Tonight’s author, Ambrose Bierce, has a personal history almost as strange as any of his tales. In 1913, Bierce told reporters that he was travelling to Mexico to gain first-hand experience of the Mexican Revolution. He disappeared and was never seen or heard from again.

A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. For his horror writing, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. S.T. Joshi, a critic whose work largely focuses on weird and fantastic fiction, speculates that he may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produced, and in this regard can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire. Bierce’s book, The Devil’s Dictionary, is a satirical classic in American literature, well known for its often biting tongue-in-cheek definitions.

And now a tale of murder and haunting for you from one of America’s great literary voices—turn down the lights and join us for “The Moonlit Road” by Ambrose Bierce.