M.A. Kleen

My latest article is up at the Emerging Civil War blog!

Both stories, “The Soldier Boy’s Ghost” by Mrs. B. C. Peters and “A Baffled Ambuscade” by Ambrose Bierce, examine the Civil War through the eyes of individual soldiers. These are not tales of patriotism, grand armies, or larger-than-life figures, they are stories about loneliness and fear, of being swept up in events outside of your control. Both stories use claustrophobic settings to place us inside the thoughts of soldiers shaped by war’s personal toll. War lingers in the roads, woods, and buildings, leaving behind a kind of psychic residue that manifests in eerie, unexplained ways. They remind us that the true weight of conflict is not always reflected in casualty numbers, it is borne in the hearts and minds of the survivors. In this way, both narratives use the supernatural to speak to the emotional and psychological cost of war.

ECW welcomes back guest author M.A. Kleen. The simple people of the South believed firmly in ghosts. From childhood, Jimmy had learned to fear uncanny manifestations. His perplexity had already grown into fear. He now became frightened. Little would it take to precipitate him into headlong flight. Suddenly, he heard the noise again from the […]

Haunted by Memory: Two Civil War Ghost Stories