# Halpin Frayser — Can Such Things Be? character guide

> Halpin Frayser in Can Such Things Be? by Ambrose Bierce.

**Role:** major

**Also known as:** Frayser, Halpin

**First appearance:** 0000-the-death-of-halpin-frayser

## Snapshot

A dreamy Tennessee gentleman's son, bred for law but haunted by a poet's blood, who wanders into a forest where the dead do not stay buried.

## Who they are

Halpin Frayser is the spoiled youngest of a well-to-do Nashville family, a reluctant law student whose maternal great-grandfather was a Colonial poet and whose mother secretly dotes on that same tainted inheritance. His father, a politician, ignores him; his relatives dismiss him as an intellectual black sheep likely to disgrace the flock by bleating in meter. Dreamy, indolent, and romantic, Halpin drifts toward a haunted wood where his one thought becomes a written appeal to benign powers—until his own mother's corpse-face stares back at him from the dark.

## In the story

### [The Death of Halpin Frayser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/the-death-of-halpin-frayser)

Central figure of the chapter, whose death and potential return are foreshadowed.

### [I](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/i)

Protagonist who wakes in the forest, speaks a mysterious name, and experiences a terrifying nightmare.

### [Chapter II](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/ii)

Protagonist; a dreamy, indolent young man from Nashville, deeply attached to his mother, who later becomes a sailor after being shanghaied and shipwrecked.

### [III](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/iii)

The dreamer confronting the apparition in the haunted wood, experiencing paralysis and a fatal struggle.

### [Chapter IV](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/iv)

The deceased; found strangled in the forest, his pocketbook containing a poem.

### [The Moonlit Road](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/the-moonlit-road)

The son who narrates the events and seeks to understand his mother's murder.

### [III: Statement of the Late Julia Hetman, Through the Medium Bayrolles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/iii-statement-of-the-late-julia-hetman-through-the-medium-bayrolles)

Julia Hetman's son, left doubly desolate after his father's flight.

### [I: The Review as a Form of Welcome](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/i-the-review-as-a-form-of-welcome)

The unnamed man on the hill, disoriented and observing the spectral army.

### [The Realm of the Unreal](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/the-realm-of-the-unreal)

Central figure experiencing dream-like states and supernatural encounters.

### [Some Haunted Houses](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/chapters/some-haunted-houses)

Central figure in a haunting narrative involving his own death and supernatural return.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters/halpin_frayser
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/can_such_things_be_se/characters