The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce. Volume III. Can such things be? [42 stories]

This collection contains forty-two stories centered on the intersection of military brutality and the supernatural. Bierce documents the psychological disintegration of soldiers during the American Civil War and the intrusion of the inexplicable into mundane life. Specific narratives involve an invincible invisible entity in a forest, a man terrorized by a predatory plant, and a soldier who mistakenly shoots his own father during a strategic ambush. The plots frequently hinge on ironies of fate, sudden death, and the lingering presence of the deceased in the physical world.

Readers of historical horror and dark satire value this volume for its clinical, unsentimental approach to the macabre. It serves those interested in how the trauma of combat translates into ghost stories and psychological hauntings. The reader exits these stories with a clarified view of Bierce’s trademark cynicism and a detailed inventory of the ways human perception fails when confronted with the violent or the unknown. It provides a stark alternative to the ornate Gothic traditions of the nineteenth century.