Title: Terror by Night
Author: Ambrose Bierce
Genre: Horror
Pages: 292
Rating: 4/5 stars
Reading Challenges: T4MC - A Author; Genre - Horror; What's in a Name - Emotion; TBR Pile
How I Got It: I own it!
'Nothing is so improbable as what is true' Of all the writers of ghost and horror stories, Ambrose Bierce is perhaps the most colourful. He was a dark, cynical and pessimistic soul who had a grim vision of fate and the unfairness of life, which he channelled into his fiction. And in his death, or rather his disappearance, he created a mystery as strange and unresolved as any that he penned himself. But more of that later.
Previously I have read Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary (such fun) and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" (for school), but never moved to his other short stories. These stories remind me of a poor man's Poe. They have the unexpected elements of supernaturalbut none of the psychological horror so present in Poe's work. I did pass an enjoyable afternoon with Bierce's stories. My favorites were the stories of an encounter with a ghost, but not knowing it was a ghost. Good collection of stories.
