The Mysterious Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce - Castle of Spirits Paranormal Podcast Ep26

In October of 1888, three articles about strange, unsolved disappearances were published in the San Francisco Examiner. In the first, a slave owner in Alabama vanishes into thin air right before a group of eyewitnesses. In the second, a drunk Englishman takes a bet he can’t run to the next town without stopping and vanishes without a trace after stumbling, nearly falling, but never hitting the ground. And in the third, a sixteen-year-old boy leaves his family’s farmhouse to get some water from the nearby spring and is never seen again—even though his voice is heard on several occasions by his family, crying out from a distance, before growing fainter and fainter over the course of months and eventually fading away entirely.

What these three articles had in common, aside from their mysterious nature, was the name of the author: Ambrose Bierce. Today, the stories are known far and wide and have become practically enmeshed in the DNA of modern paranormal lore—told and retold so many times that they’ve turned into urban legends that entirely ignore their origins. What may not be as well known, however, is the fact that Bierce himself would later become one of the most famous unsolved mysterious disappearances of the 20th century.

What happened to Ambrose Bierce? In this episode of the Castle of Spirits Paranormal Podcast, we discuss the theories. Listen to this episode here.

Links:

Ambrose Bierce (Wikipedia)

Alta Live: What Really Happened to Ambrose Bierce? (Video)

Finding the Bones of Ambrose Bierce (or Not) (Article)

The Many Deaths of Ambrose Bierce (Article)

Priest Erects Bierce Gravestone in Sierra Mojada, Mexico (Article)

The Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce (Video)

Crystal skull (Wikipedia)

Francisco Goldman (Wikipedia)