“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is the best-known short story by Ambrose Bierce. The story was first published by the San Francisco Examiner on July 13, 1890 and included in Bierce’s Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891). It is one of the earliest examples of non-linear stream of consciousness narration and one of the most frequently anthologized stories in American literature.

We open with a man standing on a railroad bridge in Alabama with his hands tied behind his back and a rope strong around his neck. Military personnel are in the process of arranging themselves at their stations and assuming their roles. The mechanics of execution machinery are described in some detail, as it is the landscape and a small throng of spectators. We cut to a flashback and learn that the man is a civilian, a well-to-do planter about 35 years of age named Peyton Farquhar. There is an exchange with a soldier who rides up to the gate with the news that Union soldiers have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge.  He suggests it that if Farquhar can slip past the guards, he might be able to burn it down and leaves, doubling back after nightfall on his return. We cut back to the present just as the hanging occurs and the rope around the doomed man’s neck breaks. He appears to experience an escape, which is described in lengthy detail.  Just as he arrives home, there is a blow to his neck and a loud noise, then darkness and silence.

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