He was the successor of Edgar Allan Poe and a harbinger of H. P. Lovecraft, penning some of the most shocking, savage horror stories in the English language. His dark, literary universe was haunted by shadowy monsters who never quite revealed themselves, only stalking in the dim background like woodland predators around a campfire. And what better stories for any campfire's company: he wrote twilight tales of seductive werewolves, zombie resurrections, nights spent with corpses in empty houses, haunted cabins, killer robots, wartime ghost stories, invisible predators, reincarnated spirits, family curses, ghoul-haunted graveyards, jilted ghosts' violent revenges, mysterious disappearances, spectral visions, guilt-maddened murderers, and battlefield carnage. There was never a better author to read around the snapping flare of a lonely campsite than the rustic, existential horror stories of Ambrose Bierce. In death, as in life, Bierce is defined by contradictions. He was a mystical materialist, a cynical idealist, and a compassionate curmudgeon. His stories - especially those which we can classify as horror or fantasy - illustrate a world which fails to live up to its promises. As he wrote in "The Devil's Dictionary," a ghost is the outward sign of an inward fear - a visual signifier of a spiritual sickness. His stories are loaded with spooks of this sort. These are the ghosts of what should be. They are the ghosts of a murdered potential: the potential to do life well - properly, as it should be. His stories are haunted by monsters of automated technology ("Moxon's Master"), intellectual insecurity ("The Damned Thing"), sexual anxiety ("Eyes of the Panther"), and hereditary corruption. Failure is the chief of all these phantoms, however. Failure to do what one ought, and become what one should. This was a deeply personal boogeyman for Bierce. One which cast its shadow over his life and stamped its footprints into his fiction. What he left behind him, after vanishing into the dusty Mexican air, was a universe bedeviled by disappointment - in mankind, in the universe, and in himself. It is a raw and savage universe, but one dimly illuminated by Bierce's frustrated idealism. We can see the shadows for that light, but in those shadows, what monsters lurk.

The Damned Thing is a horror short story written by American Civil War soldier, wit, and writer Ambrose Bierce. It first appeared in Town Topics on December 7, 1893.

»The Damned Thing« is a short story by Ambrose Bierce, originally published in 1893. AMBROSE BIERCE [1842-1914] was an American author, journalist, and war veteran. He was one of the most influential journalists in the United States in the late 19th century and alongside his success as a horror writer he was hailed as a pioneer of realism. Among his most famous works are The Devil's Dictionary and the short story »An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.«

The Damned Thing is a story focuses on how the human race takes their views of nature for granted, and how there may be things in the natural world that the human eye cannot see or the human ear cannot hear. An Occurrence at Owl takes place during the war of the 1860's between the American states of the North and the states of the South. A group of soldiers is hanging a Southern farm owner for trying to stop Northern military movements across the Owl Creek Bridge. In the last moments of his life, the Southern prisoner dreams he has escaped; and everything that happens in the story is really only the work of the prisoner's brain just before he dies. One of Bierce's most famous works is his much-quoted book, The Devil's Dictionary, originally a newspaper serialization which was first published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book. It offers an interesting reinterpretation of the English language in which cant and political double-talk are neatly lampooned. Chickamauga was first published in 1889. It's about an innocent child who stumbles into unspeakable horror during the battle. Ambrose Bierce (1842 – 1914?) was an American satirist, critic, poet, editor and journalist. Bierce became a prolific author of short stories often humorous and sometimes bitter or macabre. He spoke out against oppression and supported civil and religious freedoms. He also wrote numerous Civil War stories from first-hand experience. Many of his works are ranked among other esteemed American authors' like Edgar Allen Poe, Stephen Crane, and Mark Twain.

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By THE light of a tallow candle, which had been placed on one end of a rough table, a man was reading something written in a book. It was an old account book, greatly worn; and the writing was not, apparently, very legible, for the man sometimes held the page close to the flame of the candle to get a stronger light upon it. The shadow of the book would then throw into obscurity a half of the room, darkening a number of faces and figures; for besides the reader, eight other men were present. Seven of them sat against the rough log walls, silent and motionless, and, the room being small, not very far from the table.

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-1914) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer and satirist, today best known for his The Devil s Dictionary (1911). He wrote some of his books under the pseudonyms Dod Grile and J. Milton Sloluck. Bierce s lucid, unsentimental style has kept him popular when many of his contemporaries have been consigned to oblivion. His dark, sardonic views and vehemence as a critic earned him the nickname, Bitter Bierce. Such was his reputation that it was said his judgment on any piece of prose or poetry could make or break a writer s career. His short stories are considered among the best of the 19th century, providing a popular following based on his roots. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Killed at Resaca, and Chickamauga. His works include: The Fiend s Delight (1873), Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874), Black Beetles in Amber (1892), Fantastic Fables (1899), Shapes of Clay (1903), A Son of the Gods, and A Horseman in the Sky (1907), Write It Right (1909) and A Cynic Looks at Life (1912).