安布羅斯·比爾斯/Ambrose Bierce
安布羅斯·比爾斯（Ambrose Bierce，1842—1914），美國恐怖、靈異小說家，生於俄亥俄州梅格斯縣的一個貧苦農民家庭。參加過南北戰爭，這段不平凡的經曆為他後來的文學創作打下了堅實的基礎。戰爭結束後，他開始了一個編輯兼作家的忙碌生涯。他早期的作品主要是隨筆和諷刺性短詩，也包括一些小說，人生觀比較悲觀，被人們稱為“辛辣比爾斯”。
“I am not so superstitious as some of your physicians-men of science, as you are pleased to be called，”said Hawver, replying to an accusation that had not been made.“Some of you-only a few, I confess-believe in the immortality of the soul, and in apparitions which you have not the honesty to call ghosts. I go no further than a conviction that the living are sometimes seen where they are not, but have been-where they have lived so long, perhaps so intensely, as to have left their impress on everything about them. I know, indeed, that one‘s environment may be so affected by one’s personality as to yield, long afterward, an image of ones self to the eyes of another. Doubtlessthe impressing personality has to be the right kind of personality as the perceiving eyes have to be the right kind of eyes-mine, for example.”
“Yes, the right kind of eyes, conveying sensations to the wrong kind of brains，”said Dr. Frayley, smiling.
“Thank you, one likes to have an expectation gratified；that is about the reply that I supposed you would have the civility to make.”
“Pardon me. But you say that you know. That is a good deal to say, dont you think?Perhaps you will not mind the trouble of saying how you learned.”
“You will call it an hallucination，”Hawver said，“but that does not matter.”And he told the story.
“Last summer I went, as you know, to pass the hot weather term in the town of Meridian. The relative at whose house I had intended to stay was ill, so I sought other quarters. After some difficulty I succeeded in renting a vacant dwelling that had been occupied by an eccentric doctor with the name of Mannering, who had gone away years before, no one knew where, not even his agent. He had built the house himself and had lived in it with an old servant for about ten years. His practice, never very extensive, had after a few years been given up entirely. Not only so, but he had withdrawn himself almost altogether from social life and become a recluse. I was told by the village doctor, about the only person with whom he held any relations, that during his retirement he had devoted himself to a single line of study, the result of which he had expounded in a book that did not commend itself to the approval of his professional brethren, who, indeed, considered him not entirely sane. I have not seen the book and cannot now recall the title of it, but I am told that it expounded a rather startling theory. He held that it was possible in the case of many a person in good health to forecast his death with precision, severalmonths in advance of the event. The limit, I think, was eighteen months. There were local tales of his having exerted his powers of prognosis, or perhaps you would say diagnosis；and it was said that in every instance the person whose friends he had warned had died suddenly at the appointed time, and from no assignable cause. All this, however, has nothing to do with what I have to tell；I thought it might amuse a physician.”