Customer Reviews

Terror by Night (Wordsworth Mystery & Supernatural) (Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural)

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Wordsworth Editions, published in London, has a wonderful thing going with its current series entitled "Tales of Mystery & the Supernatural," bringing back into print short-story collections and full-length novels from such relatively unknown authors as Gertrude Atherton, Edith Nesbit, D.K. Broster, Marjorie Bowen, May Sinclair and Dennis Wheatley. The imprint's collection of horror tales from Ohio-born Ambrose Bierce is a very satisfying and generous one, gathering 51 of the author's more shuddery pieces, out of the 90 or so from his complete oeuvre. (Bierce never wrote any longer pieces, calling the novel, in typically cynical fashion, "a short story padded.") Bierce, who was born in 1842 and died mysteriously, most likely in Mexico, around 1914, wrote tales that have been elsewhere divided into three categories: Tales of Horror, Tall Tales and Tales of the Civil War, in which he fought with distinction on the Union side. But these three loose categories don't tell the full story; his most famous short piece, for example, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," while certainly being a tale of war, is also undeniably a psychological horror story. Indeed, a reader of this volume will quickly discern at least eight types of Bierce tales therein; more on that in a moment. All the stories in this collection display an extremely fine polish as regards writing technique (some of the tales may even be accused of being overwritten) and a cynical, often merciless worldview. The author was not nicknamed "Bitter Bierce" for nothing, and there is absolutely no way for the reader to predict whether or not any character, be it man, woman or child, will suffer a horrible fate. As no less a critic than H.P. Lovecraft wrote of Bierce's writing, in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature": "[There is in it] a rare strain of sardonic comedy and graveyard humour, and a kind of delight in images of cruelty and tantalising disappointment." And as David Stuart Davies mentions, in his well-written and informative intro to this edition, "His stories invariably turn on these strange and often heart-stopping twists of fate--twists that are calculated to shock and shake the reader out of a comfortable complacency...."

As to those eight types of tales found in this volume, by far the most commonly encountered is the Ghost Tale, such as "A Baby Tramp," in which a mother's ghost lures its baby son on a cross-country pilgrimage; "The Moonlit Road," a murderous tale told from three vantages, including the dead wife; "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot," in which another murdered wife (little love is lost in these grisly Bierce stories!) takes a hideous vengeance; and "Staley Fleming's Hallucination," which features what may be literature's earliest canine ghost. Then there are the purely Supernatural Tales, such as "The Spook House," with its unescapable room filled with corpses; "A Wireless Message," in which a man sees his wife's flaming doom from 1,000 miles away; and "John Bartine's Watch," with its accursed timepiece. Of course, there are the Civil War Tales, and if "Occurrence" is the best-known of the six presented here, it is not alone in quality. "One of the Missing" tells of the terrible plight of a Union soldier who is trapped beneath the wreckage of a bombarded building; "Chickamauga" describes the outcome of that horrible battle through the eyes of a 6-year-old boy; and "Three and One Are One," "The Affair at Coulter's Notch" and "The Mocking-Bird" all tell ironic tales of how the war divided families and turned son against father, husband against wife, and brother against brother. And speaking of horrible, what I refer to as Bierce's purely Horrible Doings is the fourth category here; tales that tell of characters visited by truly horrendous fates. "The Man Out of the Nose" tells of the tragic end that a married man's love affair brings about; "The Applicant" tells the sorry story of a poor old man on Christmas Eve; "A Holy Terror" gives us a gold prospector violating the grounds in a deserted cemetery; and "The Eyes of the Panther" tells of how a tragedy involving a wildcat has a far-reaching psychological impact on a woman later on. Then there are what I suppose one might call Strange Doings; tales, many of them short shorts, that make you scratch your head and go "Wha?" In "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field," "An Unfinished Race" and "Charles Ashmore's Trail," men mysteriously vanish without a trace; in "John Mortonson's Funeral," a hungry feline interrupts a man's mourning family; and in "An Adventure at Brownville," an opera singer seemingly has a murderous effect on women. Bierce also wrote what may be regarded as two Science Fiction Tales, and they are both doozies: "Moxon's Master," featuring a nasty-tempered, chess-playing automaton, and "The Damned Thing," with its invisible, field-dwelling creatures. The seventh category here is Tales of Murder, of which "An Imperfect Conflagration" is a perfect example; here, a man casually murders both his parents to possess himself of a music box. (Well, at least he had a good reason!) Finally, there are the Unclassifiable Tales; stories that are difficult to synopsize, much less describe. In "Haita the Shepherd," a lad learns a hard lesson about the essence of happiness; in "The Night Doings at 'Deadman's'," a man sits in a shanty waiting for the ghost of a "Chinaman" whose braid he cut off; in "The Death of Halpin Frayser," a man walks through a forest that is dripping with blood to meet the spirit of his dead mother....

As you can see, a wide assortment of story types, plots and settings. Most of the stories here are concise to the point of terseness; only two stories are longer than 10 pages, and many barely fill two. Elegantly written by a master wordsmith, and filled with concisely etched characters and backdrops, there is certainly not much in the way of padding. Brilliantly cynical, as would be expected from the man who gave the world "The Devil's Dictionary," the tales presented here often provoke a guffaw in the middle of a shudder. Bottom line: All readers who have not yet had the pleasure of encountering this true master of the art should certainly pounce!

Ghosts and haunted houses, dying Civil War soldiers and attacking beasts, things unseen and terrors imagined: this volume collects 51 of Ambrose Bierce's short stories. It's not an imprint which you pick up for its own sake, but rather because it's the Bierce collection closest at hand. The introduction is adequate but awkwardly written and hardly comprehensive; the collection itself is not all of Bierce's short fiction, and the arrangement is adequate--never poor or jarring, and sometimes aiding the flow between stories. It isn't a volume that I recommend outright, but if it does happen to be the Bierce collection closest at hand, then do pick it up--because Bierce is worth reading. He's a deceptively simple writer: his tone is straightforward and his penchant for twist endings can grow predictable (and, the danger of a collection, may grow repetitive as well), but in that straightforwardness hides understatement. Dry wit, insightful irony, startling human perception, and no lack of horror--some human, some otherworldly, all of it crossing the boundary between the two in the impact it has on those involved--are all presented in a bare style that mimics simplicity but is actually skillful subtlety. Bierce's dark humor is delightful, and his horror is both intriguing and chilling, both as fearful pleasure and something outright unsettling.

For all of this, Bierce is not my new favorite short fiction author, in part because I do find his twist endings repeditive, in part because not all of his themes--family issues and human folly, ghosts and the Civil War--appeal to my own personal interests. But his voice and style do appeal to me, and as they are short, finely crafted, and often intriguing, I found Bierce's stories both addicting and supremely satisfying, and enjoyed this sampling of his short fiction. "An Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge," "An Imperfect Conflagration," and "The Damned Thing" were my favorites, but few stories disappointed me. Give or take this specific collection, but I recommend Bierce--to fans of horror and of short fiction, for he excelled at both.

I have recently been on a Victorian and Edwardian ghost story binge. I bought many of the Wordsworth editions. This is by far one of my very favorites. Many say M.R. James is the best ghost story writer out there, and while he is good, I really do prefer the Ambrose Bierce stories. You won't be disappointed in this collection. One comment on the quality of the paperback...the paper is cheaper and the bindings tend to split at the bottom with normal reading. Just a note if you are particular on your binding/cover qualities. Right now, this seems to be one of the only publishing houses seriously releasing these stories and the price is in accordance with the quality.

I firmly believe that tales of the supernatural are more effective in short-story form. Sure, you can't get the slow build-up of suspense that a full-length novel might allow, but when I look back over my own reading experiences it is the short-story format that I've found most effective in scaring the living daylights out of me. Perhaps because of their immediacy and the shortened time period in which they are read, it is writers such as Algernon Blackwood and M.R. James who have left their morbid and macabre stories permanently imprinted on my memory.

Ambrose Bierce belongs firmly in their camp, understanding that the most frightening components of any story are dreamt up in the reader's imagination. The writer must set the scene, the tone, and the mystery, and then simply let the reader do the rest of the work...

Born in 1842 in Horse Creek, Ohio, the tenth of thirteen children who were all given names that started with the letter A, it comes as little surprise that a man with such a difficult life was capable of writing such strange, unnerving stories that deal predominantly with the inherent unfairness of life and the cruel twists of fate that it accords mankind - all with a supernatural twist, of course.

Bierce's childhood was an unhappy one, fraught with poverty and family problems, though he was able to escape his disadvantaged youth through service in the army during the American Civil War. Beginning a career in journalism, Bierce also endured the death of his son, the dissolution of his marriage, and eventually his own mysterious disappearance in 1912, in which he travelled to Mexico and was never seen or heard from again.

In his introduction David Stuart Davies describes Bierce as "a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul," and his life's tribulations are reflected in the content and themes of his stories. Many of them feature the poisonous nature of families ("An Imperfect Conflagration" opens with a matter-of-fact statement by a man who is recounting his murder of his father) and the brutality of war combined with the lurking threat of the unknowable and uncontrollable supernatural. In doing so, Bierce is sometimes credited with the creation of a new genre: that of the short story that begins as a war story, but gradually turns into a psychological terror story. No doubt inspired by his own experiences during the war, some of Bierce's most powerful stories are set during the civil war. "One of the Missing", concerns a soldier who finds himself trapped in a collapsed building, face to face with the barrel of his own rifle, unable to move or look away. Then there's "The Mockingbird", in which a sentry is certain that he's shot-down a Confederate soldier and becomes obsessed with his unexplainable urge to seek out the body.

Bierce is not for the casual reader, for his writing style needs your full attention. His syntax is complicated and his plots are vague to the point of incomprehensibility - yet at the same time his tone can be curt and brusque, wasting no time on superfluous details or scene-setting. Once read, you're never quite sure whether you've been given a full understanding of the events therein, and the final twists can be so brutal that despite the demand for an instant re-read in order to pick up on some of the subtleties that lead to each dénouement, you're left hesitating on whether you *want* to fully grasp what you've just read. Bierce hints at some horrifying realities, both in the supernatural and human realms, which are carefully hidden behind his words and insinuations, and which are perhaps best kept as ambiguities.

Two traits constantly emerge in Bierce's writing: his shock endings, and his refusal to give us all the information we need to figure out the mystery at the core of each tale. In the fifty-one short-stories collected here you will find the usual attributes of spooky stories: unsolved murders that are solved by supernatural occurrences, people who simply disappear without a trace, doctors attempting to explain mysterious illnesses as psychosis or hallucinations, only to concede their ignorance when faced with the unexplainable.

Some readers may find the twist endings repetitive after a while (especially if they're being read in succession), but it is in the telling of these stories that Bierce's strength as a writer lies. It is not what his stories are about but *how* he tells them; not what is said, but what is *not* said, leaving the reader to fill in the blanks. And ultimately, the cruel twists at the end are very much in accord with his own philosophy: "Death is not the end. There remains the litigation over the estate."

Beginning with what is perhaps his most famous short-story "Occurrence at Owl Creek" which was adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone Bierce's anthology may not make for a light, enjoyable read, but if you're in the mood to be unsettled and disturbed, and have the patience to pick carefully through his dense prose, you'll be rewarded with a haunting reading experience. Often Bierce hooks you into the tale, right from the opening sentence:

"One sunny autumn afternoon a child strayed away from its rude home in a small field and entered a forest unobserved." (Chickamauga)

"It was a singularly sharp night, and clear as the heart of a diamond. Clear nights have a trick of being keen. In darkness you may be cold and not know it; when you see, you suffer. This night was bright enough to bite like a serpent." (The Night Doings At Deadman)

"I am the most unfortunate of men. Rich, respected, fairly well educated and of sound health - I sometimes think I would be less unhappy if they had been denied me, for then the contrast between my outer and inner life would not be continually demanding a painful attention." (The Moonlit Road)