A 71-year-old famous American writer pens a final letter saying he is leaving for an unknown destination in the middle of a violent revolution, then vanishes without a trace. It is one of the most famous unsolved disappearances in American literary history, but his death overshadows an explosive life.

This episode unpacks Ambrose Bierce, the man who pioneered psychological horror, fought at Shiloh, took down a 130-million-dollar railroad monopoly, and ultimately wrote himself out of history. It is a study of how an uncompromising intellect was forged on the battlefield and why a man who fought to be heard chose silence.

• His traumatic brain injury at Kennesaw Mountain that left him with lifelong fainting spells and irritability
• The 1896 railroad bill, where he derailed a secret 130-million-dollar bailout and told Huntington his price was payable to the U.S. Treasury
• The McKinley controversy, where a satirical poem about Goebel’s assassination was twisted into accusations of incitement
• His trick endings in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and the savage wit of The Devil’s Dictionary
• The competing theories of his end: execution by firing squad in Mexico versus Joe Nickell’s claim of a faked narrative and suicide at the Grand Canyon