I take this journey into an occult-sunken mind as an examination of modern life’s complexity eroding the continuity of one man’s soul. An offhand statement by Dampier reflecting a belief that “ancestral blood”in a man’s veins serves as a moral guidepost for the living individual, hints at the fact that among thinkers of Bierce’s time blood memory was thought to be related to intuition, messages from our ancestors who faced long ago and many times over that which we are about to experience.

Bierce’s style is haunting in and of itself and his satirical diction adds immensely to the sense of realism that accompanies such weird stories as Beyond the Wall. It seems that his visits to then recent Civil War battlefields did much to affect his ghostly vision of humanity.