of a death.

Extravasate = to force out from the proper vessels, as blood, especially so as to diffuse through the surrounding tissues.

Privation = lack of the usual comforts or necessaries of life