James Worson incident

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Ambrose Bierce, author of An Unfinished Race

The legend of the disappearance of James Worson on 3 September 1873 probably originates in a short story entitled An Unfinished Race by the American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce, written around the time it was set. The story is included in a modern collection entitled Present at a Hanging and Other Ghost Stories. The legend is often included as fact on lists of unexplained disappearances.

According to the legend, James Worson, a shoemaker who lived in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire, England, undertook a bet, while under the influence of liquor, that he could run non-stop from Leamington Spa to Coventry, a distance of approximately 9 miles. He started to run, accompanied by the unnamed receiver of the bet, Barham Wise, a linen draper, and Hamerson Burns, a photographer, who followed him with their horse-wagons to verify the event. During the race, Worson stumbled and fell, "with a terrible cry", and vanished before he hit the ground. He was never seen again.

Ambrose Bierce himself famously disappeared in mysterious circumstances. In October 1913, he departed Washington, D.C. on a tour to revisit his old Civil War battlefields. By December, he had proceeded on through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was then in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad Juárez, he joined the army of Pancho Villa as an observer, in which role he participated in the battle of Tierra Blanca. He is known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua, Chihuahua. After a last letter to a close friend, sent from that city on December 26, 1913, he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. Subsequent investigations to ascertain his fate were fruitless and, despite many decades of speculation, his disappearance remains a mystery.