"The Death of Halpin Frayser" is a

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

ghost story A ghost story is any piece of fiction, or drama, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them."Ghost Stories" in Margaret Drabble (ed.), ''Oxford Companion to English Literature'' ...

Ambrose Bierce Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book ''The Devil's Dictionary'' was named as one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by t ...

. It was first published in the

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17t ...

periodical ''The Wave'' on December 19, 1891 before appearing in the 1893 collection '' Can Such Things Be?''

Plot summary

Halpin Frayser, a 32-year-old resident of the

Napa Valley Napa Valley is an American Viticultural Area (AVA) located in Napa County in California's Wine Country. It was established by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) on January 27, 1981. Napa Valley is considered one of the premier ...

, awakens from a dreamless sleep speaking the mysterious words "Catherine LaRue" into the darkness. Earlier that day, Frayser went hunting in the vicinity of Mount Saint Helena. As he wanders the darkness and chooses a "road less travelled", it is clear there is something devious about. Halpin dreams about a haunted forest dripping with blood and is stricken with fear. In his dream, Halpin grabs a red-leather pocketbook and begins to write with blood a dark poem (in the manner of Freneau's "The House of Night") but before he can write too much, he is confronted by the corpse of his mother. The story then switches to Frayser's upbringing in

Nashville, Tennessee Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and ...

. He never fit in with most of his family except for his mother. His penchant for

poetry Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meani ...

(albeit bad poetry) makes him a favorite to her. As Frayser becomes a young man, the relationship between mother and son is perceived as strange as they are together constantly. One day, Frayser tells her that he will go to California and though she initially tries to go with him, she relents. She has a dream that her son will die there by

strangulation Strangling is compression of the neck that may lead to unconsciousness or death by causing an increasingly hypoxic state in the brain. Fatal strangling typically occurs in cases of violence, accidents, and is one of two main ways that hangin ...

. While in San Francisco, Halpin is kidnapped onto a ship and spends several years at sea. The story switches back to the day after Halpin's confrontation with his mother's corpse. A deputy and detective are walking the roads near where Halpin was last seen, looking for a criminal named Branscom. They heard he is in town and plan to capture him. He's wanted for slicing the throat of a woman in California. While exploring an area beyond a

graveyard A cemetery, burial ground, gravesite or graveyard is a place where the remains of dead people are buried or otherwise interred. The word ''cemetery'' (from Greek , "sleeping place") implies that the land is specifically designated as a buri ...

, they find a body that clearly was in a struggle before dying. They discover that this is Halpin's body and a poem on him that he had just written. Nearby, they discover another headboard with the name Catherine LaRue. It's at this point that the officer remembers that Larue was Branscom's original last name and Frayser was the name of the woman whom Branscom killed. The detectives hear an "unnatural" and "unhuman" laugh that fills them with dread.

Interpretations

The most obvious interpretation of the story is supernatural: Halpin was killed by the

zombie A zombie ( Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in w ...

or lich-like corpse of his mother.''The Encyclopedia of the Gothic''. John Wiley & Sons, 2015. . P. 69. Years ago, she went to search for him in California and ended up by marrying Larue, her future murderer. After Halpin unknowingly approached her grave, the

revenant In folklore, a revenant is an animated corpse that is believed to have been revived from death to haunt the living. The word ''revenant'' is derived from the Old French word, ''revenant'', the "returning" (see also the related French verb ''reve ...

"strangled her son literally, as she had strangled him metaphorically during her life". As summarised by H. P. Lovecraft, the story "tells of a body skulking by night without a soul in a weird and horribly ensanguined wood, and of a man beset by ancestral memories who met death at the claws of that which had been his fervently loved mother". There is also a naturalistic interpretation: Halpin is killed by the maniac Branscom while dreaming that he is being strangled by his mother. His dream is probably inspired by Catherine's premonitory dream of her son's strangulation in California. That all this happens by his mother's grave is just an improbable coincidence. This leaves unexplained the hideous unearthly laugh heard by the detectives, however. More recent commentators, including William Bysshe Stein and Robert C. Maclean, have highlighted the

incest Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity ( marriage or stepfamily), ado ...

uous attachment between Halpin and his mother.S.T. Joshi. ''The Weird Tale''. Wildside Press LLC, 2003. . P. 161-162. Maclean has speculated that after Halpin and his mother fled separately west, they lived as man and wife in California (although there is no indication of this in Bierce's text).

S. T. Joshi Sunand Tryambak Joshi (born June 22, 1958) is an American literary critic whose work has largely focused on weird and fantastic fiction, especially the life and work of H. P. Lovecraft and associated writers. Career His literary critici ...

went even further by claiming that it was Frayser who "killed his wife/mother but she came back from the dead as he lurked by her grave". According to Maclean, Halpin's murderer was no other than "his own father, disguised as the private detective Jaralson".

Assessment

The story has been viewed as "perhaps Bierce's most remarkable supernatural tale" and a key precursor of zombie fiction.June Michele Pulliam, Anthony J. Fonseca (eds.). ''Encyclopedia of the Zombie''. . P. 16. In 1927, H. P. Lovecraft included "The Death of Halpin Frayser" among "permanent mountain-peaks of American weird writing". For

Frederic Taber Cooper Frederic Taber Cooper Ph.D. (May 27, 1864 – May 20, 1937) was an American editor and writer. Life Cooper was born in New York City, graduated from Harvard University in 1886 and obtained an LL.B. from Columbia University in 1887."Fred ...

, it was "the most fiendishly ghastly tale in the literature of the Anglo-Saxon race". "The Death of Halpin Frayser" has also been acclaimed as "an interesting pre-Freudian study of an Oedipal theme". It has been noted that "Branscom/LaRue fulfills Frayser's deadly incestuous drive by killing the latter's mother". "Halpin Frayser" supposedly goes beyond Bierce's other non-war stories in "reaching a truly rich measure of psychological complexity".Larry Lew Hill. ''Style in the Tales of Ambrose Bierce''. University of Wisconsin Press, 1973. P. 173. The story's style is elaborate and its structure is complex. The murky dream sequence is wedged between two realistic narratives set in the daylight. As

Samuel Loveman Samuel E. Loveman (January 14, 1887 – May 14, 1976) was an American poet, critic, and dramatist probably best known for his connections with writers H. P. Lovecraft and Hart Crane. Early life and career He spent the first 37 years of his lif ...

has noted, "flowers, verdure, and the boughs and leaves of trees are magnificently placed as an opposing foil to unnatural malignity".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Death of Halpin Frayser, The 1891 short stories Gothic short stories Ghosts in written fiction Short stories by Ambrose Bierce Southern Gothic media Filicide in fiction Short stories set in California Nashville, Tennessee in fiction Zombies and revenants in popular culture

Plot summary

Interpretations

Assessment

See also

References