The Boarded Window

by Ambrose Bierce

A deserted cabin deep in the woods. One door, one window. The window is boarded up. The former resident - a recluse - is deceased. Is there a story here?

Estate liquidators make a living disposing of the personal effects of deceased persons. Typically these are elderly people who may have lived alone, and were considered a bit strange because of their aloofness. But as the liquidator goes through the effects of the deceased, they occasionally find a story. Letters, pictures, and other artifacts prove that this person was once young, vibrant, sexy, full of hopes dreams, and possibilities, intriguing and mysterious.

Here, Ambrose Bierce explores some possibilities of the strange person that lived in the cabin with the boarded up window.

Public Domain (P)2012 Audio Books by Mike Vendetti

Genres: Short Stories, Horror, Fiction, Classics, Mystery, American, Historical Fiction

6 pages, Unknown Binding

First published April 12, 1891

About the author

died perhaps 1914

Caustic wit and a strong sense of horror mark works, including In the Midst of Life (1891-1892) and The Devil's Dictionary (1906), of American writer Ambrose Gwinett Bierce.

People today best know this editorialist, journalist, and fabulist for his short story, An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and his lexicon.

The informative sardonic view of human nature alongside his vehemence as a critic with his motto, "nothing matters," earned him the nickname "Bitter Bierce."

People knew Bierce despite his reputation as a searing critic, however, to encourage younger poet George Sterling and fiction author W.C. Morrow.

Bierce employed a distinctive style especially in his stories. This style often embraces an abrupt beginning, dark imagery, vague references to time, limited descriptions, the theme of war, and impossible events.

Bierce disappeared in December 1913 at the age of 71 years. People think that he traveled to Mexico to gain a firsthand perspective on ongoing revolution of that country.

Theories abound on a mystery, ultimate fate of Bierce. He in one of his final letters stated: "Good-bye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it is a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia!"

Reviews

[Sara · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ambrose Bierce must have decided to pick up the mantle of Edgar Allan Poe when he imagined this story. Of course, Bierce was consistently able to write the haunting and unexpected.

If you would like to know of a real mystery connected to Bierce, you should read this article posing theories as to his disappearance. He numbers among the missing--never found.
https://lithub.com/no-one-knows-why-a...

[Latasha · Rating 4 out of 5]

you can never go wrong with Ambrose Bierce. He is one of my absolute favorites.

[Cole W · Rating 3 out of 5]

This short story starts off strong with a dark, eerie tone that pulls you in right away. There’s a steady sense of dread and loneliness that fits the setting perfectly. It really captures what life on the edge of the frontier might have felt like, quiet, harsh, and a little haunted. The middle slows down a bit and loses some tension, but the ending makes up for it. That final moment changes how you see everything before it.

What really stood out to me was the meaning behind the boarded window. It feels like a symbol for closing yourself off from the world. Whether it’s grief, guilt, or just the weight of isolation, whatever’s hidden there feels too painful to face.

It isn’t my favorite of his stories, but I’m glad I read it. The atmosphere and final reveal make it worth the time.

[Federico DN · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh.

It was ok, but not worth reviewing.

For the moment at least.

It’s public domain. You can find it HERE.

-----------------------------------------------
PERSONAL NOTE :
[1891] [12p] [Horror] [2.5] [Not Recommendable]
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★★★★☆ The Damned Thing.
★★★★☆ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. [3.5]
★★★☆☆ Un Habitante de Carcosa y otros Relatos de Terror. <--
★★★☆☆ Civil War Stories. [2.5]

-----------------------------------------------

Meh.

Estuvo bien, pero no vale la pena reseñarlo.

Al menos por ahora.

Es dominio público, lo pueden encontrar ACA.

-----------------------------------------------
NOTA PERSONAL :
[1891] [12p] [Horror] [2.5] [No Recomendable]
-----------------------------------------------

[The night gazer nomad · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely fascinating and mysterious short story , i loved it !
it's a thought provoking story .
"At that moment came in through the open window a long , wailing sound like the cry of a lost child in the far deeps of the darkening wood !"
I loved the description , in this quote and generally in the whole story. In that quote ,while I was reading it , i thought maybe his wife gave bearth to a child !
but it turned to be a vicious black panther !
the idea that murlock lived in a house in the forest with no lights in his house made the story even better ! the primitivity of one man's live !
I didn't totally understand the story , I only understood 90% of it , because i thought she was really dead , so in the end I had to find an explication to finding a fragment of the panther's ear in the dead woman's mouth : i came to 2 :
1- she became alive and bit the panther's ear (unlikely to happen)
2-the gunshot hit the panther's ear and a fragment fell in the dead woman's mouth (possible if the mouth is open)
But only today after I searched on google that she wasn't dead and that Murlock mistaked her for being dead !
I also loved the fact that the story ended the way it did , "Between the teeth was a fragment of the animal's ear " Bam , it stops right there ,with so much to think about, i loved that
overall it was an excellent read ! much fun , much suspence , big adventure , amazing events , if you know any story like this one , this type , these events , please let me know .

[Richie Kercenna · Rating 3 out of 5]

There is more mystery than horror in this short-story. The plot is engaging and thrilling. It builds and increases suspense, but when it is time to reveal the source of horror, it only yields a riddle and a mystery. Why did Murlock bar the window in his house? What is the significance of the panther's attack? And how did the animal's ear end up torn between the dead woman's teeth? Bierce ends his tale on a note of deep mystery that is even more intriguing with the endless possibilities and conjectures.

[Marwa · Rating 3 out of 5]

So there I was, totally absorbed in the story, saddened by Murlock's grief over his late wife,
When my kitty decided to give me a heart attack by jumping on me at the exact moment that
Murlock  heard "a long screaming unearthy sound came in through the window!"

And -to top it off- the audio version I was listening to had such a creepy sound effect .. Oh the nightmares I'm having tonight! lol

[K. Anna Kraft · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have arranged my thoughts into a haiku:

"A beautiful show
Of grief in a quiet form,
And also zombies."

[Edita · Rating 4 out of 5]

[…] for what but the magnetism of a blessed memory could have chained that venturesome spirit to a lot like that?
*
His heart could not contain it all, nor his imagination rightly conceive it. He did not know he was so hard struck; that knowledge would come later, and never go. Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs.

[Kavita · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think Ambrose Bierce is for me. The story starts off quite promising but fizzles off into a single sentence of chill at the end. The atmosphere-building is good but I like more meat to my horror.

This story is about a man called Murlock who lives in a house with a boarded window. He dies and is buried besides his wife who died many years ago, and therein lies a story. She was ailing and was dying. On the night that she died, something happened. It was not a very thrilling story/ The significance of the boarded window did not make itself felt either. Is the wife still in there? Is she not human? What's the significance here? *shrugs*

One word review: Boring!

[Marc D. ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5 estrellas.

Este me encantó, me sorprendió un montón. Después de terminar de leerlo tuve que buscar sí o sí un foto de discusión e interpretación para ese final, perdón 🙈

Pero bueno, otra joya 💖

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actual rating: 2.5 stars



This was a weird one. I couldn't really bring myself to care about the character Murlock or his wife for most of the story. I found the narration a bit confusing as it seemed to switch perspective and I thought the story lacked focus especially for being as short as it was. However, the ending was very action-packed and surreal so I gave it a higher rating since it held my interest at the end and left me wondering what actually happened.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a re-read, having first read the story in middle school. I think The Boarded Window was part of the curriculum in at least some US school districts in the 1980s, because I've seen other people online mention they had to read it too. After we read the story, we watched the short film of the same name (the 1973 version that can be found on YouTube at the time I'm writing this). That film remains one of the most vivid memories I have of my school days, specifically the end scene. I actually recommend watching the short film FIRST and then reading the short story. The film will creep you out, and then the story will fill in some of the details.

One of my favorite short stories, and I've already placed an order for a collection of Bierce horror stories to see if he's always this good.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

could sit down and read this with a dainty cup of tea or something

[Karen]

Read for my English class.

[Dana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read for my English course. It explores isolation, grief, and loss. I enjoyed the symbolism, but the writing style wasn’t a fit for me.

[Katy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Boarded Window not particularly exciting or memorable. Written somewhat in Edgar Allen Poe style of horror, but not what I expected after reading An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.

I listened to the audiobook it it rather droned on which sometimes works well with horror but not in this case.

I’ll try other stories by this author as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was spectacular… I’m sure other stories of his will be too… but this one… not so much!

[Olivia Caciuleanu · Rating 5 out of 5]

"Things cannot be as bad as they seem" my ass.

[Jörg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Spannend und am Ende sehr unerwartete Wendung, gut gelungen das Buch

[Michael Hickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Boarded Window

By Michael Hickey

Personal Response- I really enjoyed this short story. It was really fun to read and was a little suspenseful and eerie.

Plot- The story starts out with a young man telling a story about an old man and his cabin that the young man’s grandfather had told him. His story tells a young man who moved to the western frontier in the 1850’s. He was accompanied by his wife. He built himself and his wife a log cabin with one window and one door. The man’s name was Murlock. His wife died of a sickness rather abruptly. He was in shock and did not cry. He said that in the morning, he would build a coffin. Murlock prepared her body to be buried because there was nobody else around to do it. He layed her on the table and sat in a chair next to her. Murlock fell asleep in that chair. He was awoken in the middle of the night to a blood curdling noise. He didn’t know what it was and he also heard shuffling in his house. The table shook and was thrown against him. He was terrified and grabbed his gun. Murlock fired off a round not looking and saw what was happening through the light from the shot. There was a huge panther dragging his wife out the door. He then passed out. When he awoke, he saw his wife on the ground. The shot scared off the panther but there was something interesting about the crime scene. The ribbon he bound his wife’s hands with was ripped and she had a piece of the animal’s ear in her mouth. She was not dead until the panther came.

Characterization- Murlock is an old man that is always cooped up inside his boarded up cabin in the beginning of the story. He was also a young man at one point who was a trapper with a wife.

Rating/ Recommendation- I would rate this story at a 4 out of 5 stars. I really liked the story but it was difficult to understand the end the way that it was wrote. I did figure it out and it was really eerie. I would recommend this book to high schoolers and up because it does have some tough vocabulary.

[Leah Markum · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those stories you wonder whether it's good for being ambiguous and forcing you to carefully evaluate the text to decipher the meaning or it's annoying for leaving you utterly unsure of what nonsense happened.

We have an old man in the woods. Supposedly his wife died. Supposedly he witnessed some unusual things that could be supernatural, bizarrely real, or completely made up We're hearing this story third-hand or more: the narrator heard from his grandfather and others, and we don't know if they heard it from others or witnessed the events themselves. The narrator uses vague language that displaces authority like "supposedly," "apparently," and such. There's no grounds to figure out who has made up what.

Was the wife alive? Was there ever a beast? Which, if any, did he shoot? Was it all a dream? Even from the main character's, Murloc's, perspective nothing is for sure. Maybe both he and the narrator are delusional. Why is it even called The Boarded Window? It's barely mentioned. The table had a larger and more apparent role in the plot.

I had to read other reviews and search other websites for enough information just to put together this review. Otherwise I may have written, "Huh?" "Bleh." "*shrug*." Or something else just as vague as the story.

Overall, I have mixed feelings. I would appreciate more clues as to what actually happened and which story--Murloc's or the narrator's--was the real story. On the other hand, it's fun to ponder and discuss such a mysterious work.

[Avery · Rating 3 out of 5]

Personal Response: My personal response for this story is going to be that it did not make that much sense. I provided 1st person point of view, but never gave a name or example of who is talking. It felt like i was reading a 3rd grader's autobiography on his/her's life.
Plot Summary: The book started out with somebody talking about a cabin in the middle of the woods with a boarded up window, hence the title of the book. Then the person talked about a man by the name "Murloc". Then they said that Murloc died and was buried next to his dead wife. After saying that Murlocs dead, the person talked about him.He talked about how he dies. Saying that he was dreaming and then awoke just to find out what or who awoke him. It was some animal. And then at the end of the story it said a body was sticking out the window and in its teeth the animal's ear. This saying that the man dies while ripping off the ear of the animal.
Recommendations: I recommend this book to people who are bored of reading 3/5 stars... maybe 2.5/5.
And well it being a short story there isn´t much to go off of.

[Althea Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is this tale supposed to be a tie-in to Bierce's other story, 'Eyes of the Panther,' or is it just similar in theme? I'm not sure. I felt that it was a less-successful variation of the story, as there's no explanation or seeming meaning behind why the 'creepy' events occur.

An old hunter-trapper, out on the frontier, has lived alone in his modest cabin for years. His one window has remained boarded shut for as long as anyone can remember. This is the story of why he boarded that window for good.

[Latie · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum.” – Ambrose Bierce

An interesting short story by Ambrose Bierce on love and loss. As beautiful as these prose are, what makes it exceptional is the haunting quality it is written in.

[Jesse Field · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Boarded Window” is just under 2,000 words long, yet wound like a spring to deliver a dramatic punch in its final scene, which makes it worth taking apart to really study the parts, and perhaps to backwards-engineer another version of that dramatic energy.

Back when the Ohio River Valley was forested, a man named Murlock built a log house and lived off the land. Now the old cabin sits empty, with one boarded window, and the speaker heard from his grandfather the story of that boarded window. It goes like this: once, long before, Murlock had had a good wife, game to partner with him on frontier life, but she fell prostrate to fever, and passed away. Alone in the wilderness, Murlock laid her out on the table in the cabin and did his best to prepare her for burial. That evening, weary Murlock was awakened by an uncanny cry, leading us to a short but intense episode with a wildcat.

This bare synopsis shows my division of the story into sections, but hardly does more than hint at the theme: this is the story of a man who must learn to grieve, albeit in his own, gruff, ruggedly individualist way. Just before the climax sequence, Bierce reflects solemnly, and somewhat grandiloquently, on grief.

Grief is an artist of powers as various as the instruments upon which he plays his dirges for the dead, evoking from some the sharpest, shrillest notes, from others the low, grave chords that throb recurrent like the slow beating of a distant drum. Some natures it startles; some it stupefies. To one it comes like the stroke of an arrow, stinging all the sensibilities to a keener life; to another as the blow of a bludgeon, which in crushing benumbs.

Bierce refers obliquely to a theory that human natures are very diverse, a generalization of his early reflection that “the people of the frontier” hold in their natures “some mysterious impulse” that drives them away from habitation toward “new perils.” Some are driven to explore; some, to settle down. Murlock was an explorer par excellence, until his wife died, chaining his “venturesome spirit” to the cabin and the lot for the rest of his life. Like many a gruff pioneer, Murlock does not easily express feeling, except perhaps by sunning himself on a stoop, or reducing a few trees to stumps with his ax. His lifelong occupation of the log cabin with its boarded up window is his way of grieving, and perhaps doing penance for, the loss of his love.

All of this would be boring, insightful as it is, without the potent climatic sequence that ends the story. A mysterious cry, blood chilled and breath held in the dark; sound of footfall and the thud of a body on the floor; flash of gunfire illumines a panther dragging off his wife; finally, the “a fragment of the animal’s ear.” The energy of the climax comes through in the dense and rapid advance of the imagery, especially in contrast to the deliberately reflective and prosaic section preceding this action.
But consider, what is happening to Murlock here? How is his need to grieve affected by the incident of the panther? The scene is perfectly ambiguous, at once a testament of his wife’s love, but also a terrible mark of Murlock’s guilt over not taking better care of his wife.

In the positive aspect, Murlock, taciturn explorer, is knocked out of his insensible weariness by a symbol of the “perils” his pioneer spirit relishes. The rifle is one of his familiar tools for surviving on the land, and it serves a clear purpose here. Say his wife really was dead, on that table as the evening came on. It shows her tenacity, that she crossed back from eternal rest to perform one more act, that she not be separated from her husband and his lot.

If Murlock could have understood the events as such, he might have completed his grieving and regained the gumption to go abroad again. But apparently not. Murlock cannot ignore the negative aspect of the situation. He put this life, which he valued above all, in danger. It’s his fault she fell prostrate so far from help (not that medicine was of much use in those days, I might have consoled Murlock). He tried to care for her properly, but apparently he could not even determine the line between life and death, and laid her out on the table before her time. And it was his weary insensibility to all on that evening that gave the panther its opening to come in through the window. Hence the title, “Boarded Window” – Murlock’s cabin window becomes a symbol of his permanent state of guilt. Just as he boarded up the window, so he boarded up his own zest for life, perhaps as a kind of penance, a protocol for grief in the wake of a tragedy he must judge caused by him and him alone.

The negative aspect determines Murlock’s life as a widower. But the positive aspect is perhaps the true lesson of the story. In 2024, it’s getting hard to remember how generally Americans once celebrated the pioneer spirit. Some blame the lack of new places to explore, but I rather think it has to do with the diversification of stories we tell. No longer do tales of pioneer life dominate so large in our imagination. That is not an ethical point, but just an observation. One last observation: we can take up the ideal of pioneer at any time, and likely reactivate it, at least in a small audience. The “mysterious impulse” to go where none have gone before, to face perils and make gains, certainly have not gone away, but remain basic to human nature.

[Walter]

wilderness....darkness.....fear....grief!

[Paul LaFontaine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Another Bierce power story, short and enjoyable. The man who finds his wife dead to discover perhaps he had it wrong in the end. Recommend.

[Roman Pikalyuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hello Happy Tree Friends?

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not my favorite short story, however did have me keep wondring what was gonna happen. Quite suspenseful.

[David Meditationseed · Rating 5 out of 5]

A tale about death, not only that of those who pass through it, but that of those who remain alive, feeling the processes of loss, of mourning; which comes in varying forms as Bierce points out: "Mourning is an artist of powers as diverse as the instruments in which the requiem plays for the dead, in some evoking the sharper, more strident notes, in others the lower, grave, recurring tones like the slow sound of a distant drum. For some people, mourning frightens. For others, immobilize. For some people it arrives like an arrow sticking, spurring the senses to a sharper perception, to others it is like a deaf coup, that stuns".

In this story death and mourning arrive in a wooden house, isolated in a forest where only one man lives. In a steril land that neither blossoms nor fruit. With this man, only his solitude, a window blocked by wooden planks and the sounds of the forest, which may seem like cries of a desperate child.