The Stranger

🎬 Experience the atmospheric visual edition plus narrator intro and outro of this tale by searching 'Jonathan Dunne Horror' on YouTube. 

Title: The Stranger

Series Name: Timeless Terrors

Series Entry: 117

Author: Ambrose Bierce

Narrator: Jonathan Dunne

Original Publication: 1893

Public Domain: Yes

Description:

The Stranger is a haunting Civil War tale of grief, memory, and spectral visitation set amid the quiet desolation of a rural Tennessee plantation.

The story centers on a Confederate soldier who returns home after the war, weary and altered by the horrors he has witnessed. Seeking refuge in the familiarity of family and hearth, he instead encounters something deeply unsettling — a silent, enigmatic figure whose presence stirs unease and long-buried sorrow. As evening shadows lengthen and conversation turns toward loss and the cost of conflict, the boundaries between the living and the dead begin to blur.

In this somber and atmospheric narrative, Ambrose Bierce explores themes of unresolved grief, the psychological scars of war, and the fragile veil separating this world from the next. With quiet restraint and mounting dread, the story builds toward a revelation both poignant and chilling, leaving the listener with a lingering sense of the uncanny.

Narrated by Amazon bestselling horror author Jonathan Dunne, this performance captures the story’s restrained tension, elegiac tone, and eerie subtlety, bringing Bierce’s meditation on loss and remembrance vividly to life.