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    Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
    Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
    Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories
    Ebook67 pages1 hour

    Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

    By Ambrose Bierce

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    Ambrose Bierce was an American writer who is best known for his realism. Often compared to Poe for the dark, realistic nature of his short stories, Bierce drew upon his Civil War experience as a soldier to write on a wide variety of subjects, and stories like An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge are still widely read.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKrill Press
    Release dateDec 7, 2015
    ISBN9781518329166
    Author

    Ambrose Bierce

    Ambrose Bierce was an American writer, critic and war veteran. Bierce fought for the Union Army during the American Civil War, eventually rising to the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army following an 1866 expedition across the Great Plains. Bierce’s harrowing experiences during the Civil War, particularly those at the Battle of Shiloh, shaped a writing career that included editorials, novels, short stories and poetry. Among his most famous works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The Boarded Window,” “Chickamauga,” and What I Saw of Shiloh. While on a tour of Civil-War battlefields in 1913, Bierce is believed to have joined Pancho Villa’s army before disappearing in the chaos of the Mexican Revolution.

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      Book preview

      Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories - Ambrose Bierce

      PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES

      ..................

      Ambrose Bierce

      CROW PRESS

      Thank you for reading. In the event that you appreciate this book, please consider sharing the good word(s) by leaving a review, or connect with the author.

      This book is a work of fiction; its contents are wholly imagined.

      All rights reserved. Aside from brief quotations for media coverage and reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced or distributed in any form without the author’s permission. Thank you for supporting authors and a diverse, creative culture by purchasing this book and complying with copyright laws.

      Copyright © 2015 by Ambrose Bierce

      Interior design by Pronoun

      Distribution by Pronoun

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

      Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

      By

      Ambrose Bierce

      Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories

      Published by Crow Press

      New York City, NY

      First published 1914

      Copyright © Crow Press, 2015

      All rights reserved

      Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

      About Crow Press

      Crow Press is a publishing house that loves reading and distributing horror stories, weird fiction, and tales of the bizarre.

      PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES

      ..................

      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 esteemed; to the general disrepute of social unworth is affixed the special reproach of age.)  A peddler came to his house and none went away - that is all that anybody knew.

      Seven years later the Rev. Mr. Cummings, a Baptist minister well known in that part of the country, was driving by Baker’s farm one night.  It was not very dark: there was a bit of moon somewhere above the light veil of mist that lay along the earth.  Mr. Cummings, who was at all times a cheerful person, was whistling a tune, which he would occasionally interrupt to speak a word of friendly encouragement to his horse.  As he came to a little bridge across a dry ravine he saw the figure of a man standing upon it, clearly outlined against the gray background of a misty forest.  The man had something strapped on his back and carried a heavy stick - obviously an itinerant peddler.  His attitude had in it a suggestion of abstraction, like that of a sleepwalker.  Mr. Cummings reined in his horse when he arrived in front of him, gave him a pleasant salutation and invited him to a seat in the vehicle - if you are going my way, he added.  The man raised his head, looked him full in the face, but neither answered nor made

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