Stories

First published in 1891, Ambrose Bierce's 'The Stranger' is a masterwork of American supernatural fiction that exemplifies the author's signature style of economical storytelling and ambiguous dread. A mysterious visitor appears at a desert campfire and recounts the desperate fate of five prospectors trapped in a cave by Apache attackers thirty years prior, narrating in haunting detail the deaths of his four companions. As the tale unfolds, the campfire witnesses begin to realize they may be encountering something far more uncanny than a mere mortal traveler with a gruesome story to tell.