# An Inhabitant of Carcosa explained — Can Such Things Be? > Chapter companion for Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce. ## What happens The narrator, reflecting on Hali's words about different kinds of death, finds himself lost in a bleak, desolate plain filled with ancient gravestones and ruins. Believing he is ill and delirious, he encounters a lynx and a half-naked man with a torch, but they seem not to see or hear him. Realizing he sees stars in the absence of darkness and casts no shadow, he discovers a gravestone bearing his own name, birth date, and death date. At dawn, he sees the ruins of the ancient city of Carcosa and understands he is a spirit recounting these facts through a medium. ## Themes in this chapter ### Death and the Supernatural The narrator's journey reveals he is a spirit, with his own gravestone marking his death, and the entire landscape is a supernatural realm of the dead. ### Madness and Perception The narrator questions his sanity, attributing the eerie phenomena to delirium, yet later realizes his perceptions are those of a disembodied spirit. ### Isolation and Terror The desolate, silent plain with its ancient graves and lack of human life evokes a profound sense of isolation and existential dread. ## Character check-ins ### Hastur Invoked in the opening epigraph referencing Hali's words, setting a supernatural tone. ## Key lines > For there be divers sorts of death⁠—some wherein the body remaineth; and in some it vanisheth quite away with the spirit. There are many kinds of death—some leave the body behind, while others cause both body and spirit to disappear entirely. _Opening reflection on the nature of death, setting the supernatural context._ > I observed with astonishment that everything seemed unfamiliar. On every side of me stretched a bleak and desolate expanse of plain, covered with a tall overgrowth of sere grass... I was shocked to find myself in a completely strange, barren plain overgrown with dry grass. _Describes the narrator's disorientation and the eerie landscape._ > God in Heaven! my name in full!⁠—the date of my birth!⁠—the date of my death! My God! The stone bore my full name, my birth date, and my death date! _Climactic revelation that the narrator is dead, reading his own tombstone._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/an-inhabitant-of-carcosa - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters