Ignoring the pain in his neck and the “black circle” on his neck, Farquhar runs to his beloved wife. A few more steps and he would be in the arms of his love. In a flash Farquhar was dead, near the “black circle” under the Owl Creek Bridge. Peyton Farquhar, the main character of the historical story "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" written by Ambrose Bierce, is hanged by the Union Army after being framed by the Federal soldier. The reader is misled by Bierce into thinking that Farquhar escapes and survives. In reality Farquhar is hanged and imagined he would survive. The author uses many subtle hints during Farquhar's “escape” to demonstrate this. Using literary techniques: imagery, supernatural plot elements, and allusions, Bierce foreshadows Peyton Farquhar's true fate. At the beginning of Part Three, Bierce first mentions the pain and feeling of the rope around Farquhar's neck after his fall. “…by the pain of strong pressure on the throat, followed by a feeling of suffocation. Atrocious and moving agonies seemed to pass from his neck downwards through every fiber of his body and limbs. Although this sentence never mentions that Farquhar still had the noose, it is implied as there was no statement before he stated that he had taken it off. Farquhar's neck would also have been fine because if he had run away the pain would have lessened as the pressure of his full weight would have disappeared. In fact, if he had actually escaped, his entire focus would have been on swimming instead of the "pain" in his neck. After he supposedly removed the noose and emerged from the hanging, he still felt pain in his neck from the noose. “His neck hurt terribly; his brain was on fire, his heart, which had had the flu... in the center of the card... on the sides." This is a reference to the Greek mythology of the River Styx, a river that separates the living from the dead .The black bodies of the trees show that it was dark and, based on the paintings, there were walls of darkness around the River Styx. The River Styx is also a path to death or the path of death foreshadow that Farquhar is actually at the “door of the death.” Ambrose Bierce uses the following literary devices: imagery, preternatural plot elements, and allusions to foreshadow the true ending of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” The author has tricked readers into thinking that Farquhar survives even with subtlety foreshadowing. With the ominous mention of the “black circle” towards the end of the story, readers are still misled by Farquhar's plausible imagination at the end succumbs to the “black circle”.