Cryptofiction Classics, $2.99, ISBN 978-1-4733-9915-0
Horror, 2014 (Reissue)

Ambrose Bierce’s The Damned Thing is a masterclass in economy. Why waste time with needless exposition when you can jump straight into a grisly inquest?

This delightfully grim short story delivers the goods: a dead man, a dubious witness, and a court that collectively shrugs and goes, “Eh, must’ve been a mountain lion.”

The story kicks off with the coroner examining the corpse of Hugh Morgan, who had the misfortune of encountering something terrifying and deadly. Enter William Harker, Morgan’s hunting buddy, who claims that Morgan was killed by… something.

Harker, ever the reliable narrator, saw Morgan thrashing and convulsing but couldn’t actually see what was attacking him. This is because Morgan, in his infinite wisdom, had apparently been hunting “the damned thing”, a name that is both ominous and spectacularly unhelpful.

Naturally, everyone in the room treats Harker’s testimony with the respect it deserves: by collectively rolling their eyes and declaring that a mountain lion must have done it. Case closed!

Except, of course, it isn’t. Morgan’s diary turns up, revealing that “the damned thing” might actually be something real, sinister, and, most inconveniently, invisible to the human eye. Because if there’s one thing worse than being mauled to death in the woods, it’s being mauled to death in the woods by something that makes people think you just had an unfortunate run-in with local wildlife.

Now, some claim that this story inspired HP Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space. And while it’s a fun theory, it’s about as solid as trying to describe an invisible monster in a police report. Sure, both stories toy with the idea that there are things lurking beyond human perception, but The Damned Thing is more about the sheer horror of being dismissed by society as a lunatic when you’ve actually seen something horrific.

Truly, the biggest horror here is trying to convince a room full of skeptics that you didn’t just hallucinate a violent death.

Despite its brevity, this little tale is a deliciously eerie blend of gallows humor and mounting dread. It’s proof that you don’t need an entire novel—or even a visible monster—to craft a chilling horror story. Ambrose Bierce takes a simple premise, injects it with tension, irony, and just a touch of existential terror, and delivers a perfectly bite-sized dose of the macabre.

Simply a must-read for anyone who enjoys their horror with a side of “Wait, what just happened?”!