FROM THE CRYPT
Prospector Digs Notorious Woman's Grave for Gold in Bierce Tale
A podcast episode revives Ambrose Bierce's 'A Holy Terror,' in which a letter from a dead grave digger points to a vein of gold beneath a burial plot.
A CALIFORNIA GOLD CAMP — A California mining camp abandoned by everyone but its dead is the setting of a new audio presentation from the Weird Darkness podcast, which adapts the short story "A Holy Terror" by Ambrose Bierce, according to the program's listing.
The listing describes a prospector who follows an old letter written by a late friend, the camp's grave digger. The letter, it says, leads to a vein of gold hidden beneath a notorious woman known as Scarry.
The prospector, according to the description, digs into her grave until the moon comes up. The listing does not say what he finds there, and this newspaper declines to speculate on the contents of a stranger's tomb.
The episode was broadcast under the banner "Midnight In The Macabre" on October 29, 2026. The program credits Bierce's story as being in the public domain and provides a link to the text for readers who wish to consult it for themselves.
No claim of a real haunting is made in the material. The tale is presented as fiction, though listeners with shovels are advised to keep to their own property.