# The Other Lodgers explained — Can Such Things Be?

> Chapter companion for Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce.

## What happens

Colonel Levering recounts a harrowing night at the Breathitt House in Atlanta, a dilapidated former hotel and hospital. After falling asleep in a room, he awakens to find it filled with the corpses of former patients. The night-clerk, who appears to be a ghost, and a mysterious caretaker reveal the building's grim history, leaving Levering terrified.

## Themes in this chapter

### Death and the Supernatural

The chapter centers on the protagonist's encounter with a room full of corpses and a ghostly night-clerk, blending death with supernatural horror.

### Isolation and Terror

The protagonist's solitary experience in the dead-room and his inability to move or cry out highlight the terror of isolation.

## Character check-ins

### Col. J. C. McArdle

The narrator and protagonist who experiences the supernatural events at the Breathitt House.

## Key lines

> This is not a hotel. It used to be; afterward it was a hospital. Now it is unoccupied, awaiting a tenant. The room that you mention was the dead-room—there were always plenty of dead.

The building was once a hotel, then a hospital, and is now vacant; the room in question was used to store corpses.

_The caretaker explains the building's history and the room's purpose._

> The fellow that you call the night-clerk used to be that, but later he booked the patients as they were brought in. I don’t understand his being here. He has been dead a few weeks.

The man the protagonist thought was the night-clerk had actually worked as a hospital registrar and has been dead for weeks.

_The caretaker reveals the night-clerk's true identity as a ghost._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/the-other-lodgers
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters