dealing with the Civil War. The battles he participated in and the things he saw in those battles gave him inspiration for his stories (Hall 87).
             Ambrose Bierce used his experiences in the Civil War to understand and to convey to other people through his writing that war is not glorious--it is horrible. Even though Bierce wrote more supernatural stories, he is better known for his Civil War short stories (Hall 87). Of a total of ninety-three short stories, fifty-three were supernatural (Gullette). Bierce was able to write convincing stories with less than one thousand words (Gullette). Many of his writings are less than three thousand words (Gullette). Some of his short stories had a Civil War and a supernatural aspect to them. "Chickamauga" is an example of one of these stories. Sharan K. Hall described Ambrose Bierce's stories as having "an attraction for death in its more bizarre forms, featuring depictions of mental deterioration, uncanny manifestations, and expressing the horror of existence in a meaningless universe" (87). Many of Bierce's stories shock the reader, and the stories tell about a nightmarish reality (May 370). James K. Folsom described Ambrose Bierce's writing like this:
             Many people think Ambrose Bierce is obsessed with death; incapable of compassion. A less moralistic and biographical reevaluation of Bierce's work, however, revea
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