{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/apparition",
 "title": "Apparition",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V",
 "book_slug": "collected-works-v",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 57,
 "container": "Black Beetles in Amber",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1911,
  "venue": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume V (1911)",
  "note": "Taken from Volume V of the Neale collected edition (copyright 1911). That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume's own preface states that most of its verses are republished from newspapers and periodicals of the Pacific Coast, and which of them printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "black-beetles-in-amber.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 26,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 47,
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 "site_ready": true,
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 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "“The ghosts are all gone,” the Bulletin cries.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O neighbor, good neighbor, where are your eyes?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gruesome and ghastly, beneath your nose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A ghost is stalking that never goes.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With a stony eye and a brow of gloom,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It enters the editorial room,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It haunts the passages, haunts the stairs⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Editors, printers alike it scares;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But the reader most it appals, for still",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "It writes and writes with a real quill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "On real paper, in real ink,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The phantoms of thoughts that dead men think.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sheeted ideas from wormy brains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Troop o’er the paper, and spooks of strains",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Of sepulchral laughter seem to float",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In the air as the ghost reads what it wrote;",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "And a faint, white, phosphorescent ray⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The visible eloquence of decay⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Gleams on its lips as it reads each word",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "In a tone that no mortal before has heard.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Copy to printer and ghost to tomb⁠—",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Silent the editorial room.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "O the Bulletin ghost is indeed a most",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Remarkable kind of a Bulletin ghost.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who sees it cries, as his heart were bled:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“O God! will Bill Bartlett never stay dead?”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}