

Transcribed from the 1918 Boni and Liveright’s “Can Such Things Be?”
edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

                      [Picture: Public domain cover]





               PRESENT AT A HANGING AND OTHER GHOST STORIES


                                    By
                              Ambrose Bierce




CONTENTS

THE WAYS OF GHOSTS                                         PAGE
                  PRESENT AT A HANGING                      327
                  A COLD GREETING                           331
                  A WIRELESS MESSAGE                        335
                  AN ARREST                                 340
SOLDIER-FOLK
                  A MAN WITH TWO LIVES                      345
                  THREE AND ONE ARE ONE                     350
                  A BAFFLED AMBUSCADE                       356
                  TWO MILITARY EXECUTIONS                   361
SOME HAUNTED HOUSES
                  THE ISLE OF PINES                         369
                  A FRUITLESS ASSIGNMENT                    377
                  A VINE ON A HOUSE                         383
                  AT OLD MAN ECKERT’S                       389
                  THE SPOOK HOUSE                           393
                  THE OTHER LODGERS                         400
                  THE THING AT NOLAN                        405
                  THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD        415
                  AN UNFINISHED RACE                        419
                  CHARLES ASHMORE’S TRAIL                   421




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 any further movement. The minister, with
good-natured persistence, repeated his invitation. At this the man threw
his right hand forward from his side and pointed downward as he stood on
the extreme edge of the bridge. Mr. Cummings looked past him, over into
the ravine, saw nothing unusual and withdrew his eyes to address the man
again. He had disappeared. The horse, which all this time had been
uncommonly restless, gave at the same moment a snort of terror and
started to run away. Before he had regained control of the animal the
minister was at the crest of the hill a hundred yards along. He looked
back and saw the figure again, at the same place and in the same attitude
as when he had first observed it. Then for the first time he was
conscious of a sense of the supernatural and drove home as rapidly as his
willing horse would go. On arriving at home he related his adventure to his family, and early the
next morning, accompanied by two neighbors, John White Corwell and Abner
Raiser, returned to the spot. They found the body of old man Baker
hanging by the neck from one of the beams of the bridge, immediately
beneath the spot where the apparition had stood. A thick coating of
dust, slightly dampened by the mist, covered the floor of the bridge, but
the only footprints were those of Mr. Cummings’ horse. In taking down the body the men disturbed the loose, friable earth of the
slope below it, disclosing human bones already nearly uncovered by the
action of water and frost. They were identified as those of the lost
peddler. At the double inquest the coroner’s jury found that Daniel
Baker died by his own hand while suffering from temporary insanity, and
that Samuel Morritz was murdered by some person or persons to the jury
unknown. A COLD GREETING


THIS is a story told by the late Benson Foley of San Francisco:

“In the summer of 1881 I met a man named James H. Conway, a resident of
Franklin, Tennessee.