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“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”
Ambrose Bierce(1891)
This short Civil War horror story is the best known
and most imitated story by Ambrose BIERCE,an
unusual figure whose career ended when he disap-
peared mysteriously in Mexico. Having served in
the Civil War himself, Bierce was ideally suited to
portray the plight of ordinary soldiers of that pe-
riod, and the majority of his stories, supernatural
and otherwise, are linked to that conflict.
This particular tale opens with a saboteur
about to be hanged by Federal forces from the rail-
road bridge in the title. The condemned man has
no friends to plead for him, and the only witnesses
to his execution are a company of soldiers drawn
up nearby. His name is Peyton Farquhar, a civilian,
and Bierce explains that he was tricked into com-
mitting an act of sabotage to slow the army’s ad-
vance, for which he is to be summarily hanged. As
the final seconds tick away, he is struck by an ap-
parent slowing of time, a foreshadowing of what is
to follow.
The moment comes, and he drops through the
ties of the bridge, feeling a sudden burning pain
around his neck. Then he is in the water and de-
cides that the rope must have broken at just the
right moment. On the verge of drowning, he man-
ages to free his bound arms and remove the noose,
but now he faces the possibility of being shot when
he appears on the surface. His senses seem preter-
naturally sensitive as he swims desperately away
from the soldiers, who are now shooting at him.
Eventually, he eludes them and spends the rest of

the day moving through the forest, which seems

unusually wild to him, eventually reaching his

home town despite the growing pain in his neck

and dryness in his mouth. Just as he sees his wife

coming to meet him, he feels a sharp pain and

loses consciousness.

With the final line, Bierce reveals the truth.

All that has happened took place within the split

second during which Farquhar fell and had his

neck broken, a wish-fulfillment fantasy that re-

placed the reality of what was happening to him.

The idea that a wealth of experience could be

compressed into such a small expanse of time has

been copied in many forms since, but never more

effectively.

O’Day-Flannery, Constance(unknown)

During the past 20 years, the time travel romance

has evolved into a subgenre in its own right. Typi-

cally, a woman from the present day is transported

through some magical or unexplained means to an

earlier time and place, where she finds true love,

usually in the arms of an aristocrat or a mighty

warrior. There have been literally hundreds of nov-

els that used this same plot in recent years, varying

widely in narrative quality and historical accuracy.

One of the best of the authors working in this par-

ticular vein is Constance O’Day-Flannery, whose

career started with Timeless Passion (1986), in

which an automobile accident inexplicably projects

a lonely woman back to the pre–Civil War South,

where she eventually finds a place and a lover. Two