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