Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce ( born June 24 , 1842 ; assumed to have died sometime after December 26 , 1913 ) was an American editorial ist , journalist , short story writer , fabulist , and satirist . He wrote the short story " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " and compiled a satirical lexicon " The Devil ' s Dictionary " . His vehemence as a critic , his motto " Nothing matters " , and the sardonic view of human nature that informed his work , all earned him the nickname " Bitter Bierce " . Despite his reputation as a searing critic , Bierce was known to encourage younger writers , including poet George Sterling and fiction writer W . C . Morrow . Bierce employed a distinctive style of writing , especially in his stories . His style often embraces an abrupt beginning , dark imagery , vague references to time , limited descriptions , impossible events and the theme of war . In 1913 , Bierce traveled to Mexico to gain first - hand experience of the Mexican Revolution . While traveling with rebel troops , he disappeared without a trace . Early life . Bierce was born at Horse Cave Creek in Meigs County , Ohio , to Marcus Aurelius Bierce ( 1799 – 1876 ) and Laura Sherwood Bierce . His mother was a descendant of William Bradford . His parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep love for books and writing . The boy grew up in Kosciusko County , Indiana , attending high school at the county seat , Warsaw . He was the tenth of thirteen children whose father gave all of them names beginning with the letter " A " . In order of birth , the Bierce siblings were Abigail , Amelia , Ann , Addison , Aurelius , Augustus , Almeda , Andrew , Albert , Ambrose , Arthur , Adelia , and Aurelia . He left home at age fifteen to become a " printer ' s devil " at a small Ohio newspaper . Military career . At the outset of the American Civil War , Bierce enlisted in the Union Army ' s 9th Indiana Infantry Regiment . He participated in the Operations in Western Virginia campaign ( 1861 ) , was present at the " first battle " at Philippi and received newspaper attention for his daring rescue , under fire , of a gravely wounded comrade at the Battle of Rich Mountain . In February 1862 he was commissioned First Lieutenant , and served on the staff of General William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer , making maps of likely battlefields . Bierce fought at the Battle of Shiloh ( April 1862 ) , a terrifying experience that became a source for several later short stories and the memoir , " What I Saw of Shiloh " . In June 1864 , he sustained a serious head wound at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain , and spent the rest of the summer on furlough , returning to active duty in September . He was discharged from the army in January 1865 . His military career resumed , however , when in mid - 1866 he rejoined General Hazen as part of the latter ' s expedition to inspect military outposts across the Great Plains . The expedition proceeded by horseback and wagon from Omaha , Nebraska , arriving toward year ' s end in San Francisco , California . Personal life . Bierce married Mary Ellen " Mollie " Day on December 25 , 1871 . They had three children ; two sons , Day ( 1872 – 1889 ) and Leigh ( 1874 – 1901 ) , and a daughter , Helen ( 1875 – 1940 ) . Both of Bierce ' s sons died before he did : Day committed suicide due to depression over a romantic rejection , and Leigh died of pneumonia related to alcoholism . Bierce separated from his wife in 1888 after discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer . They divorced in 1904 and Mollie Day Bierce died the following year . Bierce was an agnostic . Bierce suffered from lifelong asthma as well as complications from his war wounds . Journalism . In San Francisco , Bierce received the rank of brevet major before resigning from the Army . He remained in San Francisco for many years , eventually becoming famous as a contributor and / or editor for a number of local newspapers and periodicals , including " The San Francisco News Letter " , " The Argonaut " , the " Overland Monthly " , " The Californian " and " The Wasp " . A selection of his crime reporting from " The San Francisco News Letter " was included in The Library of America anthology " True Crime " . Bierce lived and wrote in England from 1872 to 1875 , contributing to " Fun " magazine . His first book , " The Fiend ' s Delight " , a compilation of his articles , was published in London in 1873 by John Camden Hotten under the pseudonym " Dod Grile " . Returning to the United States , he again took up residence in San Francisco . From 1879 to 1880 , he traveled to Rockerville and Deadwood in the Dakota Territory , to try his hand as local manager for a New York mining company ; when the company failed he returned to San Francisco and resumed his career in journalism . In 1887 , he published a column called " Prattle " and became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists to be employed on William Randolph Hearst ' s newspaper , the " San Francisco Examiner " , eventually becoming one of the most prominent and influential among the writers and journalists of the West Coast . He remained associated with Hearst Newspapers until 1906 . Railroad Refinancing Bill . The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroad companies had received large loans from the U . S . government to build the First Transcontinental Railroad on gentle terms , but Collis P . Huntington persuaded a friendly member of Congress to introduce a bill excusing the companies from repaying the money , amounting to $ 130 million ( nearly $ 3 billion in 2007 money ) . In January 1896 Hearst dispatched Bierce to Washington , D . C . to foil this attempt . The essence of the plot was secrecy ; the railroads ' advocates hoped to get the bill through Congress without any public notice or hearings . When the angered Huntington confronted Bierce on the steps of the Capitol and told Bierce to name his price , Bierce ' s answer ended up in newspapers nationwide : Bierce ' s coverage and diatribes on the subject aroused such public wrath that the bill was defeated . Bierce returned to California in November . McKinley accusation . Because of his penchant for biting social criticism and satire , Bierce ' s long newspaper career was often steeped in controversy . On several occasions his columns stirred up a storm of hostile reaction which created difficulties for Hearst . One of the most notable of these incidents occurred following the assassination of President William McKinley when Hearst ' s opponents turned a poem Bierce had written about the assassination of Governor Goebel in 1900 into a " cause célèbre " . Bierce meant his poem , written on the occasion of the assassination of Governor William Goebel of Kentucky , to express a national mood of dismay and fear , but after McKinley was shot in 1901 it seemed to foreshadow the crime : Hearst was thereby accused by rival newspapers — and by then Secretary of State Elihu Root — of having called for McKinley ' s assassination . Despite a national uproar that ended his ambitions for the presidency ( and even his membership in the Bohemian Club ) , Hearst neither revealed Bierce as the author of the poem , nor fired him . Literary works . Bierce was considered a master of pure English by his contemporaries , and virtually everything that came from his pen was notable for its judicious wording and economy of style . He wrote in a variety of literary genres . His short stories are held among the best of the 19th century , providing a popular following based on his roots . He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " , " " , " Killed at Resaca " , and " " . In addition to his ghost and war stories , he also published several volumes of poetry . His " Fantastic Fables " anticipated the ironic style of grotesquerie that became a more common genre in the 20th century . One of Bierce ' s most famous works is his much - quoted book , " The Devil ' s Dictionary " , originally an occasional newspaper item which was first published in book form in 1906 as " The Cynic ' s Word Book . " It consists of satirical definitions of English words which lampoon cant and political double - talk . Under the entry " leonine " , meaning a single line of poetry with an internal rhyming scheme , he included an apocryphal couplet written by the fictitious " Bella Peeler Silcox " ( i . e . Ella Wheeler Wilcox ) in which an internal rhyme is achieved in both lines only by mispronouncing the rhyming words : Bierce ' s twelve - volume " Collected Works " were published in 1909 , the seventh volume of which consists solely of " The Devil ' s Dictionary " , the title Bierce himself preferred to " The Cynic ' s Word Book " . Disappearance . In October 1913 Bierce , then aged 71 , departed Washington , D . C . , for a tour of his old Civil War battlefields . By December he had passed through Louisiana and Texas , crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico , which was in the throes of revolution . In Ciudad Juárez he joined Pancho Villa ' s army as an observer , and in that role he witnessed the Battle of Tierra Blanca . Bierce is known to have accompanied Villa ' s army as far as the city of Chihuahua . His last known communication with the world was a letter he wrote there to Blanche Partington , a close friend , dated December 26 , 1913 . After closing this letter by saying , " As to me , I leave here tomorrow for an unknown destination , " he vanished without a trace , becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history . Skeptic Joe Nickell argued that such a letter had never been found . All that existed was a notebook belonging to his secretary and companion , Carrie Christiansen , containing a rough summary of a purported letter and her statement that the originals had been destroyed . Oral tradition in Sierra Mojada , Coahuila , documented by the priest James Lienert , states that Bierce was executed by firing squad in the town cemetery there . Again , Nickell finds this story to be rather incredible . He quotes Bierce ' s friend and biographer Walter Neale as saying that in 1913 , Bierce had not ridden for quite some time , was suffering from serious asthma , and had been severely critical of Pancho Villa . Neale concludes that it would have been highly unlikely for Bierce to have gone to Mexico and joined up with Villa . All investigations into his fate have proven fruitless , and Nickell concedes that despite a lack of hard evidence that Bierce had gone to Mexico , there is also none that he had not . Therefore , despite an abundance of theories ( including death by suicide ) , his end remains shrouded in mystery . Legacy and influence . At least three films have been made of Bierce ' s story " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " . A silent film version , " The Bridge " , was made in 1929 . A French version called " La Rivière du Hibou " , directed by Robert Enrico , was released in 1962 ; this black - and - white film faithfully recounts the original narrative using voice - over . Another version , directed by Brian James Egen , was released in 2005 . The French version was aired in 1964 as the final episode of the television series " The Twilight Zone " : " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " . A copy of " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " appeared in the ABC television series " Lost " ( " The Long Con " , airdate February 8 , 2006 ) . Prior to " The Twilight Zone " , the story had been adapted as an episode of " Alfred Hitchcock Presents " . Another film adaptation was made of Bierce ' s story " Eyes of the Panther " . To date at least two versions of this story exist on screen . One version was developed for Shelley Duvall ' s " Nightmare Classics " series and was released in 1990 . This version runs about 60 minutes . Another , shorter , version was released in 2006 by director Michael Barton and runs about 23 minutes . " The Damned Thing " was adapted into a " Masters of Horror " episode of the same title directed by Tobe Hooper . American composer Rodney Waschka II composed an opera , " Saint Ambrose " , based on Bierce ' s life . Bierce ' s disappearance has also been a popular topic . Carlos Fuentes ' s novel " The Old Gringo " is a fictionalized account of Bierce ' s disappearance which was later adapted into the film " Old Gringo " ( 1989 ) , starring Gregory Peck in the title role . Bierce ' s disappearance and trip to Mexico provide the background for the vampire horror film " " ( 2000 ) , in which Bierce ' s character plays a central role . Bierce ' s fate is the subject of Gerald Kersh ' s " The Oxoxoco Bottle " ( aka “ The Secret of the Bottle ” ) , which appeared in " The Saturday Evening Post " on December 7 , 1957 , and was reprinted in the anthology " Men Without Bones " . Bierce reappears in the future on Mount Shasta in Robert Heinlein ' s novella , " Lost Legacy " . It was also alluded to by a sci - fi fiction site " The SCP Foundation : SCP - 1084 - Damaged Mausoleum . " Though the author himself is not named , things such as location , date of birth , and being a disappeared American author point to Bierce . The short film " Ah ! Silenciosa " ( 1999 ) , starring Jim Beaver as Bierce , weaves elements of " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " into a speculation on Bierce ' s disappearance . The short story " The Difficulty of Crossing a Field , " written by Bierce , is one of the first types of fiction that dealt with unexplainable , Twilight Zone - like themes . In this story , a man is seen crossing a field and then disappears from existence . Such a story could be thought of as a foreboding prophecy of his own unexplained disappearance . This short story would go on to be the inspiration for the famous David Lang disappearance often found in modern supernatural folklore . Biographer Richard O ' Conner argued that war unleashed the howling demons lurking in the pit of Bierce ' s soul : " War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer . [ From his grim experience , he became ] truly capable of transferring the bloody , headless bodies and boar - eaten corpses of the battlefield onto paper . " Essayist Clifton Fadiman wrote : " Bierce was never a great writer . He has painful faults of vulgarity and cheapness of imagination . But . . . his style , for one thing , will preserve him ; and the purity of his misanthropy , too , will help to keep him alive . " Author Alan Gullette argues that Bierce ' s war tales may be the best writing on war , outranking his contemporary Stephen Crane ( author of " The Red Badge of Courage " ) and even Ernest Hemingway . Author Kurt Vonnegut once stated that he considered " Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " the greatest American short story and a work of flawless American genius . American writer and researcher into anomalous phenomena Charles Fort wrote about the unexplained disappearances of Ambrose Bierce and Ambrose Small , and asked " Was somebody collecting Ambroses ? "