Can Such Things Be?

A coroner's inquest tries to explain how a man was torn apart by something nobody could see. One of the first invisible monster stories ever written, and a short, perfect introduction to Bierce's horror.

Ambrose Bierce

Short ghost stories told like newspaper reports: haunted houses, soldiers who return from the dead, and people who vanish in the middle of a field. Most take five minutes to read and stay with you much longer.

Ambrose Bierce

A young monk in the Bavarian Alps falls for the daughter of the town executioner, an outcast everyone avoids. Bierce rewrote this Gothic novella from a German original, and its dark ending is pure Bierce.

Ambrose Bierce and Adolphe Danziger