Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce, Biography & Autobiography

December 26th, 1913, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce disappeared into the Mexican desert, never to be seen again, and so it was that, in appropriately mysterious manner, one of the premiere American horror authors passed on into the undying realm of night. Bierce was the preeminent innovator of supernatural stories between the death of Poe and the rise of Lovecraft--and to be quite honest, I'd place him head and shoulders above either of them.While those authors tended toward a dour, indulgent, overwrou [...]

Lovecraft nos habla de Ambrose Bierce en ‘El horror sobrenatural en la litaratura’: ”Prácticamente, todos sus cuentos son de horror, y aunque muchos tratan sólo de horrores físicos y psicológicos, dentro del orden natural, hay un número considerable que incorpora lo malignamente sobrenatural. Es el gran creador de sombras.”Poco se puede decir de Ambrose Bierce que no se haya dicho ya. “Bitter” Bierce (el amargo Bierce), como lo bautizaron los ingleses, es uno de los mejores cuen [...]

Oh, Ambrose Bierce, you did have such a way with words. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of short stories fantastical and ghostly in nature. My only complaint, if any, would be that if I left them alone for too long it would take me several minutes to get back into Bierce's writing style. I mean I know it was published before the turn of last century, I don't expect it to be modern and breezy it just takes a minute to shift those mental gears is all.Some of my favorite quotes from this coll [...]

Los cuentos de "Bitter Bierce" o "Gringo Viejo", como me gusta llamarlo, son la combinación perfecta entre humor negro, amargura y horror gótico. Aplaudo esta reedición, yo ya lo tenía y en general todos los relatos valen la pena, y mucho. Por ejemplo:El Engendro Maldito: Un muy buen relato de terror sobrenatural en la línea de clásicos como "El Horla" de Maupassant y "Qué fue eso" de Fitz-James O'Brien. Excelente.Una noche de verano: humor negro e ironía con un final tragicómico.La alu [...]

I love gothic literature. while this was not technically gothic it had the same feel to it. The words, the descriptions, the content-all worked together to create really compelling stories and an extremely enjoyable reading experience.

Ambrose Bierce is best known for disappearing never to be found, the Devil's Dictionary, and Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge iirc, amazing short story about a bloke being hanged. This is a collection of rather macabre short stories in that sort of vein. Redolent of the 19th century West, vivid scars of the Civil War. They're of varying quality, but very similar feel, and I suspect would have a lot more impact read single in a magazine. Lot of mysterious stories that stop abruptly and end with peo [...]

Despite his reputation as "bitter Bierce," many of the stories in this collection were extravagantly morose and melancholy. The most obvious writer to compare him to is Poe, although Bierce is no where near as horrifying as Poe. Many of these stories are only mildly scary. The emphasis is on psychological duress via devices like doubles, mirrors, ghosts, shadows, weird watches and such. Not every story is a gem, as Bierce's writing sometimes lacks the polish of Poe (it can be very garbled and st [...]

Ya me lo he acabado y me ha gustado bastante!Como pasa con las recopilaciones de relatos hay de todo, pero en este caso en general son buenos. Con todo, para no cansarme me lo he ido leyendo a trozos hasta el día de hoy.La calidad literaria de Ambrose Bierce está fuera de toda duda y a pesar ser cuentos de finales del s. XIX son una gozada leerlos disfrutando de su genial estilo. Las historias, aunque a simple vista puedan parecer muy similares, tienen sus matices y elementos singulares que la [...]

Ambrose Bierce was a journalist and a professional wit so it's sometimes difficult to reconcile his quips and his muckraking with the irrational and spiritual nature of horror, and especially his particular style of country horror. But he was a soldier in the civil war so he had seen his share of the American wilderness and of death and destruction. His dry personality is most evident when he describes ignorant yokel characters using highfalutin language. But there is still something inexplicabl [...]

Just started reading. I remember doing a report on him in school, and dug this out from my collection. Giving it a read. I also had his "Devil's Dictionary". Nice tales of horror and supernatural for the campfire or when the lights go out in a storm, and read by the candle. I finished this book last week

I think this would've been better to read rather than listen to via Audible. Some of the stories are excellent; others aren't.

As is the case with most anthologies, this one is a mixed bag. Most of them are ghost stories or urban myth-type tales. I think it would be fun to adapt some of them for reading around a campfire the next time we go camping.I became interested in this series when I read The King in Yellow. I'm not sure if they were intended to be the same character or if Mr Lovecraft just made them so. He's mentioned even less in this book than he was in Chambers' book. What I find most interesting is the way he [...]

The book is pretty dense, but not in the way you would expect since in Bierce's stories, every single word matter. To simplify it, you would read 2 pages, then on the 3rd page, you went "Oh snap!" as something wrong had happened. Therefore, despite its length, it is not an easy read at all, and you would definitely want to completely focus on the story. Personally, I don't think I could read more than a few stories per session at all.With all that being said, there are quite a few classic horror [...]

This was a good grouping of stories. May of the stories are in other editions. So caveat emptor.

Bierce is one of the earliest true influences of weird fiction, and this book of stories lets you see why. Although the prose can turn somewhat purple at times, there are certain stories which embrace and explore the supernatural for all it's worth.For instance, The Damned Thing— which, along with Arthur Machen's The Great God Pan, appears to have been the basis for H.P. Lovecraft's famous novella The Dunwich Horror, deals in an exploration of the fantastic contrasted against the mundane in a [...]

A delightfully creepy collection of short stories, including what may have been HP Lovecraft's inspirations for the god Hastur and the ancient city of Carcosa. Some themes are a bit repetitive amongst the stories, but the florid prose makes up for it. A prime example: "The house itself is in tolerably good condition, though badly weather-stained and in dire need of attention from the glazier, the smaller male population of the region having attested in the manner of its kind its disapproval of d [...]

Sophisticated horror – heartfelt horror. Some stories are difficult to process while others hit square in the heart and the mind. The tales are told in such an intimate yet aloof but also serious and sometimes sad way, I could not help but think Bierce was inspired to write them based on actual events he came across during his own Americana wanderings. These stories are lonely, haunting, and sure to bring on a chill to any reader.

I don't know if it's because I tried the audio version of this book or not, but I spent the first several chapters entirely lost and had no clue what in the world was going on. And there just wasn't anything that kept me interested enough to keep with it. So back to the library it wentybe I'll try the print version one day.

Bierce is a classic writer of the American early west, but with fascination with the unexplainable and the strange story. His plots are compelling and intriguing and he plays well with his readers fascination at the oddities. This collection is an easy treasury of such stories and would be enjoyed by audiences wide and diverse

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! Bierce had such a way with words:"Anybody can tell a story; narration is one of the elemental powers of the race. But the talent for description is a gift."Stories were enjoyably eerie!

Many unusually fantastical horrific ghostly and downright strange classic tales by Bierce

oh Ambrose! some of the stories were awesome, some were bad. but I sure do love him!

This was good, but not great. Some of the stories were more boring than terrifying, although there were a few gems. This really should be read just to get a glimpse into the past and to see where Lovecraft got some of his inspiration from.

A very solid collection of early fantasy and horror writing. This collection is certainly dated, and undeniably racist at times, but the premise behind most of the stories is enough to still capture audiences' imaginations.

If you like strange this is for you.

Lots of ghosts, ghouls, and mysterious disappearances. Audio was pretty good.

For the bibliographically-inclined, it's worth noting that this title covers a number of editions with vastly varying contents - it's a short story collection - so much so that you could argue that the reader of a late edition has not read the same book as the reader of an early edition. I read the free Kindle version derived from a Project Gutenberg transcription/scan (as, I suspect, most readers here will have done), and because the PG metadata was sorely lacking, it took me a while to figure [...]

Being vaguely aware that Bierce was an important, if neglected, voice in the history of horror fiction, I thought I'd give him a try and, with a combination of the Librivox audiobook and this Kindle edition, I listened/read this twenty-four story collection of wildly varying quality with a mixture of admiration and boredom.When Bierce is good - the proto-zombie fiction of 'The Death of Halpin Frayser', the pre-Lovecraftian 'The Damned Thing' or even in a sad little oddity like 'The Baby Tramp' - [...]

Antología completa de los cuentos de Bierce que he disfrutado mucho, intentando leer un relato al día. Obviamente, al reunirlos todos hay un poco de todo. Están los relatos más conocidos, desde Un habitante de Carcosa que precede el horror cósmico de Lovecraft al salvaje humor negro de El clan de los Parricidas. De Bierce, además de su humor, me gusta esas recopilaciones de breves historias de fantasmas, casas encantadas y muertos que caminan escritas con sencillez y que no sé si eran inv [...]

I would say that Bierce’s stories span the gap between Poe and Lovecraft, but that’s been said (a lot) before and the fact is that I’ve never read any Lovecraft. I will say that the stories collected here are uneven. Some are excellent, reminiscent in certain respects of stories by John Collier (e.g. “The Damned Thing”) or even Borges (e.g. “An Inhabitant of Carcosa”). Others are less successful. Overall, however, this collection is good fun.