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Collected Fiction #1
Collected Fiction Volume 1: Tales of Psychological and Supernatural Horror
From the beginning of his career, Ambrose Bierce wrote stories of all different types-humorous sketches, satirical squibs, and weird tales. This volume prints some of his most memorable fiction-his tales of psychological and supernatural horror. Bierce was a profound student of the psychology of fear, and his tales depicted human beings succumbing to the fear of death ("A Watcher by the Dead"), fear of wild animals ("The Man and the Snake," "The Eyes of the Panther"), and the inhumanity of human beings against their own kind ("A Holy Terror," "A Baby Tramp"). Other tales venture into the supernatural, introducing the notion of revenants ("The Death of Halpin Frayser"), ghosts ("The Moonlit Road"), and haunted houses ("The Boarded Window"). Some stories are forward-looking tales of science fiction ("The Damned Thing," "Moxon's Master"), while others appear to be parodies of the fashionable spiritualism of the day. Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?) was the leading American writer of weird fiction between Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. Having served in some of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War, Bierce settled in San Francisco, where he became a fearless journalist and satirist, attacking corrupt politicians, long-winded clerics, wretched poetasters, and others who incurred his wrath. The stories in this volume are presented in definitive texts based on a consultation of manuscripts and early publications. They are edited by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Bierce and weird fiction.
- GenresHorror
360 pages, Paperback
Published December 31, 2020
9 people want to read
About the author
Ambrose Bierce
2,425 books1,297 followersdied 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!"
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!"
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 16, 2025
When I started digging deeper into Weird Fiction post-Lovecraft, I was pleased to find Hippocampus Press’s three-volume collection of Ambrose Bierce’s fiction. I am a delver at heart and while “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” and, to a lesser extent, “Haita the Shepherd” would be the main required reading as far as it pertains to the Bierce–Chambers–Lovecraft trio timeline, I would have been missing out on so much. For instance, I was deeply interested in reading his American Civil War stories. I also knew that I wanted to see his other ghost tales after reading “The Moonlit Road” in Barnes and Noble’s Classic Ghost Stories Compilation.
S. T. Joshi attempted to divide Bierce’s works into three groups. This first volume catalogs the majority of his supernatural and otherwise horror-oriented fiction. The exceptions are mostly a handful of ghost stories set during or associated with the Civil War, so they are included in the second volume (Collected Fiction Volume 2: Tales of the Civil War and Tales of the Grotesque), which gathers Bierce’s Civil War fiction alongside a grouping of tales and sketches labeled “grotesques”. The third and final volume chiefly concerns Bierce’s most pointedly satirical output.
There is a fair amount of crossover between these stories and Joshi’s groupings of grotesques and satires. A true “grotesque”, I guess, is something like The Aristocrats joke, with Bierce starting with something outlandish and then taking it as far–or as gross–as he dares. “One Summer Night”, found in this collection, starts with a man who is buried alive, and then is dug up by medical students as Biercian resurrection men, only for them to flee in terror when the presumed dead guy sits up, only for the laborer to murder the man to ensure that he gets paid for the body. If I had read this story in the second volume, I would not have batted an eye.
To paint with a broad brush, there are myriad subgenres of horror fiction found in this collection. The main thrust of Bierce’s psychological horror stories involves people who are scared to death through a perfect alignment of circumstances. Sometimes there is an element of the supernatural, as with “One of the Twins”, but the victim typically suffers from a mental shock. “The Man Out of the Nose” sort of fits within this framework, except the subject of the story is a still-living person who behaves as if he were a ghost.
I would break down the supernatural part of the collection first in two. A fair number of stories are presented as factual accounts of ghosts, haunted houses, corpses moving on their own, and people vanishing into thin air. Imagine, if you will, creepypasta from the late 1800s. I found these uncanny accounts fascinating. If you would’ve told me that Bierce was reporting secondhand accounts of supernatural events then I would’ve believed you. Joshi’s notes in the collection portray Bierce as doing a straight-faced parody of the Society for Psychical Research, which I guess would potentially land these stories in the realm of hoaxes. I don’t know; having read all of Bierce’s grotesques and satires, it’s hard to imagine him being so subtle. I have read precious little of his nonfiction, though, and there ARE those questionable “wronged women” stories in the third volume.
The remaining supernatural stories range from ghosts to psychic visitations to hypnotist bullies to stranger things, like the invisible monster of “The Damned Thing” or the sore loser robot in “Moxon’s Master”. My sleeper favorite is “An Untitled Tale”, the last item in the collection. The sketch has a man describing repeated brushes with cosmic horror, bridging the gulf between dimensions with experiences beyond any describable human emotion. “A Vine on a House” would make for a pretty good lowkey horror Junji Ito story. I liked “Beyond the Wall” as it’s an early example of the occult scholar trope, complete with a fictitious tome, and it’s implied that the scholar has a sympathetic motivation for all of the questionable research that he’s been up to. “The Death of Halpin Frayser” is an awesome, dense horror story that ticks some Gothic boxes, particularly a squicky, incestual love between a mother and son. The dream imagery that Halpin sees right before his death is powerful.
“An Inhabitant of Carcosa” is a great ghost story to me because 1) it’s written from the ghost’s point of view and 2) Carcosa itself suggests the vastness of the depths of prehistory that later authors like Lovecraft, Smith, and Howard would kick around in. I loved “The Moonlit Road” when I first read it and still love it, again because of Julia Hetman’s testimony from beyond the veil. The ghost’s limited viewpoint, with her alluding to features of the afterlife yet explicitly saying very little, adds something to the three-POV trinity of the father, the son, and the spirit of the wife.
“Haita the Shepherd” does not fit in with any of these stories but it would fit even less among the second or third volumes. The origin of Hastur is as good a reason as any to place it here alongside “Carcosa”. It’s written like a fable and if I were going to compare it to anything it would be Lovecraft’s attempts at Dunsanian fantasy. Hastur’s original incarnation is pretty much an Abrahamic deity so it’s clear that, as far as Bierce’s influence on cosmic horror goes, it’s more about Chambers namechecking Carcosa and Hastur.
A few of these stories are not really horror. “A Jug of Sirup”, for instance, has the ghost of a shopkeeper, who had an inhuman work ethic in life, resume his business. The town tries to run him out but, well, they’re forced to allow him to work if he so desires. “A Lady From Redhorse” is a short romance that plays up the idea of a woman unknowingly entering into occult dalliances, namedropping Madame Blavatsky among other things, but it’s revealed as a practical joke. “The Applicant” starts with a child finding a body in the snow but this slice of apparent horror isn’t followed up on. The flashback that explains the opening feels more like a satire of human cruelty than anything.
After reading some of the Nightshade Press Clark Ashton Smith collections, I was excited to see an appendix with supplementary material. Beyond I suppose Bierce’s sparse introductions to the collections published within his lifetime, the included items feel entirely superfluous as they consist of “single” versions of the factitious ghost stories found in the main part of this collection. I didn’t get much value from their inclusion here but I can appreciate their presence as a completionist.
I enjoyed this collection of Bierce just as much if not more so than the second volume. The best of the Weird Fiction here is amazing and I loved the late 19th century creepypasta stories. Their straightforward presentation helps to break up the relentless barrage of twist endings.
If you want a spoiler-laden rundown of every single story, you can look at my activity for this book. I've written some kind of a summary and, if I felt so obliged, commentary for each one.
S. T. Joshi attempted to divide Bierce’s works into three groups. This first volume catalogs the majority of his supernatural and otherwise horror-oriented fiction. The exceptions are mostly a handful of ghost stories set during or associated with the Civil War, so they are included in the second volume (Collected Fiction Volume 2: Tales of the Civil War and Tales of the Grotesque), which gathers Bierce’s Civil War fiction alongside a grouping of tales and sketches labeled “grotesques”. The third and final volume chiefly concerns Bierce’s most pointedly satirical output.
There is a fair amount of crossover between these stories and Joshi’s groupings of grotesques and satires. A true “grotesque”, I guess, is something like The Aristocrats joke, with Bierce starting with something outlandish and then taking it as far–or as gross–as he dares. “One Summer Night”, found in this collection, starts with a man who is buried alive, and then is dug up by medical students as Biercian resurrection men, only for them to flee in terror when the presumed dead guy sits up, only for the laborer to murder the man to ensure that he gets paid for the body. If I had read this story in the second volume, I would not have batted an eye.
To paint with a broad brush, there are myriad subgenres of horror fiction found in this collection. The main thrust of Bierce’s psychological horror stories involves people who are scared to death through a perfect alignment of circumstances. Sometimes there is an element of the supernatural, as with “One of the Twins”, but the victim typically suffers from a mental shock. “The Man Out of the Nose” sort of fits within this framework, except the subject of the story is a still-living person who behaves as if he were a ghost.
I would break down the supernatural part of the collection first in two. A fair number of stories are presented as factual accounts of ghosts, haunted houses, corpses moving on their own, and people vanishing into thin air. Imagine, if you will, creepypasta from the late 1800s. I found these uncanny accounts fascinating. If you would’ve told me that Bierce was reporting secondhand accounts of supernatural events then I would’ve believed you. Joshi’s notes in the collection portray Bierce as doing a straight-faced parody of the Society for Psychical Research, which I guess would potentially land these stories in the realm of hoaxes. I don’t know; having read all of Bierce’s grotesques and satires, it’s hard to imagine him being so subtle. I have read precious little of his nonfiction, though, and there ARE those questionable “wronged women” stories in the third volume.
The remaining supernatural stories range from ghosts to psychic visitations to hypnotist bullies to stranger things, like the invisible monster of “The Damned Thing” or the sore loser robot in “Moxon’s Master”. My sleeper favorite is “An Untitled Tale”, the last item in the collection. The sketch has a man describing repeated brushes with cosmic horror, bridging the gulf between dimensions with experiences beyond any describable human emotion. “A Vine on a House” would make for a pretty good lowkey horror Junji Ito story. I liked “Beyond the Wall” as it’s an early example of the occult scholar trope, complete with a fictitious tome, and it’s implied that the scholar has a sympathetic motivation for all of the questionable research that he’s been up to. “The Death of Halpin Frayser” is an awesome, dense horror story that ticks some Gothic boxes, particularly a squicky, incestual love between a mother and son. The dream imagery that Halpin sees right before his death is powerful.
“An Inhabitant of Carcosa” is a great ghost story to me because 1) it’s written from the ghost’s point of view and 2) Carcosa itself suggests the vastness of the depths of prehistory that later authors like Lovecraft, Smith, and Howard would kick around in. I loved “The Moonlit Road” when I first read it and still love it, again because of Julia Hetman’s testimony from beyond the veil. The ghost’s limited viewpoint, with her alluding to features of the afterlife yet explicitly saying very little, adds something to the three-POV trinity of the father, the son, and the spirit of the wife.
“Haita the Shepherd” does not fit in with any of these stories but it would fit even less among the second or third volumes. The origin of Hastur is as good a reason as any to place it here alongside “Carcosa”. It’s written like a fable and if I were going to compare it to anything it would be Lovecraft’s attempts at Dunsanian fantasy. Hastur’s original incarnation is pretty much an Abrahamic deity so it’s clear that, as far as Bierce’s influence on cosmic horror goes, it’s more about Chambers namechecking Carcosa and Hastur.
A few of these stories are not really horror. “A Jug of Sirup”, for instance, has the ghost of a shopkeeper, who had an inhuman work ethic in life, resume his business. The town tries to run him out but, well, they’re forced to allow him to work if he so desires. “A Lady From Redhorse” is a short romance that plays up the idea of a woman unknowingly entering into occult dalliances, namedropping Madame Blavatsky among other things, but it’s revealed as a practical joke. “The Applicant” starts with a child finding a body in the snow but this slice of apparent horror isn’t followed up on. The flashback that explains the opening feels more like a satire of human cruelty than anything.
After reading some of the Nightshade Press Clark Ashton Smith collections, I was excited to see an appendix with supplementary material. Beyond I suppose Bierce’s sparse introductions to the collections published within his lifetime, the included items feel entirely superfluous as they consist of “single” versions of the factitious ghost stories found in the main part of this collection. I didn’t get much value from their inclusion here but I can appreciate their presence as a completionist.
I enjoyed this collection of Bierce just as much if not more so than the second volume. The best of the Weird Fiction here is amazing and I loved the late 19th century creepypasta stories. Their straightforward presentation helps to break up the relentless barrage of twist endings.
If you want a spoiler-laden rundown of every single story, you can look at my activity for this book. I've written some kind of a summary and, if I felt so obliged, commentary for each one.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 14, 2025
A great collection of Ambrose Bierce's supernatural fiction edited by S. T. Joshi. See below for this collection's contents.
The Discomfited Demon
The Haunted Valley
The Night-Doings at "Deadman's"
The Famous Gilson Bequest
A Psychological Shipwreck
A Holy Terror
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
The Man out of the Nose
Bodies of the Dead
Hither from Hades
Behind the Veil
Whither?
One of Twins
Two Haunted Houses
The Suitable Surroundings
A Watcher by the Dead
The Man and the Snake
The Realm of the Unreal
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
Haïta the Shepherd
A Lady from Redhorse
The Boarded Window
The Secret of Macarger's Gulch
The Thing at Nolan
A Baby Tramp
The Death of Halpin Frayser
An Adventure at Brownville
The Applicant
John Bartine's Watch
The Damned Thing
A Jug of Sirup
The Eyes of the Panther
Moxon's Master
At Old Man Eckert's
A Diagnosis of Death
A Vine on a House
A Man with Two Lives
A Wireless Message
An Arrest
One Summer Night
John Mortonson's Funeral
The Moonlit Road
Beyond the Wall
The Stranger
An Untitled Tale
APPENDIX A: VARIANT TEXTS
Bodies of the Dead
--Granny Magone
--A Light Sleeper
--The Mystery of Charles Farquharson
--"Dead and Gone"
--A Cold Night
--A Creature of Habit
Present at a Hanging
A Fruitless Assignment
The Isle of Pines
A Cold Greeting
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
An Unfinished Race
Charles Ashmore's Trail
The Spook House
A Doppleganger
APPENDIX B: Bierce on His Fiction
Preface to Bubbles Like Us
Preface to Can Such Things Be?
[Prefatory Note to "The Ways of Ghosts"]
The Discomfited Demon
The Haunted Valley
The Night-Doings at "Deadman's"
The Famous Gilson Bequest
A Psychological Shipwreck
A Holy Terror
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
The Man out of the Nose
Bodies of the Dead
Hither from Hades
Behind the Veil
Whither?
One of Twins
Two Haunted Houses
The Suitable Surroundings
A Watcher by the Dead
The Man and the Snake
The Realm of the Unreal
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
Haïta the Shepherd
A Lady from Redhorse
The Boarded Window
The Secret of Macarger's Gulch
The Thing at Nolan
A Baby Tramp
The Death of Halpin Frayser
An Adventure at Brownville
The Applicant
John Bartine's Watch
The Damned Thing
A Jug of Sirup
The Eyes of the Panther
Moxon's Master
At Old Man Eckert's
A Diagnosis of Death
A Vine on a House
A Man with Two Lives
A Wireless Message
An Arrest
One Summer Night
John Mortonson's Funeral
The Moonlit Road
Beyond the Wall
The Stranger
An Untitled Tale
APPENDIX A: VARIANT TEXTS
Bodies of the Dead
--Granny Magone
--A Light Sleeper
--The Mystery of Charles Farquharson
--"Dead and Gone"
--A Cold Night
--A Creature of Habit
Present at a Hanging
A Fruitless Assignment
The Isle of Pines
A Cold Greeting
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
An Unfinished Race
Charles Ashmore's Trail
The Spook House
A Doppleganger
APPENDIX B: Bierce on His Fiction
Preface to Bubbles Like Us
Preface to Can Such Things Be?
[Prefatory Note to "The Ways of Ghosts"]
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