Plot:
The following things happened: Joel Hetman returned from a trip at an unexpected time and used the back door without disturbing anyone. He chased what appeared to be a prowler into the woods, who got away. His wife, Julia, was strangled to death in her bedroom. He summoned his nineteen-year-old son, Joel, Jr., home from his studies at Yale. The son decided to stay and help his father.
A few months later, Joel Sr. and Joel Jr. walked down the road in the moonlight by their house. There was no light in the house. As they approached the gate, the father drew the son’s attention to something he saw. The son saw nothing; the father’s gaze remained fixed. He even took a few steps back. A servant lit a light upstairs. When the son looked for his father, he was nowhere to be found. He never learned what happened to him.
Some twenty years later, a man named Caspar Grattan wrote a statement the night before he was to be hanged. He recalls an earlier prosperous life with a wife and a successful son.
Lastly, a statement is offered through a medium; the other side is very much like this one.
Thoughts:
The story is presented through the statements of three different people at three distinct times. Each offers an honest, if incomplete, account of the story’s events. It’s not difficult for a reader to piece together what happened, of course. It’s not intended to be a mystery, but (as far as I can make out) a comment on how far things can go wrong when people don’t talk to each other.
Each has a unique view of events that the others lack. The three people involved in the story are intimate and love each other, belonging to the same family, but seem to hardly know one another. And they don’t talk. That is the great tragedy because it brings about the death of one character and the ruin of another.
In this ghost story, it is humans, rather than spirits from beyond, who give the reader the chills. So, yeah, it is the typical cheery Ambrose Bierce stuff.
Bio: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914) was an American journalist, writer, and Civil War veteran. Among his best-known works are “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”—familiar to high school students in the U.S.—and The Devil’s Dictionary, a collection of sardonic definitions of common words. He also wrote a memoir, What I Saw at Shiloh, an unsentimental (at least) account of that battle.
There has been much speculation about his death. He is said to have gone to join the forces of Pancho Villa to observe the Mexican Revolution and disappeared, but a small ocean of ink has been spilled about hows, wheres, and whens.
This story can be read here:
This story can be listened to here: (29:10)
Title: “The Moonlit Road”
Author: Ambrose Bierce (1842- disappeared 1914)
First published: Cosmopolitan (New York) [not that one], January 1907
Length: short story
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 
“it is humans, rather than spirits from beyond, who give the reader the chills” – I think that is a unique and interesting aspect. “…But seem to hardly know one another. And they don’t talk. That is the great tragedy.” is an important aspect too. It sounds like an interesting story.
It is interesting, though not a terribly happy one. Thanks for your comments.
Yes it seems so. Thank you Denise.