Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

Bierce’s writing style is both descriptive and haunting, drawing readers into the world of the supernatural and leaving them with a sense of unease. The stories are short and quick-paced, making them perfect for a quick scare before bed or a spooky night by the campfire.

Overall, Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories is a must-read for anyone who enjoys a good ghost story. Bierce’s ability to weave together suspense and horror creates a truly unforgettable reading experience that will linger in the minds of readers long after they have finished the book.

Book Description:

Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914?), satirist, critic, poet, short story writer and journalist. His fiction showed a clean economical style often sprinkled with subtle cynical comments on human behaviour. Nothing is known of his death, as he went missing while an observer with Pancho Villa’s army in 1913/14.
(Summaries by Peter Yearsley)

The Ways of Ghosts: Stories of encounters with the ghosts of the dead and dying. The spirits of the dead reach out to the living, to pass on a message or to pursue a killer.

Contents (with beginning time):

• Present at a Hanging (02:06)
• A Cold Greeting (07:07)
• A Wireless Message (11:15)
• An Arrest (17:04)

Soldier Folk: Oddities of death and life; from a man who finds that his death is uncertain, through the effects of war on the family, duty that survives death, to the memory of revenge.

Contents (with beginning time):

• A Man with Two Lives (00:31)
• Three and One are One (06:23)
• A Baffled Ambuscade (14:18)
• Two Military Executions (19:45)

Some Haunted Houses – Part One: Encounters of the living with the spirits of the dead who have been bound into buildings. An old man revenges himself; a journalist investigates a haunted house; and the quivering vine that tangles the face of a deserted home.

Contents (with beginning time):

• The Isle of Pines (00:31)
• A Fruitless Assignment (10:39)
• A Vine on a House (17:54)

Some Haunted Houses – Part Two: Houses where the living are never seen again, memories of the mortuary live on, and a murdered man wanders through.

Contents (with beginning time):

• At Old Man Eckert’s (00:30)
• The Spook House (06:36)
• The Other Lodgers (16:04)
• The Thing at Nolan (21:50)

Mysterious Disappearances: Three short tales of men who have vanished living their ordinary lives, sometimes in full view of witnesses; plus a short, probably fictional, description of a theory to partly explain these events.

Contents (with beginning time):

• The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (00:32)
• An Unfinished Race (05:18)
• Charles Ashmore’s Trail (07:50)
• Science to the Front (12:23)