Korb has a master's degree in English literature and creative writing and has written for a wide variety of educational publishers. In the following essay, she discusses the many mysterious elements inherent in "The Boarded Window."

Ambrose Bierce is a well-known literary figure for many reasons. He was a man out of time; his pessimistic, cynical writings were oddly out of place in a period dominated by optimist thought; he introduced psychological studies into a literary world that valued realism and naturalism. He is the author of the brutal and realistic Civil War short stories "Chickamauga" and "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and the witty, ironical Devil's Dictionary. During the 1890s, he was one of America's most famous newspaper columnists. Bierce's flight to Mexico in 1913, to join up with Pancho Villa's revolutionaries, and his subsequent disappearance, only added fuel to the legend of "Bitter Bierce." Today...