“There's nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be...” ― John Lennon

In both An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and the Supernatural episode “The Monster at the End of this Book” there is an overarching theme of the presence of fate. In An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, we as the reader are told at the very beginning of the story the predicament that Peyton Farquhar is in. The author very clearly states Farquhar’s “hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck…[which] was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees”. All the adjectives used by the author such as closely encircled, and stout cross-timber should realistically lead the reader to the conclusion that there is no hope for this man, yet we still continue reading full of optimism. What do these stories tell us about our destinies? Should we give up hope of our own free will and self-sufficiency? No matter what Sam and Dean did to alter their day in comparison to Chuck’s word, Dean still ended up eating his bacon cheeseburger with flowered Band-Aids on his head.  Ambrose Bierce leads the reader along an all too fortunate tale of escape and still the reader blindly follows along with this miraculous ending. While in both stories we hope for the characters to evade their unfortunate ends, we too find ourselves in the end hung below the rails of Owl Creek Bridge by our own optimistic doubt of destiny.