Ghosts in modern Western culture are generally considered the ephemeral images of the dead, whether person, animal, or inanimate object. Ghosts may interact with the living or they may simply exist as a non-interactive “recording” of some past event.
A single instance of viewing a ghost is called a sighting. When a ghost inhabits a specific place over a prolonged period of time and multiple sightings have taken place, this is considered a haunting. Hauntings may last only weeks, or they may linger for centuries. They may even survive through major changes to the original haunted site, with the ghost continuing to make appearances in spite of the alterations to its environment. Indeed, the ghost sometimes seems oblivious to such changes, walking through walls that used to be open space or marching three feet above a road that has shifted elevation.
A Brief History of Ghosts
Throughout human history, we have fretted over our mortality and created scenarios over what might happen to our consciousness after our bodies die. Civilizations as old as ancient China, Mesopotamia, and ancient Egypt recorded stories of souls returning to Earth to take care of unfinished business, and tales of lost spirits are popular in both Asian and Western cultures.
An old report of a ghost comes from the Bible, in the first book of Samuel. Saul goes to a medium (“a woman that hath a familiar spirit”) and asks her to conjure up the deceased Samuel, which she does. Samuel appears in the form of “an old man covered with a mantle.” The description of Samuel in his undead state, covered with his mantle, seems to set a precedent for the sheet-covered ghost so favored in Western culture.
Another very old ghost sighting comes from Ancient Greece. A Greek writer named Pausanius wrote around 150 AD about a haunting at the site of the battle of Marathon (490 BC). In the words of Pausanius:
“At this place you can hear all night horses whinnying and men fighting. No one who stays there just to have this experience gets any good out of it, but the ghosts do not get angry with anyone who happens to be there against his will.”
Although Samuel was conjured and perhaps not a “true” ghost, Pausanius’ account is clearly that of an already-established haunting which must have been well known at the time.
The ancient Romans in particular had a very robust lore around ghosts and hauntings, so much that they wrote plays and stories about them. Pliny the Younger in the first century AD told the story of a house haunted by a chain rattling ghost who was bringing down the property value. A philosopher named Athenodorus rents the house and, upon sighting the resident spirit, follows it to the courtyard. Upon digging up the spot, it’s discovered that a man was buried there in chains. After an exhumation and proper burial, the haunting ends.
Leave a Reply