Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories by Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)

By Ambrose Bierce

This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce’.

Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Bierce includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

eBook features:
* The complete unabridged text of ‘Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories’
* Beautifully illustrated with images related to Bierce’s works
* Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
* Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jul 17, 2017
• ISBN: 9781786564306

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was an American novelist and short story writer. Born in Meigs County, Ohio, Bierce was raised Indiana in a poor family who treasured literature and extolled the value of education. Despite this, he left school at 15 to work as a printer’s apprentice, otherwise known as a “devil”, for the Northern Indianan, an abolitionist newspaper. At the outbreak of the American Civil War, he enlisted in the Union infantry and was present at some of the conflict’s most harrowing events, including the Battle of Shiloh in 1862. During the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in 1864, Bierce—by then a lieutenant—suffered a serious brain injury and was discharged the following year. After a brief re-enlistment, he resigned from the Army and settled in San Francisco, where he worked for years as a newspaper editor and crime reporter. In addition to his career in journalism, Bierce wrote a series of realist stories including “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” and “Chickamauga,” which depict the brutalities of warfare while emphasizing the psychological implications of violence. In 1906, he published The Devil’s Dictionary, a satirical dictionary compiled from numerous installments written over several decades for newspapers and magazines. In 1913, he accompanied Pancho Villa’s army as an observer of the Mexican Revolution and disappeared without a trace at the age of 71.

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AMBROSE BIERCE

VOLUME 6 OF 35

Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories

Parts Edition

By Delphi Classics, 2013

Version 1

COPYRIGHT

‘Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories’

Ambrose Bierce: Parts Edition (in 35 parts)

First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

© Delphi Classics, 2017.

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

ISBN: 978 1 78656 430 6

Delphi Classics

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Delphi Publishing Ltd

Hastings, East Sussex

United Kingdom

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www.delphiclassics.com

Ambrose Bierce: Parts Edition

This eBook is Part 6 of the Delphi Classics edition of Ambrose Bierce in 35 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Ambrose Bierce, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Ambrose Bierce or the Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce in a single eBook.

Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

AMBROSE BIERCE

IN 35 VOLUMES

Parts Edition Contents

The Novellas

1, The Dance of Death

2, The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter

3, The Land Beyond the Blow

The Short Story Collections

4, The Fiend’s Delight

5, Cobwebs from an Empty Skull

6, Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories

7, In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians

8, Can Such Things Be?

9, Fantastic Fables

10, Negligible Tales

11, The Parenticide Club

12, The Fourth Estate

13, The Ocean Wave

14, Kings of Beasts

15, Two Administrations

16, Miscellaneous Tales

The Poetry Collections

17, Black Beetles in Amber

18, Shapes of Clay

19, Fables in Rhyme

20, Some Ante-Mortem Epitaphs

21, The Scrap Heap

The Non-Fiction

22, The Shadow on the Dial, and Other Essays

23, The Devil’s Dictionary

24, Write It Right

25, Ashes of the Beacon

26, On with the Dance!: A Review

27, A Cynic Looks at Life

28, Tangential Views

29, Bits of Autobiography

30, Miscellaneous Articles and Reviews

31, Uncollected Essays

The Letters

32, The Letters of Ambrose Bierce

The Criticism

33, The Criticism

Biercian Texts

34, Biercian Articles and Reviews

The Biography

35, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography by Carey Mcwilliams

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Present at a Hanging, and Other Ghost Stories

CONTENTS

The Ways of Ghosts

Present at a Hanging

A Cold Greeting

A Wireless Message

An Arrest

Soldier-Folk

A Man with Two Lives

Three and One are One

A Baffled Ambuscade

Two Military Executions

Some Haunted Houses

The Isle of Pines

A Fruitless Assignment

A Vine on a House

At Old Man Eckert’s

The Spook House

The Other Lodgers

The Thing at Nolan

Mysterious Disappearances

The Difficulty of Crossing a Field

An Unfinished Race

Charles Ashmore’s Trail

Science to the Front

The Ways of Ghosts

My peculiar relation to the writer of the following narratives is such that I must ask the reader to overlook the absence of explanation as to how they came into my possession. Withal, my knowledge of him is so meager that I should rather not undertake to say if he were himself persuaded of the truth of what he relates; certainly such inquiries as I have thought it worth while to set about have not in every instance tended to confirmation of the statements made. Yet his style, for the most part devoid alike of artifice and art, almost baldly simple and direct, seems hardly compatible with the disingenuousness of a merely literary intention; one would call it the manner of one more concerned for the fruits of research than for the flowers of expression. In transcribing his notes and fortifying their claim to attention by giving them something of an orderly arrangement, I have conscientiously refrained from embellishing them with such small ornaments of diction as I may have felt myself able to bestow, which would not only have been impertinent, even if pleasing, but would have given me a somewhat closer relation to the work than I should care to have and to avow. — A. B.

Present at a Hanging

An old man named Daniel Baker, living near Lebanon, Iowa, was suspected by his neighbors of having murdered a peddler who had obtained permission to pass the night at his house. This was in 1853, when peddling was more common in the Western country than it is now, and was attended with considerable danger. The peddler with his pack traversed the country by all manner of lonely roads, and was compelled to rely upon the country people for hospitality. This brought him into relation with queer characters, some of whom were not altogether scrupulous in their methods of making a living, murder being an acceptable means to that end. It occasionally occurred that a peddler with diminished pack and swollen purse would be traced to the lonely dwelling of some rough character and never could be traced beyond. This was so in the case of old man Baker, as he was always called. (Such names are given in the western settlements only to elderly persons who are not