Parallels in Poe's House of Usher and Bierce's Beyond the Wall, Poe's The Black Cat and Bierce's John Mortonson's Funeral, and in Poe's MS Found in a Bottle and Three and one makes one by Bierce. When we decide to become an author, we cannot help but be influenced by our predecessors, which causes some of our works to reflect and echo those of their predecessor. This is the case between Ambrose Bierce and his predecessor, Edgar Allen Poe. Aside from the obvious fact that Poe's and Bierce's short stories show an attraction to death in its many forms, depictions of mental deteriorations, supernatural events, and ghostly manifestations, there are other similarities and parallels. Examples of this appear in Poe's short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" and Bierce's short story "Beyond the Wall", Poe's "The Black Cat" and Bierce's "The Funeral of John Mortonson", as well as in Poe's “MS Found in a Bottle” and Bierce's “Three and One Make One.” Beyond the Wall versus the Fall of House of UsherIn "Beyond the Wall", the descriptions of the setting, the words Bierce uses, and the way the story opens are reminiscent of "The Fall of House of Usher" by Poe. In both stories, the narrator goes to visit a childhood friend whom the man has not seen for many years. The narrator begins his journey "... a whole dull, gloomy and silent day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively in the sky...". Poe creates a sense of despair by writing how “an unbearable sadness overcame my mind” when the narrator saw “the melancholy House of Usher.” He looked at "...the simple elements of the landscape of the estate - on the dark walls - ...on a few coarse sedges - and on a few white trunks of ...... middle of paper .... .. n stories; so what's the point?' Bierce was able to hold his own with almost all the stories he had written with masters, like Mark Twain, Brett Harte and, of course, Edgar Allen Poe, The Short Stories. Complete by Ambrose Bierce. University of Nebraska Press, 1984. Dedria Bryfonski, “Ambrose Bierce Literary Criticism of the Twentieth Century, Volume One. Gale Research Society, 1978. Cathy N. Davidson, Critical Essays.” on Ambrose Bierce. Boston, Massachusetts 1982. Arthur Miller, “The Influence of Edgar Allen Poe on Ambrose Bierce.” Edgar Allen Poe: Eight Tales of Terror. Scholastic Magazine, Inc. New York, 1978. Edgar Allen Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher and Other Tales. New American Library. new York, 1972