The style of several of these tales is similar to some of the stories of Edgar Allan Poe and Ambrose Bierce, particularly the stories of the perverse which combine narrative story line with the narrator's quasi-philosophic considerations of madness, murder, and the mysterious realm beyond the pale of ordinary understanding. But even as this realm of reality is justified rationally, the reader is never quite sure whether the realm truly exists 'out there' in the world of the story or whether it is a product of the obsessive mind of the narrator. The predominant mode of Maupassant’s psychological stories is not the manifestation of the ghostly supernatural in the traditional sense rather the stories focus on some mysterious dimension of reality that exists beyond what the human senses can perceive. Although he is best-known for such surprise-ending tales as La Parue (1884 'The Necklace,' 1909) and most-respected for such affecting realistic stories such as Boule de Suif (1880 'Ball of Fat,' 1909), Maupassant also contributed to the sophistication of the horror story by pushing it even further than Edgar Allan Poe into the modern mode of psychological obsession and madness.

In the decade between 18 Guy de Maupassant published over three hundred short stories in a variety of modes, including the supernatural legend, the surprise-ending tale, and the realistic story.

Who Knows? by Guy de Maupassant