Can Such Things Be?

Can Such Things Be?

By Ambrose Bierce.

Table of Contents

1. Titlepage
2. Imprint
3. The Death of Halpin Frayser
   1. I
   2. II
   3. III
   4. IV
4. The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
5. One Summer Night
6. The Moonlit Road
   1. I: Statement of Joel Hetman, Jr.
   2. II: Statement of Caspar Grattan
   3. III: Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, Through the Medium Bayrolles
7. A Diagnosis of Death
8. Moxon’s Master
9. A Tough Tussle
10. One of Twins
11. The Haunted Valley
    1. I: How Trees Are Felled in China
    2. II: Who Drives Sane Oxen Should Himself Be Sane
12. A Jug of Syrup
13. Staley Fleming’s Hallucination
14. A Resumed Identity
    1. I: The Review as a Form of Welcome
    2. II: When You Have Lost Your Life Consult a Physician
    3. III: The Danger of Looking Into a Pool of Water
15. A Baby Tramp
16. The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”
17. Beyond the Wall
18. A Psychological Shipwreck
19. The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
    1. I
    2. II
    3. III
20. John Mortonson’s Funeral
21. The Realm of the Unreal
    1. I
    2. II
    3. III
    4. IV
    5. V
22. John Bartine’s Watch
23. The Damned Thing
    1. I: One Does Not Always Eat What Is on the Table
    2. II: What May Happen in a Field of Wild Oats
    3. III: A Man Though Naked May Be in Rags
    4. IV: An Explanation from the Tomb
24. Haïta the Shepherd
25. An Inhabitant of Carcosa
26. The Stranger
27. The Ways of Ghosts
    1. Present at a Hanging
    2. A Cold Greeting
    3. A Wireless Message
    4. An Arrest
28. Soldier-Folk
    1. A Man with Two Lives
    2. Three and One Are One
    3. A Baffled Ambuscade
    4. Two Military Executions
29. Some Haunted Houses
    1. The Isle of Pines
    2. A Fruitless Assignment
    3. A Vine on a House
    4. At Old Man Eckert’s
    5. The Spook House
    6. The Other Lodgers
    7. The Thing at Nolan
30. Bodies of the Dead
    1. That of Granny Magone
    2. A Light Sleeper
    3. The Mystery of Charles Farquharson
    4. Dead and “Gone”
    5. A Cold Night
    6. A Creature of Habit
31. “Mysterious Disappearances”
    1. The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
    2. An Unfinished Race
    3. Charles Ashmore’s Trail
    4. Science to the Front
32. Endnotes
33. Colophon
34. Uncopyright

Imprint

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The Death of Halpin Frayser

For by death is wrought greater change than hath been shown. Whereas in general the spirit that removed cometh back upon occasion, and is sometimes seen of those in flesh (appearing in the form of the body it bore) yet it hath happened that the veritable body without the spirit hath walked. And it is attested of those encountering who have lived to speak thereon that a lich so raised up hath no natural affection, nor remembrance thereof, but only hate. Also, it is known that some spirits which in life were benign become by death evil altogether.

Hali

I

One dark night in midsummer a man waking from a dreamless sleep in a forest lifted his head from the earth, and staring a few moments into the blackness, said: “Catherine Larue.” He said nothing more; no reason was known to him why he should have said so much.

The man was Halpin Frayser. He lived in St. Helena, but where he lives now is uncertain, for he is dead. One who practices sleeping in the woods with nothing under him but the dry leaves and the damp earth, and nothing over him but the branches from which the leaves have fallen and the sky from which the earth has fallen, cannot hope for great longevity, and Frayser had already attained the age of thirty-two. There are persons in this world, millions of persons, and far and away the best persons, who regard that as a very advanced age. They are the children. To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore. However, it is not certain that Halpin Frayser came to his death by exposure.

He had been all day in the hills west of the Napa Valley, looking for doves and such small game as was in season. Late in the afternoon it had come on to be cloudy, and he had lost his bearings; and although he had only to go always downhill⁠—everywhere the way to safety when one is lost⁠—the absence of trails had so impeded him that he was overtaken by night while still in the forest. Unable in the darkness to penetrate the thickets of manzanita and other undergrowth, utterly bewildered and overcome with fatigue, he had lain down near the root of a large madrone and fallen into a dreamless sleep. It was hours later, in the very middle of the night, that one of God’s mysterious messengers, gliding ahead of the incalculable host of his companions sweeping westward with the