Comparing Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing" to Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space"
Discussions of Weird Fiction Essay #1
Editor’s Note — Spoilers abound in this discussion, but they come after the link to the file containing the Bierce story. Give it a read and then continue on if you haven’t read it before.
This is a revision of a post initially published in 2023. I intended at the time to write one discussion about Weird Fiction stories per month. While I’ve written quite a few discussions of Weird Fiction stories, I didn’t classify them as part of an overarching series and so I am posting this revision as a relaunch of the series. I would like to thank Dr.
, who’s recent “Tea and a Tale” entry featuring “The Mezzotint” by M.R. James reminded me that there is an audience for Weird discussions.
"And, God help me! the Damned Thing is of such a color!"
My love of what is often called “The Weird Tale” began the Christmas before an elementary school talent show when I was in the 4th Grade. My parents bought me a mass market magic set. If I remember correctly it was The Magic World of Blackstone Magic Set. Memory is fallible, but if it wasn’t this set it was one very much like it. I was already a fan of the “television magicians” like David Copperfield and Doug Henning, but I didn’t know anything about the “lore” of illusion and that changed after I got this set.
Upon learning my first few magic tricks, I went to the library to read more about magicians, escape artists, and illusionists of all sorts. This, of course, led me to the mountain of books dedicated to the magician to whom all magicians are compared, Erik Weisz (aka Harry Houdini). I devoured material about him and by him until one day I discovered “he” had written a short story entitled Under the Pyramids. Let’s just say that a story that combined Egyptian Pyramids and the lore of mummy curses with the most famous stage magician of all time was exactly what my young mind craved.
I devoured the story and was inspired by the way it built tension and dread. It made me an even bigger Houdini fan, so much so that I began to practice my mass market magic tricks to the point of semi-mastery. Eventually, I got good enough to consider entering the 4th Grade talent show. At least I thought I was good enough until my pride was shattered by a real magician.
Ms. Garcia (I’m pretty sure that was her name) had us do presentations about books we’d read over the course of the school year. I had already done my presentations discussing Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, Superfudge, and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. At the end of my C.S. Lewis presentation, Ms. Garcia asked me a question that she thought was going to be a “gotcha” question to prove I didn’t have the vocabulary to read the book and asked, “What’s a quiver?” I told her that it was a pouch used to carry arrows. Given that I was already reading D&D books at this time, I realized that if that was the “gotcha” then I didn’t even need to have to read the book to get an A. Thankfully, C.S. Lewis was a better writer than the teacher was an interlocutor and I progressed through the rest of the series.
Other students did their presentations as well and one of those students decided to discuss the biography of Houdini they read. During their presentation, they performed a couple of magic tricks. Only these weren’t “mass market” tricks from the Blackstone boxed set. No molded plastic vases for them. Theirs were professional grade magic tricks including the “pour the milk into the newspaper” gimmick. In addition to having professional grade tricks, they also had amazing hand manipulation skills which they demonstrated with cards and foam balls. All of this amazed my classmates and me, but only I had my heart broken. I knew that I could not compete with this master magician in the talent show.
This was not the last time that Houdini broke my heart. Oh no. I quickly learned that Harry Houdini was not the actual author of Under the Pyramids. That story was really written by one H.P. Lovecraft. This revelation was less tragic as it introduced me to the wider world of Weird Fiction and I’ve been a fan ever since.
As many of you know, I’ve been in the process of reading and researching a series of reviews from the golden age of Sword & Sorcery, and adjacent, pulp fiction. In gamer terms, it’s an Appendix N adjacent series of reviews, but not a formal Appendix N series because I want to be able to wander down paths as the whim takes me.
The series has largely focused on C.L. Moore’s tales of Northwest Smith so far with the most recent being an analysis of the collaboration between C L Moore and Forrest Ackerman, her story "Nymph of Darkness.” In researching that article I read that Moore referenced Ambrose Bierce's "The Damned Thing" as an inspiration for the way Nyusa's invisibility worked in “Nymph of Darkness.” I have been known from time to time to make a connection between Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space", which also featured a creature made of a color no one had ever seen before, and the creature in Bierce’s story. The creatures are different, but there are a number of similarities in the tale that stick out.
I first read "That Damned Thing" a few years ago and I still find it to be an enjoyable short tale that leaves you thinking about the underlying horror for much longer than it takes to read the story. It also wasn’t at all what I expected it to be based on my earlier assumptions. Having read Moore's correspondence with Ackerman, and the description in my copy of Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Literature, I expected something Gothic and atmospheric. I expected a tale filled with madness and despair. The description of "That Damned Thing" in Supernatural Horror in Literature points to it as an exception in Bierce's narrative style, a style which the book describes as "a jaunty and commonplacedly artificial style derived from journalistic models." Gothic and atmospheric are not words that I would use to describe "That Damned Thing." It certainly has its disturbing elements, and it is a wonderful commentary on willful disbelief, but it is a shockingly straight-forward tale. In fact, I might describe it as commonplacedly derived from journalistic models.
"The Damned Thing" is a perfect example of the modern procedural tale. The story opens with men, Mountain Men to be specific, gathered around a table upon which lies the body of Hugh Morgan. The use of Mountain Men is likely very intentional with regard to what Bierce is aiming at with the story. Frederick Jackson Turner's presentation on "The Significance of the Frontier in American History" had been made earlier in the year that "The Damned Thing" was published, and the stages of Turner's hypothesis are witnessed in the tale.
First, we have the Mountain Men those rugged adventurers who explore the vast unknown wilderness. Then we have the "coroner," a figure who is one of the Mountain Men in dress and composure, but who has a job associated with greater civilization. In fact, the reason the men are gathered around the table is to perform a kind of coroner's inquest and decide upon the cause of Hugh Morgan's death. Finally, we have William Harker, the young journalist and fiction writer who had come to the Frontier to write a story about Hugh Morgan because he believed Morgan’s isolated life was worth sharing with his civilized readership. William completely represents the final stage of development in Jackson's work. We have explorer's, law bringers, and the civilized, and they are all gathered around a table to guide us through the narrative.
The narrative is broken into four clear acts that are given chapter markers.
There is the establishing act where we find out that the men have gathered as a jury and that William Harker will testify regarding how Hugh Morgan died. We also learn that there is an additional piece of evidence, a book, that will play a role in the story even after it fails to play a role in the jury.
The next act consists of Harker's testimony about his hunting trip with Morgan and the beast that they encountered, a beast responsible for Hugh's death. A couple of things stand out here. We are finally given hints as to the location of the story. Bierce consistently uses the term chaparral when describing the environment, a flora commonly associated with the West. The use of chaparral lends further evidence to the Turner-esque nature of the story. When the beast is introduced, it is described as "the wind" moving vegetation. It is only after Morgan shoots at the beast, and it charges Morgan, that Harker realizes that they have encountered some creature...an invisible creature. The description of the invisibility is intriguing and somewhat puzzling.
"At a distance of less than thirty yards was my friend, down upon one knee, his head thrown back at a frightful angle, hatless, his long hair in disorder and his whole body in violent movement from side to side, backward and forward. His right arm was lifted and seemed to lack the hand -- at least, I could see none. The other arm was invisible."
We know from Harker's description that the creature is invisible, and transparent. We can see through it as it moves through the bushes in the earlier description. We also learn that things within its grasp are similarly obscured from our vision in the places where the creature holds its victim. There is obviously some cause, other than mere transparency, for the beast's invisibility. The image that keeps coming to my mind is the representation of the predator in John McTiernan’s Predator (1987).
In the third act, the Jury deliberates and determines that the death was caused by a mountain lion. The coroner assures the jurors that there is no other evidence available to help them in their determination of cause of death. The jury rejects a purely supernatural cause for the death, but acknowledges that Harker bears no fault. We also learn that the coroner was lying when he said that there was no other useful evidence. The book the coroner had been reading at the beginning of the tale happens to be Hugh Morgan's diary.
The final act is where all is made clear, in non-supernatural terms. Morgan's diary reveals to the audience that Morgan had indeed been encountering an invisible creature for some time, but Morgan had a scientific explanation. This was no mythic beast, rather the creature only reflects light that the human eye cannot see. Somehow light bends around the creature. This is where the description of the invisibility of the creature is at its strongest and weakest. The reason for the invisibility is ingenious, the execution is lacking. Bierce refers to Morgan noticing the creature because its form blocked his ability to see a couple of stars, yet he can "see through" the creature to the world behind it. In essence, the creature may not actually be invisible in the sense we tend to think of invisibility. Rather we may just be unable to see the thing, no black absence of light and no true transparency. A little awkward, but still cool.
What is even more interesting is what Bierce is doing here. One can readily understand why authors might write tales about the inability of those who follow a material metaphysic to acknowledge or engage with the supernatural. THE EXORCIST is a wonderful horror tale of this sort. The science being applied to the victim of possession is as horrifying as, if not more than, the effects of the actual possession. What happens in Bierce's tale is a material metaphysician, or rational realist if you will, in the form of the coroner unable to cope with a plausible scientific description of an unimaginable thing. Some scientists might want to explore the chaparral to find the beast, but the coroner essentially asserts that it is "better not to know." One wonders if Bierce was critiquing particular rigid dogmatists in the scientific community with this tale.
One can see why Lovecraft and Moore were inspired by the piece. Lovecraft liberally borrows names from "The Damned Thing" in his story "The Colour Out of Space." The only person who will share the tale of the invisible beast stalking the lands around Arkham is named Ammi Pierce -- clearly Ambrose Bierce -- and the name Nahum Gardner is close enough to Hugh Morgan for government work. The reluctance of the townsfolk to talk with our narrator in "Colour" fits with the jury's reluctance to deal with the unknown.
Simple tales like “The Damned Thing” and “The Colour Out of Space,” are often the targets of criticism by iconoclasts who seek to establish newer voices in a genre. One such case was an older article on the Tor website Which brings me to Seamus Cooper’s 2009 article in the Tor 12 Days of Lovecraft series. Tor is a major publisher of science fiction and fantasy, arguably THE major publisher especially if you judge major by my personal buying habits. They are also a publisher that alternates between phases of mythical canonization and iconoclasm.
In the article Cooper asserts that "The Colour Out of Space" is quite bad. A strong opinion regarding a story that Lovecraft thought his best, and about a tale that is largely praised among Lovecraft fandom. Cooper believes that "Colour" is "ill-conceived and poorly executed." This belief seems to largely stem from the fact that Cooper believes that the stakes of the tale have already taken place and that there is nothing left to chill the spines of the reader. This kind of analysis reminds me of when I saw The Blair Witch Project in the theater. After months of watching the marketing materials, I left the theater disillusioned and I asked my friend J, “is that it?” He nodded and we both agreed it wasn’t scary at all. Then, about five hours later, when I was going to sleep, it hit me. I was genuinely scared of the shadows in the corner of my room. I felt the dread. I’m not even superstitious, but I was in that moment. I thought there was no fear there, and there wasn’t at the moment, but there was later when I was alone in the dark. It changed my views about the film entirely. My friend J had similar thoughts.
Cooper is wrong on both counts. Kenneth Hite discusses some of the merits of the tale in his Tour de Lovecraft, so I won't repeat them here. Instead, I'll make a couple of my own observations.
With regard to the tale being poorly executed, one finds this a particularly baffling claim. The story begins with what may be the best written first sentence and introductory paragraphs in all of Lovecraftian fiction, "West of Arkham the hills rise wild, and there are valleys with deep woods that no axe has ever cut." The words are poetry without purple prose. Lovecraft sets the tone of the wild and unexplored marvelously, and he sets the tone for the foulness of the place itself in exquisite fashion. This story is rife with beautifully constructed wordsmithing, something I wouldn't often credit Lovecraft's fiction.
It would be fair to say that Lovecraft was inspired by Washington Irving’s classic The Legend of Sleepy Hollow which opens, “In the bosom of one of those spacious coves which indent the eastern shore of the Hudson, at that broad expansion of the river denominated by the ancient Dutch navigators the Tappan Zee, and where they always prudently shortened sail and implored the protection of St. Nicholas when they crossed, there lies a small market town or rural port, which by some is called Greensburgh, but which is more generally and properly known by the name of Tarry Town.” That might suggest that Lovecraft’s introduction wasn’t original, but it argues against it being poorly executed. I think Lovecraft’s prose is tighter and achieves the same effect with fewer words.
It is also remarkable how Lovecraft has transformed a hunting encounter with an unknown beast into a horrifying encounter with an alien presence. An encounter, I might add, that extends the interaction between the alien and the scientific beyond the mere coroner. In the end the beast does vanish, leaving a small piece behind trapped in a well, putting a seeming end to the stakes. But given the fact that there is soon to be a reservoir on top of the location of the small (trapped) piece, and the nature altering and mind altering affect this piece has on the land and the people surrounding it, one wonders what will happen when the reservoir comes and possibly frees the beast.
The end of this tale is as creepy as the end of the first FRIDAY the 13th, when we discover that it might be possible for Jason to rise from the bottom of the lake, or John Carpenter's THE THING. The creature is destroyed at the end of Carpenter's movie...or is it. The same is true here. Just how has the beast altered those around it? What effect will it have?
The stakes are subtle, rather than grotesque. They are social, rather than personal. But the stakes are horrifying none the less.
This beast represents something more than a colorless thing. No wonder the story inspired “Who Goes There?,” the source story for The Thing, as well as influenced the narrative of The Blob.
"Can't git away...draws ye...ye know summ'at's comin', but 'tain't no use..."