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THE DEATH OF HALPIN FRAYSER
by Ambrose Bierce
"The Death of Halpin Frayser" is a Gothic ghost story by Ambrose Bierce. It was first published in the San Francisco periodical The Wave on December 19, 1891 before appearing in the 1893 collection Can Such Things Be?
Halpin Frayser, a 32-year-old resident of the Napa Valley, awakens from a dreamless sleep speaking the mysterious words "Catherine Larue" into the darkness. Earlier that day, Frayser went hunting in the vicinity of Mount Saint Helena. As he wanders the darkness and chooses a "road less travelled", it is clear there is something devious about. Halpin dreams about a haunted forest dripping with blood and is stricken with fear. In his dream, Halpin grabs a red-leather pocketbook and begins to write with blood a dark poem (in the manner of Freneau's "The House of Night") but before he can write too much, he is confronted by the corpse of his mother...
Famous works of the author Ambrose Bierce: "A Psychological Shipwreck", "Killed at Resaca",, "An Inhabitant of Carcosa", "One of the Missing", "A Tough Tussle", "An Unfinished Race", "One of Twins", "A Horseman in the Sky", "The Spook House", "The Middle Toe of the Right Foot", "The Man and the Snake", "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", "The Realm of the Unreal", "The Boarded Window", "The Secret of Macarger's Gulch", "The Death of Halpin Frayser", "The Damned Thing", "The Eyes of the Panther", "Moxon's Master", "The Moonlit Road", "Beyond the Wall".
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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.
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 ca
