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44-500: Owl Creek Bridge may refer to: " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge ", a short story by Ambrose Bierce " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge " season 5 episode 13 of Alfred Hitchcock Presents An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (film) , a French film adaptation of Bierce's short story, originally titled La Rivière du Hibou (and eventually aired as an episode of The Twilight Zone ) EFP Bridge over Owl Creek Topics referred to by

88-618: A flash-back, Farquhar and his wife are relaxing at home one evening when a soldier dressed in Confederate gray rides up to the gate. Farquhar, a supporter of the Confederacy, learns from him that Union troops have seized the Owl Creek railroad bridge and repaired it. The soldier suggests that Farquhar might be able to burn the bridge down if he can slip past its guards. He then leaves, but doubles back after nightfall to return north

132-400: A life happens in an instant. Charles Dickens 's essay "A Visit to Newgate" wherein a man dreams he has escaped his death sentence has been speculated as a possible source for the story. Bierce's story, in turn, may have influenced " The Snows of Kilimanjaro " by Ernest Hemingway and Pincher Martin by William Golding . Bierce's story highlighted the idea of subjective time passing at

176-543: A long journey home to his family before his death is revealed. In an interview with Afterbuzz, Teen Wolf writer and creator Jeff Davis said that the final sequence of the Season 3 finale (2014) was inspired by "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." An episode of the British TV series Black Mirror followed a similar plot. In the episode " Playtest ", Cooper tests a revolutionary video game that causes him to confuse

220-641: A merging of resources between the two papers. For 35 years, starting in 1965, the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner operated under a joint operating agreement whereby the Chronicle published a morning paper and the Examiner published in the afternoon. The Examiner published the Sunday paper's news sections and glossy magazine, and the Chronicle contributed the features. Circulation

264-494: A minor role in it. Critics have noted a similar final act in the 1985 film Brazil . In the 2005 film Stay (with Ewan McGregor , Naomi Watts and Ryan Gosling ; directed by Marc Forster ; written by David Benioff ) the entire story takes place in a character's mind after a tragic accident. Similar to Bierce's story, in the Boardwalk Empire episode "Farewell Daddy Blues" (2013), Richard Harrow hallucinates

308-532: A more-than-40-year tenure. In the early 20th century, an edition of the Examiner circulated in the East Bay under the Oakland Examiner masthead. Into the late 20th century, the paper circulated well beyond San Francisco. In 1982, for example, the Examiner ' s zoned weekly supplements within the paper were titled "City", " Peninsula ", " Marin / Sonoma " and " East Bay ". Additionally, during

352-732: A poker debt." William Randolph Hearst hired S.S. (Sam) Chamberlain , who had started the first American newspaper in Paris, as managing editor and Arthur McEwen as editor, and changed the Examiner from an evening to a morning paper. Under him, the paper's popularity increased greatly, with the help of such writers as Ambrose Bierce , Mark Twain , and the San Francisco-born Jack London . It also found success through its version of yellow journalism , with ample use of foreign correspondents and splashy coverage of scandals such as two entire pages of cables from Vienna about

396-565: A protest outside the offices of the Examiner in response to a series of news articles disparaging people in San Francisco's gay bars and clubs. The peaceful protest against the Examiner turned tumultuous and was later called "Friday of the Purple Hand" and "Bloody Friday of the Purple Hand." Examiner employees "dumped a barrel of printers' ink on the crowd from the roof of the newspaper building." The protestors "used

440-442: A similar situation. It is later revealed that they are in fact part of an experiment and the entire situation is taking place in their minds. The broken hangman's knot and lost traveler cliché figure into the plot for the movie From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter in which Ambrose Bierce is a character. The story has also influenced music. For example, the fourteenth track on Bressa Creeting Cake's self-titled 1997 album

484-542: A stocking stuffer," Reilly said. He also owns Gentry Magazine and the Nob Hill Gazette . He then hired editor-in-chief Carly Schwartz in 2021. Under her leadership, a broadsheet -style newspaper was re-introduced, and she launched two newsletters with a nod to the rise in popularity of email marketing models such as Substack . Schwartz also put the SF Weekly on hiatus "for the foreseeable future," ending

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528-723: A subsidy of $ 66 million, to be paid over three years. From their side, the Fangs paid Hearst US$ 100 for the Examiner . Reilly later acquired the Examiner in 2020. On February 24, 2003, the Examiner became a free daily newspaper , printed Sunday through Friday. On February 19, 2004, the Fang family sold the Examiner and its printing plant, together with the two Independent newspapers, to Philip Anschutz of Denver, Colorado . His new company, Clarity Media Group , launched The Washington Examiner in 2005 and published The Baltimore Examiner from 2006 to 2009. In 2006, Anschutz donated

572-526: Is '[An] Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,' by Ambrose Bierce. It isn't remotely political. It is a flawless example of American genius, like ' Sophisticated Lady ' by Duke Ellington or the Franklin stove ." The real Owl Creek Bridge is in Tennessee. Bierce likely changed the setting to northern Alabama because the actual bridge did not have a railroad near it at the time of the story. The story explores

616-798: Is delivered free to select neighborhoods in San Francisco and San Mateo counties, and to single-copy outlets throughout San Francisco , San Mateo , Santa Clara , and Alameda counties. By February 2008, the company had transformed the newspaper's examiner.com domain into a national hyperlocal brand, with local websites throughout the United States. Clarity Media sold the Examiner to San Francisco Newspaper Company LLC in 2011. The company's investors included then-President and Publisher Todd Vogt, Chief Financial Officer Pat Brown, and David Holmes Black . Inaccurate early media reports claimed that Black's business, Black Press , had bought

660-471: Is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge Peyton Farquhar, a civilian who is also a wealthy planter and slave owner, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War . Six military men and a company of infantrymen are present, guarding

704-478: Is entitled "Peyton Farquhar". The heavy metal band Deceased retold the tale in the song "The Hanging Soldier" on its 2000 album Supernatural Addiction . Adam Young has said that the story was the inspiration for the name of his 2007 electronica musical project, Owl City . The Doobie Brothers song "I Cheat The Hangman" was inspired by the story according its composer, Patrick Simmons . The song Mendokusai on Tellison's 2015 album Hope Fading Nightly features

748-413: Is not only the narrator who experiences the story but also the readers themselves. Bierce said that he detested "bad readers—readers who, lacking the habit of analysis, lack also the faculty of discrimination, and take whatever is put before them, with the broad, blind catholicity of a slop-fed conscience of a parlor pig". The plot device of a long period of subjective time passing in an instant, such as

792-478: Is out of range, he leaves the creek to begin the journey to his home thirty miles (48 kilometres) away. Farquhar walks all day through a seemingly endless forest and that night he begins to hallucinate, seeing strange constellations and hearing whispered voices in an unknown language. He travels on, urged by the thought of his wife and children despite the pains caused by his ordeal. The next morning, after having apparently fallen asleep while walking, he finds himself at

836-531: The San Francisco Call —brought out a joint edition. The Examiner offices were destroyed on April 18, 1906, but when the city was rebuilt, a new structure, the Hearst Building, arose in its place at Third and Market streets. It opened in 1909, and in 1937, the facade, entranceway, and lobby underwent extensive remodeling designed by architect Julia Morgan . Through the middle third of

880-557: The San Francisco Independent and the San Mateo Independent . San Francisco political consultant Clint Reilly filed a lawsuit against Hearst, charging that the deal did not ensure two competitive newspapers and was instead a generous deal designed to curry approval. However, on July 27, 2000, a federal judge approved the Fangs' assumption of the Examiner name, its archives, 35 delivery trucks, and

924-418: The Examiner boasted, among other writers, such columnists as veteran sportswriter Prescott Sullivan, the popular Herb Caen , who took an eight-year hiatus from the Chronicle (1950–1958), and Kenneth Rexroth , one of the best-known men of California letters and a leading San Francisco Renaissance poet, who contributed weekly impressions of the city from 1960 to 1967. Ultimately, circulation battles ended in

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968-734: The Mayerling Incident ; satire; and patriotic enthusiasm for the Spanish–American War and the 1898 annexation of the Philippines . William Randolph Hearst created the masthead with the "Hearst Eagle" and the slogan Monarch of the Dailies by 1889, at the latest. After the great earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed much of San Francisco, the Examiner and its rivals—the San Francisco Chronicle and

1012-601: The flagship of the Hearst chain, the Examiner converted to free distribution early in the 21st century and is owned by Clint Reilly Communications, which bought the newspaper at the end of 2020 along with the SF Weekly . The Examiner was founded in 1863 as the Democratic Press , a pro- Confederacy , pro- slavery , pro- Democratic Party paper opposed to Abraham Lincoln , but after his assassination in 1865,

1056-524: The archives of the Examiner to the University of California, Berkeley Bancroft Library , the largest gift ever given to the library. Under Clarity's ownership, the Examiner pioneered a new business model for the newspaper industry. Designed to be read quickly, the Examiner is presented in a compact size without story jumps. It focuses on local news, business, entertainment, and sports, with an emphasis on content relevant to its local readers. It

1100-399: The bridge and carrying out the sentence. Farquhar thinks of his wife and children and is then distracted by a noise that, to him, sounds like an unbearably loud clanging. It is actually the ticking of his watch. He considers the possibility of jumping off the bridge and swimming to safety if he can free his tied hands, but the soldiers drop him from the bridge before he can act on the idea. In

1144-439: The concept of "dying with dignity". It shows the reader that the perception of "dignity" provides no mitigation for the deaths that occur in warfare. It further demonstrates psychological escape right before death. Farquhar experiences an intense delusion to distract him from his inevitable death. The moment of horror that the reader experiences at the end of the piece reflects the distortion of reality that Farquhar encounters. It

1188-407: The demonstrators. Somebody could have been hurt if that ink had gotten into their eyes, but the police were knocking people to the ground." The accounts of police brutality included instances of women being thrown to the ground and protesters' teeth being knocked out. In its stylebook and by tradition, the Examiner refers to San Francisco as "The City" (capitalized), both in headlines and in

1232-405: The end that this was all a fantasy to avoid the reality that Ben had been diagnosed with leukemia. The episode's title is also a reference to the story. The film Ghosts of War is about a group of soldiers who find themselves in a time loop. In one scene, one of the main characters briefly tells his fellow soldiers about An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge , implying that they may be going through

1276-409: The game with reality. Similar to Bierce's protagonist, it is revealed at the end that the entire sequence of events has taken place in the short span of his death. In Scrubs , the episode "My Occurrence" has a similar plot structure, where the main character J.D. believes that a clerical mistake was made with his patient Ben. J.D. spends the entire episode trying to get it rectified, only to realize at

1320-427: The gate to his plantation. He rushes to embrace his wife, but before he can do so he feels a heavy blow upon the back of his neck. There is a loud noise and a flash of white and "then all is darkness and silence!" It is revealed that Farquhar never escaped at all. He imagined his escape and journey home during the time between falling through the bridge and the noose breaking his neck. "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"

1364-518: The imagined experiences of Farquhar while falling, has been explored by several authors. An early literary antecedent appears in the Tang dynasty tale The Governor of Nanke , by Li Gongzuo . Another medieval antecedent is Don Juan Manuel 's Tales of Count Lucanor , Chapter XII ( c. 1335), "Of that which happened to a Dean of Santiago, with Don Illan, the Magician, who lived at Toledo," in which

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1408-483: The ink to scrawl slogans on the building walls" and slap purple hand prints "throughout downtown [San Francisco]," resulting in "one of the most visible demonstrations of gay power," according to the Bay Area Reporter . According to Larry LittleJohn, then president of Society for Individual Rights , "At that point, the tactical squad arrived – not to get the employees who dumped the ink, but to arrest

1452-811: The moment of death and popularized the fictional device of false narrative continuation, which has been in wide circulation ever since then. Notable examples of this technique from the early-to-mid 20th century include H. G. Wells 's "The Door in the Wall" (1906) and " The Beautiful Suit " (1909), Vladimir Nabokov 's " Details of a Sunset " (1924) and " The Aurelian " (1930), Jorge Luis Borges 's " The Secret Miracle " (1944) and " The South " (1949), William Golding 's Pincher Martin (1956), Terry Gilliam 's Brazil (1985) as well as Julio Cortázar 's " The Island at Midday ", and Leo Perutz 's " From Nine to Nine ". Alexander Lernet-Holenia 's novella Der Baron Bagge (1936) shares many similarities with Bierce's story, including

1496-421: The paper's offices were destroyed by a mob, and starting on June 12, 1865, it was called The Daily Examiner . In 1880, mining engineer and entrepreneur George Hearst bought the Examiner . Seven years later, after being elected to the U.S. Senate , he gave it to his son, William Randolph Hearst , who was then 23 years old. The elder Hearst "was said to have received the failing paper as partial payment of

1540-466: The paper. In 2014, Vogt sold his shares to Black Press. Present-day owners of the Examiner also own SF Weekly , an alternative weekly , and previously owned the now-shuttered San Francisco Bay Guardian . In December 2020, Clint Reilly, under his company, Clint Reilly Communications, acquired the SF Examiner for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition included buying the SF Weekly "like

1584-437: The refrain "We are all broken necked, swinging from the timbers of Owl Creek Bridge." Several adaptations of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" have been produced. The San Francisco Examiner The San Francisco Examiner is a newspaper distributed in and around San Francisco , California , and has been published since 1863. Once self-dubbed the "Monarch of the Dailies" by then-owner William Randolph Hearst and

1628-429: The same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the title Owl Creek Bridge . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Owl_Creek_Bridge&oldid=1195513965 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description

1672-412: The setting in the midst of a war and the bridge as a symbol for the moment of passage from life to death. Among more recent works, David Lynch 's later films have been compared to "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", although they also have been interpreted as Möbius strip storylines. A particularly strong inspiration for the 1990 film Jacob's Ladder , for both Bruce Joel Rubin and Adrian Lyne ,

1716-592: The text of stories. San Francisco slang has traditionally referred to the newspaper in abbreviated slang form as "the Ex" (and the Chronicle as "the Chron"). When the Chronicle Publishing Company divested its interests, Hearst purchased the Chronicle . To satisfy antitrust concerns, Hearst sold the Examiner to ExIn, LLC, a corporation owned by the politically connected Fang family, publishers of

1760-659: The twentieth century, the Examiner was one of several dailies competing for the city's and the Bay Area's readership; the San Francisco News , the San Francisco Call-Bulletin , and the Chronicle all claimed significant circulation, but ultimately attrition left the Examiner one chief rival—the Chronicle . Strident competition prevailed between the two papers in the 1950s and 1960s;

1804-469: The way he came. The soldier is actually a disguised Union scout who has lured Farquhar into a trap, as any civilian caught interfering with the railroads will be hanged. The story returns to the present, and Farquhar falls into the creek when the rope around his neck breaks. He frees his hands, pulls the noose away and rises to the surface to begin his escape. His senses now greatly sharpened, he dives and swims downstream to avoid rifle and cannon fire. Once he

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1848-487: Was Robert Enrico 's 1962 short film An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge , one of Lyne's favorite movies. Tobias Wolff 's short story "Bullet in the Brain" (1995) reveals the protagonist's past through relating what he remembers—and does not—in the millisecond after he is fatally shot. John Shirley 's 1999 short story "Occurrence at Owl Street Ridge" about a depressed housewife is modeled after Bierce's story and Bierce plays

1892-622: Was approximately 100,000 on weekdays and 500,000 on Sundays. By 1995, discussion was already brewing in print media about the possible shuttering of the Examiner due to low circulation and an extremely disadvantageous revenue sharing agreement for the Chronicle . On October 31, 1969, sixty members of the Gay Liberation Front , the Committee for Homosexual Freedom (CHF), and the Gay Guerilla Theatre group staged

1936-531: Was first published in the July 13, 1890, issue of The San Francisco Examiner and collected in the compilation Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891). Editors of a modern compilation described the story as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature". Author Kurt Vonnegut wrote in 2005: "I consider anybody a twerp who hasn't read the greatest American short story, which

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