WEBVTT - Short Stuff: The Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce 0:00:04.280 --> 0:00:07.000 Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck, 0:00:07.040 --> 0:00:09.960 there's Jerry over there. Everyone be quiet, let's get started. 0:00:10.720 --> 0:00:14.520 Ambrose Beers goes missing. This is a good one. This 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:18.760 is so. Ambrose Beers was a writer, and he's described 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.680 in this article. And this is from the old friends 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.599 at how stuff works dot com. Oh yeah, good, good plug. Yeah. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:27.400 They still have some great, great short content out there 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:30.000 that we can mind for these short stuffs. But he 0:00:30.040 --> 0:00:32.880 has described here as equal parts Mark Twain and Edgar 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.839 Allan Poe is pretty good. Yeah. He was born in 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:38.680 Ohio in eighteen forty two, and he was a journalist 0:00:39.360 --> 0:00:41.800 and like one of the big sort of early journalists 0:00:41.800 --> 0:00:44.120 to kind of supposedly one of the first ones to 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.080 really make his byeline a brand in and of itself. 0:00:47.280 --> 0:00:50.360 Oh yeah, but he also wrote horror stories. He wrote 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:54.040 horror short horror fiction. He wrote a lot of um. 0:00:54.080 --> 0:00:56.920 He was kind of his generation's voice about how the 0:00:56.960 --> 0:00:58.960 Civil War really was because he was one of the 0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:01.480 few writers of his day who had actually fought in 0:01:01.520 --> 0:01:04.040 the Civil War. That's right. I remember. The one that 0:01:04.200 --> 0:01:06.240 comes to mind for most people, probably that you read 0:01:06.240 --> 0:01:09.720 in school was an occurrence at al Creek Bridge. Great story. Yeah, 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.119 one of the classic American short stories of all time. 0:01:12.800 --> 0:01:16.120 He also wrote The Devil's Dictionary, which was his own 0:01:16.200 --> 0:01:22.760 take on words like um, ghosts are outward and visible 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:27.040 signs of inward fears, or peace is just a period 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.360 of cheating in between two periods of fighting. Just kind 0:01:30.360 --> 0:01:36.360 of scathing, sarcastic, bitter takes on humanity. And to kind 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.679 of make it more succinct, I saw a Poetry Foundation 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:45.720 description of him said he was a committed opponent of hypocrisy, prejudice, corruption, 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:50.520 and had contempt for politics, religion, society, and conventional human values. 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:53.120 So he's our kind of guy about to say he 0:01:53.160 --> 0:01:55.560 would really we should go get some coffee with him, 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:57.640 and he he would have been one of the great 0:01:57.640 --> 0:01:59.720 American writers. A lot of people say he is, but 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:01.800 he would have been one of the widely known great 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.400 American writers had he ever gotten a novel together. But 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:08.799 he didn't. He was a columnist, he was a short 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:11.760 story writer, he was a correspondent, but he never made 0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:14.440 became a novelist. And he was partially bitter. He was 0:02:14.520 --> 0:02:17.320 bitter in part because of that. So when this article 0:02:17.320 --> 0:02:20.480 says he was a novelist that is a lie. Yes, Okay, 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:27.080 So this dude named Don Swam wrote a book called 0:02:27.120 --> 0:02:31.639 The Assassination of Ambrose Beers colon. When is someone going 0:02:31.639 --> 0:02:33.680 to write a book without a colon? I think we 0:02:33.720 --> 0:02:38.960 need to colin a love story. And he seems to 0:02:38.960 --> 0:02:41.520 be sort of the guy who really is I think 0:02:41.520 --> 0:02:43.919 he runs a website on Ambrose Beers, is really carrying 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.720 this torch forward for this person? And what's interesting beyond 0:02:47.720 --> 0:02:51.639 the life of Ambrose Beers is the disappearance and mysterious 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:55.240 death of Ambrose Beers. Yeah. I was reading an l 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.200 A Times article about this very thing, and they said 0:02:58.200 --> 0:03:02.640 that Ambrose Beers would have become a totally obscure American writer. 0:03:02.720 --> 0:03:05.079 I'm not sure if that's true had he not made 0:03:05.080 --> 0:03:11.679 a great career choice at the end where he put 0:03:11.720 --> 0:03:17.320 a shroud of mystery over his own demise. That's what happened. 0:03:17.520 --> 0:03:20.240 No one knows what happened to Ambrose Beers. He disappeared 0:03:20.560 --> 0:03:24.520 and was never heard from. Starting in December of n Yeah, 0:03:24.560 --> 0:03:26.120 there are there are a bunch of theories, and we're 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:29.240 gonna throw some of them out there. Um over the 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.520 next seven or eight minutes. One of them, is that 0:03:32.800 --> 0:03:36.880 he loved the Grand Canyon, and he loved it so much. 0:03:37.040 --> 0:03:39.320 He loved it like air wolf. He loved it so 0:03:39.400 --> 0:03:41.840 much that he wanted to become a part of it 0:03:42.320 --> 0:03:45.560 and leaped to his death. Uh, and went there to 0:03:45.560 --> 0:03:48.520 to leap to his death and die by suicide. That's 0:03:48.520 --> 0:03:51.360 one which is believable, as as we'll see you later on, 0:03:51.440 --> 0:03:57.040 it's plausible. Um. But the the main story, the one 0:03:57.120 --> 0:04:00.600 that most historians will point to as the story of 0:04:00.640 --> 0:04:03.320 what happened to him, is that in December of nine 0:04:04.520 --> 0:04:08.400 he left California to go down to Mexico to find 0:04:08.520 --> 0:04:12.440 Poncho Villa, who was one of three leaders of the 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:17.400 Mexican Revolution um down there at the time, and that 0:04:17.480 --> 0:04:20.960 he either wanted to write a book about Poncho Villa, 0:04:21.200 --> 0:04:24.320 write some articles about him, or he wanted to take 0:04:24.400 --> 0:04:27.039 up arms alongside Poncho Villa because he was an old 0:04:27.080 --> 0:04:30.359 Confederate war vett who had nothing to lose at this point. 0:04:30.680 --> 0:04:33.560 He was a bitter, old drunk who had an acerbic 0:04:33.600 --> 0:04:37.600 wit and bitter take on everything. Um. And that is 0:04:37.640 --> 0:04:40.599 actually not totally out of the realm of possibility for 0:04:40.680 --> 0:04:44.040 why he was going down there. But the through The 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:47.279 common general story is that he went down to Mexico 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:49.960 to hang out with Poncho Villa for one reason or another, 0:04:50.200 --> 0:04:53.320 and that he was never heard from again at the age. 0:04:53.880 --> 0:04:56.360 So should we take a break, Ye, all right, We'll 0:04:56.360 --> 0:04:58.120 come right back and talk a little bit about what 0:04:58.160 --> 0:05:24.000 people speculate happened south of a border stop. Mm hm alright. 0:05:24.040 --> 0:05:26.560 So there are a lot. I mean, it seems like 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.680 it's really hard to get a beat, a read, a 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:36.400 beat on this a bead, because everything that seems like 0:05:36.440 --> 0:05:40.120 it might have really happened is disputed by somebody. It's 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.919 not just that chuck in addition to that, or the 0:05:43.000 --> 0:05:46.040 reason the reason why it's disputed by somebody is because 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:49.599 he almost You get the impression that he went to 0:05:49.680 --> 0:05:53.200 the trouble of setting it up so that his disappearance 0:05:53.240 --> 0:05:54.880 would be a mystery that no one would ever be 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:56.960 able to figure it out. Perhaps, And it's also clear 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.680 that in nineteen thirteen it was a lot easier to 0:05:59.680 --> 0:06:02.320 disap Pierre and no one ever knows what happens to 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:07.240 you just and then he's gone. So it is generally believed, though, 0:06:07.240 --> 0:06:11.200 that he did go to Mexico, and he did uh 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:14.000 ride with Poncho Villas, a seventy one year old Civil 0:06:14.080 --> 0:06:18.360 War veteran. It's just not um proven out exactly why 0:06:18.400 --> 0:06:22.920 he was there or how he necessarily died there, right right, 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:27.120 Some people say firing squad, yes, which is supported by 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:31.160 this letter. So his last letter was posted from Chihuahua, Mexico, 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:34.400 which is where Poncho Villa was stationed in carrying out 0:06:34.480 --> 0:06:38.680 his his arm of the revolution. So we made it 0:06:38.720 --> 0:06:42.080 as far as Poncho Villa's home territory. Supposedly. Some people 0:06:42.080 --> 0:06:44.560 don't even believe that that's true, but that's where the 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.120 last known letter from ambro Beers was postmarked, was Chihuahua, Mexico. 0:06:48.320 --> 0:06:50.920 And in this letter he says, goodbye. If you hear 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:53.359 of my being stood up against the Mexican stone wall 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.840 and shot to rags, please know that I think it 0:06:55.960 --> 0:06:58.120 is a pretty good way to depart this life. It 0:06:58.200 --> 0:07:00.920 beats old age disease or falling on the cellar stairs 0:07:01.120 --> 0:07:04.600 to be a gringo in Mexico. Ah, that is euthanasia. 0:07:05.800 --> 0:07:07.680 So this is the last letter he has, and he's 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:09.720 in Chihuahua, Mexico, and then no one ever hears f 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:11.360 him again. And he was going down to hang out 0:07:11.360 --> 0:07:13.840 with Poncho Villa. That would support the idea that he 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.480 died at the hands of either Poncho Villa or maybe 0:07:16.480 --> 0:07:19.840 the Federals who Poncho Villa was fighting. Right. There are 0:07:19.880 --> 0:07:22.560 also people skeptics that say, you know, there really was 0:07:22.720 --> 0:07:26.600 no letter um and there was a notebook that belonged 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:30.520 to a secretary that had a summary of a purported letter. 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.200 Oh really, yeah, but I mean heard that one. I 0:07:33.240 --> 0:07:36.120 think the man who wrote the book, Mr Swain, says 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:38.680 there was a literal letter, right, That's what I've heard, 0:07:38.760 --> 0:07:41.520 So I'm not sure how that can be up for debate. 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:45.440 Some people say that he had somebody take the letter 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:48.360 down to Chihuahua, because you can give someone a letter, 0:07:48.800 --> 0:07:50.520 give him some money to take it down, and then 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:53.200 have them mail it from Chiuauwa. Just because that last 0:07:53.280 --> 0:07:56.920 letter was posted from Chihuahua does not indisputably prove that 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:00.240 Ambrose Beers was in Chihuahua at the end of ten 0:08:01.080 --> 0:08:03.360 that's right. There are some other people that said there's 0:08:03.360 --> 0:08:06.360 a priest named James Lenert who says that he was 0:08:06.400 --> 0:08:11.280 executed by firing squad uh and this was in um 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:14.680 Sierra Mohata and that he never made it to Chihuahua. Yeah, 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:16.960 and that would have been the federal troops in a 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:18.880 mine in a mining camp who found out he was 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:22.320 going to aid ponto Villa and kill him. The idea 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:24.840 that he died at either the hands of or the 0:08:24.960 --> 0:08:29.440 order of Poncho Villa came from a guy named Adolf 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:34.320 Danziger de Castro who wrote a very obscure biography in 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:39.440 on Ambrose Beers, and in it he was one of 0:08:39.480 --> 0:08:42.840 De Castro was one of Ambrose Beers's drinking buddies. He 0:08:42.960 --> 0:08:45.920 said that he went down to Mexico and had dinner 0:08:45.960 --> 0:08:48.640 with Poncho Villa to find out what had happened to 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:53.680 Ambrose Beers and eventually coaxed from Poncho Villa that Ambrose 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:58.240 Beers had died because he had gone drinking and criticizing 0:08:58.480 --> 0:09:01.199 Poncho Villa in punch of He didn't like that, and 0:09:01.240 --> 0:09:03.400 so he was killed because he ran he shot his 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:08.080 mouth off, which was very believable. Yeah, it's entirely possible. 0:09:08.240 --> 0:09:11.480 And the fact that this guy knew him. Uh, A 0:09:11.520 --> 0:09:15.040 lot of historians say this seems authentic. That's really possible 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:18.080 that that happened. There was also a journalist named Jake 0:09:18.120 --> 0:09:22.800 Silverstein and early two thousand's that said, Uh, he got 0:09:22.800 --> 0:09:25.600 into this theory that he never made it to Mexico 0:09:25.640 --> 0:09:28.200 and he died in Texas. Uh. He dug up a 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.559 letter to the editor of a little newspaper in Marfa, 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.120 Texas from a man who said, he's buried here in 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.680 an unmarked grave because I picked up a hitchhiker once 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.040 who fought for the federal forces, the Mexican federal forces 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:46.120 when he's a teenager. And he said that he picked 0:09:46.160 --> 0:09:51.439 up an old gringo who called himself Ambrosia, and uh, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:53.200 he said, hey, can you pay me to get me 0:09:53.240 --> 0:09:56.040 back into the US. And during this trip he talked 0:09:56.040 --> 0:09:58.199 about books that he had written, and one had the 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:01.120 word devil in the title. And he died of pneumonia 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:06.559 in nineteen fourteen and was buried in Marfa, Texas. Mhm, okay, 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.120 that's just as legitimate as anything else. What about the 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.080 one that he actually he like like somebody was saying 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:15.920 that he gave the letter to somebody else to post 0:10:15.920 --> 0:10:18.800 from Chihuahua and he went to the Grand Canyon and 0:10:18.880 --> 0:10:21.840 died by suicide. That that was how he died, and 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:24.280 that he was throwing everybody off the trail. This one 0:10:24.360 --> 0:10:26.960 is actually supported by a couple of things. His son 0:10:27.320 --> 0:10:31.880 um died by suicide. He spoke of suicide as a 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.720 noble out that it was somebody's right to make that choice. 0:10:35.960 --> 0:10:39.839 And then also, Um he did a tour of Civil 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:43.319 War battlefields in the United States right before he went 0:10:43.320 --> 0:10:46.880 to Mexico, So it's possible that he was in the 0:10:46.960 --> 0:10:49.360 kind of mindset that he would have been in to 0:10:49.360 --> 0:10:51.719 to take his own life. Who knows, but that's a 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:55.040 I mean, that's why we'll probably never know what happened 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.959 to him. Because each of these is really plausible, and 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:02.439 each of them can be not constructed but arrivaled by 0:11:02.440 --> 0:11:05.200 the next theory too. None of the theories are just 0:11:05.240 --> 0:11:08.960 like outlandish, They're all pretty pretty reasonable and supported by 0:11:08.960 --> 0:11:11.360 some factor other. Yeah, and there was one final one 0:11:11.440 --> 0:11:14.600 that this is from Swain's book, that Beer's actually went 0:11:14.640 --> 0:11:18.400 to Mexico and fought and lived and then retired to 0:11:18.960 --> 0:11:21.560 Saratoga Springs, New York, where he fell in love and 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.320 then died of asthma. And that was of course entirely fiction, 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.720 I think so, right, Yeah, because that was his book 0:11:27.840 --> 0:11:30.719 was the Ambrose Beer's love story was fiction, and I 0:11:30.760 --> 0:11:32.640 think that's what happens to him in the book. You 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:35.200 know that movie, you know, the movie Old Gringo with 0:11:35.240 --> 0:11:39.240 Gregory Peck that came out Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda 0:11:39.200 --> 0:11:44.720 and Jimmy Smits. It reimagines Ambrose Beers's death at the 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:47.760 hands of one of ponto Villa's generals, shot in the 0:11:47.800 --> 0:11:51.520 back and supposedly from dust till Don three, not supposedly. 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:57.080 I never saw it, but that tackles ambro Beers. Ambro Beers, 0:11:57.080 --> 0:11:59.280 he's a character in it. Yeah, and I think he 0:11:59.360 --> 0:12:04.719 lives in in that in Old gringoy Dies. Well, if 0:12:04.760 --> 0:12:06.640 you know what happened Ambrose Beers, we want to know 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:09.600 about it. You can send us a message to Stuff 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:13.160 Podcasts at I heeart radio dot com and uh, I 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.199 think that's it right, that's it. Well, then short stuff 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:21.320 is out. Stuff you Should Know is a production of 0:12:21.320 --> 0:12:24.280 iHeart Radios. How Stuff Works. 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