Famed for the mordant wit and satire of his essays and newspaper columns, Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) also possessed a fascination with the macabre. His masterful tales of the supernatural bespeak an imagination generations ahead of its time, exhibiting impressionistic conceits of reality in which space and time expand and contract according to individual perception.

This stimulating and provocative collection of twelve of Bierce's finest ghost and horror stories abounds in crimes of passion, restless specters seeking revenge, haunted houses, forewarnings of doom, and sound minds deranged by contact with the spirit world. Selections include "The Eyes of the Panther," a chilling account of a young woman's supernatural link to a beast of the forest; "A Watcher by the Dead," in which a madcap wager has ghastly consequences; "The Man and the Snake," a hallucinogenic encounter between serpent and human; "Moxon's Master," a nineteenth-century caveat against the coming Machine Age; the celebrated title story; and seven other vignettes.

A feast for devotees of ghost and horror stories, this remarkable collection of intelligent and inventive tales will captivate any reader who enjoys a compelling and suspenseful narrative.
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