An Inhabitant of Carcosa

by Ambrose Bierce

Release: 25 December 1886
Format: Short Story
Genres: Fantasy, Weird Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: No Time Phenomena
Original Language: English

The ghost of a man from the ancient, fictional city of Carcosa seems destined to wander the city’s ruins, meeting wildlife and perhaps one even older ghost. Although we detected no definitive time phenomena, the time frame of the story is nebulous and intriguing, and the city’s mythos provided a fertile ground for 20th-century writers including Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, and George R. R. Martin.

— Michael Main

In one kind of death the spirit also dieth, and this it hath been known to do while yet the body was in vigour for many years. Sometimes, as is veritably attested, it dieth with the body, but after a season is raised up again in that place where the body did decay.

DEBUT

“An Inhabitant of Carcosa,” in the San Francisco Newsletter and California Advertiser, 25 December 1886.

VARIANTS

1 English variant

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Unspecified Year

Fictional Tags

Ghosts