ANCIENT APPARITIONS OF THE UNDEAD

I. GREEK AND ROMAN REMAINS

The relationship between the living and the dead has been an important aspect of human society since the beginning of recorded history. In ancient times, supernatural encounters with the dead occurred most often when the living failed in their duties to the deceased by neglecting their proper burial or refusing to visit their tombs. Negligence of this kind could prompt a haunting. The living could also summon the spirits of the dead with magical spells in order to learn information that only the deceased could know, a practice known as “necromancy,” a Greek term that means “divination by means of communication with the spirits of the dead.”

Ghosts appear in some of the earliest works of European literature, dating back to Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey (c. 700 BCE). The descriptions of the restless dead in the oldest Greek sources provided the template for depictions of them for centuries to come. The ancients described ghosts as shadows in human form or as insubstantial corpses, stained with the blood of the wounds that killed them. Some were as black as the night; others were pallid from their loss of blood and the lack of sunlight in the underworld. Ancient apparitions swarmed like bees and flocked like night-birds near the caves and riverbanks that provided entrance to the realm of the dead. Their voices ranged from low groans and baleful mutterings to high-pitched squeaks and gibbering.

In most cases, the souls of the recently deceased made the journey to their subterranean realm (Hades) without any trouble, but certain kinds of death agitated the soul, causing it to linger on the threshold of the world of the living as a ghost. These restless souls included people who had died before their time, primarily infants, but also men and women who had died before marriage. The souls of those killed by violence tarried among the living as well, especially suicides and warriors who were slain in combat. Lastly, those whose corpses remained unburied were also exiled among the living. Among them were those unfortunate souls who died in shipwrecks, for their bodies could find no rest in the storm-tossed sea.

The restless dead were particularly susceptible to the power of necromancers, who worked spells to summon souls, bind them to their will, and exploit them for information. Many ghosts in ancient literature appeared in a necromantic context. Rites for the summoning of restless souls involved a ceremony of evocation, first described in Homer’s Odyssey (see below) and elaborated in later literature. The summoner dug a shallow pit, into which he or she poured libations of honey-sweetened milk, wine, and water, and made offerings of barley and blood. There followed a burnt sacrifice and prayers to the gods of the dead, including Hades and Persephone.

The response of ghosts to necromantic binding varied considerably. Some were eager to return to the world of the living for conversation, even briefly. Others were reluctant to speak. Bitter that their otherworldly peace had been disturbed, only the proper spells could compel them to converse. Ghosts also appeared to necromancers in their dreams. In these cases, it is unclear if the rituals of summoning were performed prior to sleep or if they took place in the dream sequence that culminated in the appearance of an apparition.

What could be gained by summoning a ghost? A necromantic encounter was a useful way to learn the cause of a haunting and to put a stop to it. Ghosts liked nothing more than to talk about the circumstances of their own deaths and often aided in laying their own spirits to rest by revealing the identity of their murderers or the location of their unburied bodies. The restless dead tended to hover near the location of their mortal remains, whether it was in a tomb or not, and therefore knew what went on in the vicinity of their corpses. It was also believed that ghosts had access to important information shared by the spirits of the recently slain, with whom they had conversed in the underworld. In some cases, however, necromancers summoned the spirits of the dead to exploit important skills that the deceased had in life, especially the power of prophecy.

ODYSSEUS IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH1

Homer’s Odyssey tells the story of Odysseus, a veteran of the Trojan War, and his decade-long voyage back to the island of Ithaca. Odysseus’s journey home was fraught with peril because he and his crew offended the sea god Poseidon by blinding his son, the Cyclops Polyphemos. On the advice of the enchantress Circe, Odysseus traveled to the threshold of the underworld to ask the ghost of Tiresias of Thebes, a renowned prophet, to peer into the future and provide advice about his best course back to Ithaca.

The summoning of Tiresias takes place in book eleven of The Odyssey, which provided a description of the underworld and its inhabitants that subsequently had a profound influence on their depiction in Western literature from Virgil’s Aeneid to Dante’s Divine Comedy. The land of the dead is a somber place in Homer’s imagination, a dark and comfortless realm. The hardships of Odysseus’s travels often led him to thoughts of suicide, but once he visited the House of Death, he came to realize that living is much better than dying. The ghost of Achilles warned Odysseus directly not to glorify the condition of death: “No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus! By god, I’d rather slave on earth for another man—some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive—than rule down here over all the breathless dead.” (The Odyssey 11.488–491). While Odysseus performed his necromantic ritual specifically to speak to Tiresias, he was unprepared for the great number of ghosts that responded to his summons—“hordes of them, thousands raising unearthly cries” (The Odyssey 11.724)—among them his recently deceased companion Elpenor and his beloved mother Anticlea, who had died of grief in his long absence. Their heartbreaking conversation provided a brief respite from the otherworldly horrors that surrounded them.

And [our ship] made the outer limits, the Ocean River’s bounds, where Cimmerian people have their homes—their realm and city shrouded in mist and cloud. The eye of the Sun can never flash his rays through the dark and bring them light, not when he climbs the starry skies or when he wheels back down from the heights to touch the earth once more—an endless, deadly night overhangs those wretched men. There, gaining that point, we beached our craft and bearing out the sheep, we picked our way by the Ocean’s banks until we gained the place that Circe made our goal.

Here at the spot Perimedes and Eurylochus held the victims fast, and I, drawing my sharp sword from beside my hip, dug a trench of about a forearm’s depth and length, and around it poured libations out to all the dead, first with milk and honey, and then with mellow wine, then water third and last, and sprinkled glistening barley over it all, and time and again I vowed to all the dead, to the drifting, listless spirits of their ghosts, that once I returned to Ithaca I would slaughter a barren heifer in my halls, the best I had, and load a pyre with treasures—and to Tiresias, alone, apart, I would offer a sleek black ram, the pride of all my herds. And once my vows and prayers had invoked the nations of the dead, I took the victims, over the trench I cut their throats and the dark blood flowed in—and up out of Erebus they came, flocking toward me now, the ghosts of the dead and gone: brides and unwed youths and old men who had suffered much and girls with their tender hearts freshly scarred by sorrow and great armies of battle dead, stabbed by bronze spears, men of war still wrapped in bloody armor—thousands swarming around the trench from every side—unearthly cries—blanching terror gripped me!2 I ordered the men at once to flay the sheep that lay before us, killed by my ruthless blade, and burn them both, and then say prayers to the gods, to the almighty god of death and dread Persephone.3 But I, the sharp sword drawn from beside my hip, sat down on alert there and never let the ghosts of the shambling, shiftless dead come near that blood till I had questioned Tiresias myself.

But first the ghost of Elpenor, my companion, came toward me. He’d not been buried under the wide ways of earth, not yet, we’d left his body in Circe’s house, unwept, unburied—this other labor pressed us. But I wept to see him now, pity touched my heart and I called out a winged word to him there: “Elpenor, how did you travel down to the world of darkness? Faster on foot, I see, than I in my black ship.”

My comrade groaned as he offered me an answer: “Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, old campaigner, the doom of an angry god, and god knows how much wine—they were my ruin, captain. I’d bedded down on the roof of Circe’s house but never thought to climb back down again by the long ladder—headfirst from the roof I plunged, my neck snapped from the backbone, my soul flew down to Death. Now, I beg you by those you left behind, so far from here, your wife, your father who bred and reared you as a boy, and Telemachus, left at home in your halls, your only son. Well I know when you leave this lodging of the dead that you and your ship will put ashore again at the island of Aeaea—then and there, my lord, remember me, I beg you!4 Don’t sail off and desert me, left behind unwept, unburied, don’t, or my curse may draw god’s fury on your head. No, burn me in full armor, all my harness, heap my mound by the churning gray surf—a man whose luck ran out—so even men to come will learn my story. Perform my rites and plant on my tomb that oar I swung with mates when I rowed among the living.”

“All this, my unlucky friend,” I reassured him, “I will do for you. I won’t forget a thing.” So we sat and faced each other, holding my sword above the blood, he across from me there, my comrade’s phantom dragging out his story.

But look, the ghost of my mother came, my mother, dead and gone now. Anticlea—daughter of that great heart Autolycus—whom I had left alive when I sailed for sacred Troy. I broke into tears to see her here, but filled with pity, even throbbing with grief, I would not let her ghost approach till I had questioned Tiresias myself.

At last he came. The shade of the famous Theban prophet, holding a golden scepter, knew me at once and hailed me: “Royal son of Laertes, Odysseus, master of exploits, man of pain, what now, what brings you here, forsaking the light of day to see this joyless kingdom of the dead? Stand back from the trench—put up your sharp sword so I can drink the blood and tell you the truth.”

Moving back, I thrust my silver-studded sword deep in its sheath, and once he had drunk the dark blood the words came ringing from the prophet in his power: “A sweet smooth journey home, renowned Odysseus, that is what you seek, but a god will make it hard for you—I know—you will never escape the one who shakes the earth, quaking with anger at you still, still enraged because you blinded the Cyclops, his dear son. Even so, you and your crew may still reach home, suffering all the way, if you only have the power to curb their wild desire and curb your own, what’s more, from the day your good trim vessel first puts in at Thrinacia Island, flees the cruel blue sea. There you will find them grazing, herds and fat flocks, the cattle of Helios, god of the sun who sees all, hears all things. Leave the beasts unharmed, your mind set on home, and you all may still reach Ithaca—bent with hardship, true—but harm them in any way, and I can see it now: your ship destroyed, your men destroyed as well. And even if you escape, you’ll come home late and come a broken man—all shipmates lost, alone in a stranger’s ship—and you will find a world of pain at home, crude, arrogant men devouring all your goods, courting your noble wife, offering gifts to win her. No doubt you will pay them back in blood when you come home! But once you have killed those suitors in your halls—by stealth or in open fight with slashing bronze—go forth once more, you must. Carry your well-planed oar until you come to a race of people who know nothing of the sea, whose food is never seasoned with salt, strangers all to ships with their crimson prows and long slim oars, wings that make ships fly. And here is your sign—unmistakable, clear, so clear you cannot miss it: When another traveler falls in with you and calls that weight across your shoulder a fan to winnow grain, then plant your bladed, balanced oar in the earth and sacrifice fine beasts to the lord god of the sea, Poseidon—a ram, a bull, and a ramping wild boar—then journey home and render noble offerings up to the deathless gods who rule the vaulting skies, to all the gods in order. And at last your own death will steal upon you, a gentle, painless death, far from the sea it comes to take you down, borne down with the years in ripe old age with all your people there in blessed peace around you. All that I have told you will come true.”

“Oh Tiresias,” I replied as the prophet finished, “surely the gods have spun this out as fate, the gods themselves. But tell me one thing more, and tell me clearly. I see the ghost of my long-lost mother here before me. Dead, crouching close to the blood in silence, she cannot bear to look me in the eyes—her own son—or speak to me. How, lord, can I make her know me for the man I am?”

“One rule there is,” the famous seer explained, “and simple for me to say and you to learn. Any one of the ghosts you let approach the blood will speak the truth to you. Anyone you refuse will turn and fade away.”

And with those words, now that his prophecies had closed, the awesome shade of lord Tiresias strode back to the House of Death. But I kept watch there, steadfast till my mother approached and drank the dark, clouding blood. She knew me at once and wailed out in grief and her words came winging toward me, flying home: “Oh my son! What brings you down to the world of death and darkness? You are still alive! It’s hard for the living to catch a glimpse of this. Great rivers flow between us, terrible waters, the Ocean first of all—no one could ever ford that stream on foot, only aboard some sturdy craft. Have you just come from Troy, wandering long years with your men and ship? Not yet returned to Ithaca? You’ve still not seen your wife inside your halls?”

“Mother,” I replied, “I had to venture down to the House of Death to consult the shade of Tiresias, seer of Thebes. Never yet have I neared Achaea, never once set foot on native ground, always wandering—endless hardship from that day I first set sail with King Agamemnon bound for Troy, the stallion-land, to fight the Trojans there. But tell me about yourself and spare me nothing. What form of death overcame you, what laid you low, some long, slow illness? Or did Artemis showering arrows come with her painless shafts and bring you down? Tell me of Father, tell of the son I left behind: do my royal rights still lie in their safekeeping? Or does some stranger hold the throne by now because men think that I’ll come home no more? Please, tell me about my wife, her turn of mind, her thoughts. Still standing fast beside our son, still guarding our great estates, secure as ever now? Or has she wed some other countryman at last, the finest prince among them?”

“Surely, surely,” my noble mother answered quickly, “she’s still waiting there in your halls, poor woman, suffering so, her life an endless hardship like your own. Wasting away the nights, weeping away the days. No one has taken over your royal rights, not yet. Telemachus still holds your great estates in peace, he attends the public banquets shared with all, the feasts a man of justice should enjoy, for every lord invites him. As for your father, he keeps to his own farm—he never goes to town—with no bed for him there, no blankets, no glossy throws; all winter long he sleeps in the lodge with servants, in the ashes by the fire, his body wrapped in rags. But when summer comes and the bumper crops of harvest, any spot on the rising ground of his vineyard rows he makes his bed, heaped high with fallen leaves, and here he lies in anguish, with his old age bearing hard upon him, too, and his grief grows as he longs for your return. And I with the same grief, I died and met my fate. No sharp-eyed huntress showering arrows through the halls approached and brought me down with painless shafts, nor did some hateful illness strike me, that so often devastates the body, drains our limbs of power. No, it was my longing for you, my shining Odysseus—you and your quickness, you and your gentle ways—that tore away my life that had been sweet.”

And I, my mind in turmoil, how I longed to embrace my mother’s spirit, dead as she was! Three times I rushed toward her, desperate to hold her, three times she fluttered through my fingers, sifting away like a shadow, dissolving like a dream, and each time the grief cut to the heart, sharper, yes, and I, I cried out to her, words winging into the darkness: “Mother, why not wait for me? How I long to hold you! So even here, in the House of Death, we can fling our loving arms around each other, take some joy in the tears that numb the heart. Or is this just some wraith that great Persephone sends my way to make me ache with sorrow all the more?”

My noble mother answered me at once: “My son, my son, the unluckiest man alive! This is no deception sent by Queen Persephone, this is just the way of mortals when we die. Sinews no longer bind the flesh and bones together—the fire in all its fury burns the body down to ashes once life slips from the white bones, and the spirit, rustling, flitters away, flown like a dream. But you must long for the daylight. Go, quickly. Remember all these things so one day you can tell them to your wife.”

PLINY CONTEMPLATES THE EXISTENCE OF GHOSTS1

"Pliny the Younger (c. 61–113) was a Roman provincial governor who served under Emperor Trajan (98–117). He was the author of hundreds of letters on a wide range of topics from politics and family affairs to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the local troubles caused by early Christians. In a letter to his friend Lucius Licinius Sura, he contemplated the existence of ghosts. This letter includes three stories about the appearance of apparitions and their possible meanings. In the first story, a larger-than-life woman appeared to a Roman nobleman named Curtius Rufus. Claiming to be “the spirit of Africa,” she foretold his future as governor of Africa. In the second story, a philosopher named Athenodorus stayed in a haunted house in Athens. There he confronted a restless ghost who rattled chains in the night, kept his cool despite its frightening demeanor, and helped lay it to rest. The third and final story happened in Pliny’s very own household: his slaves complained about figures in white who came into their dormitory at night and cut their hair with scissors. Pliny offered an interpretation of this spectral visitation as a sign that he would escape the plots made against him by a political enemy named Carus. These stories contained elements inherited from the Greek tradition of ghost stories: apparitions can provide useful information to the living, both directly and indirectly; and spirits of the dead cannot find rest until their bodies receive proper burial".
—
To Licinius Sura,

Our leisure gives me the chance to learn and you to teach me; so I should very much like to know whether you think that ghosts exist, and have a form of their own and some sort of supernatural power, or whether they lack substance and reality and take shape only from our fears. I personally am encouraged to believe in their existence largely from what I have heard of the experience of Curtius Rufus.2 While he was still obscure and unknown he was attached to the suite of a new governor of Africa. One afternoon he was walking up and down in the colonnade of his house when there appeared to him the figure of a woman, of superhuman size and beauty. To allay his fears she told him that she was the spirit of Africa, come to foretell his future: he would return to Rome and hold office, and then return with supreme authority to the same province, where he would die. Everything came true.3 Moreover, the story goes on to say that as he left the boat on his arrival at Carthage the same figure met him on the shore. It is at least certain that when he fell ill he interpreted his future by the past and his misfortune by his previous success, and gave up all hope of recovery although none of his people despaired of his life.

Now consider whether the following story, which I will tell just as it was told to me, is not just as remarkable and even more terrifying. In Athens there was a large and spacious mansion with the bad reputation of being dangerous to its occupants. In the dead of night the clanking of iron and, if you listened carefully, the rattle of chains could be heard, some way off at first, and then close at hand. Then there appeared the specter of an old man, emaciated and filthy, with a long flowing beard and hair on end, wearing fetters on his legs and shaking the chains on his wrists. The wretched occupants would spend fearful nights awake in terror; lack of sleep led to illness and then death as their dread increased, for even during the day, when the apparition had vanished, the memory of it was in their mind’s eye, so that their terror remained after the cause of it had gone. The house was therefore deserted, condemned to stand empty and wholly abandoned to the specter; but it was advertised as being for rent or for sale in case someone was found who knew nothing of its evil reputation.

The philosopher Athenodorus came to Athens and read the notice. His suspicions were aroused when he heard the low price, and the whole story came out on inquiry; but he was nonetheless, in fact all the more, eager to rent the house. When darkness fell, he gave orders that a couch was to be made up for him in the front part of the house and asked for his notebooks, a pen, and a lamp. He sent all his servants to the inner rooms, and concentrated his thoughts, eyes, and hand on his writing, so that his mind would be occupied and not conjure up the phantom he had heard about nor other imaginary fears. At first there was nothing but the general silence of night; then came the clanking of iron and dragging of chains. He did not look up or stop writing, but steeled his mind to shut out the sounds. Then the noise grew louder, came nearer, was heard in the doorway, and then inside the room. He looked around, saw, and recognized the ghost described to him. It stood and beckoned, as if summoning him. Athenodorus in his turn signaled to it to wait a little, and again bent over his notes and pen, while it stood rattling its chains over his head as he wrote. He looked around again and saw it beckoning as before, so without further delay he picked up his lamp and followed. It moved slowly, as if weighed down with chains, and when it turned off into the courtyard of the house it suddenly vanished, leaving him alone. He then picked some grass and leaves and marked the spot. The following day he approached the magistrates and advised them to give orders for the place to be dug up. There they found bones, twisted around with chains, which were left bare and corroded by the fetters when time and the action of the soil had rotted away the flesh. The bones were collected and given a public burial, and after the shades had been duly laid to rest the house saw them no more.

For these details I rely on the evidence of others, but here is a story I can vouch for myself. One of my freedmen, a man of some education, was sleeping in the same bed as his younger brother when he dreamed that he saw someone sitting on the bed and putting scissors to his hair, even cutting some off the top of his head. When day dawned he found his head shorn and the hair lying on the floor. A short time elapsed and then another similar occurrence confirmed the earlier one. A slave boy was sleeping with several others in the young slaves’ quarters. His story was that two men clad in white came in through the window, cut his hair as he lay in bed, and departed the way they had come. Daylight revealed that his head had also been shorn and the hair was scattered about. Nothing remarkable followed, except perhaps the fact that I was not brought to trial, as I should have been if Domitian (the emperor under whom all this happened) had lived longer.4 For among the papers in his desk was found information laid against me by Carus, from which, in view of the custom for accused persons to let their hair grow long, one may interpret the cutting of my slaves’ hair as a sign that the danger threatening me was averted.

So please apply your learned mind to this question; it deserves your long and careful consideration, nor can I be called undeserving as a recipient of your informed opinion. You may argue both sides of the case as you always do, but lay your emphasis on one side or the other and do not leave me in suspense and uncertainty; my reason for asking your opinion was to put an end to my doubts.

A MISTRESS OF THE GRAVES1

"Ancient necromancers were typically male, but in the Roman literary tradition it became common to associate the practice of summoning the dead with women. Homer’s depiction of the central role played by the enchantress Circe in Odysseus’s consultation with Tiresias was an important precedent. Why did this change take place? By assigning necromantic agency to women, Roman authors simultaneously expressed their disdain for this ancient practice and distanced themselves from rites that were increasingly viewed as unsavory and suspicious in their culture. The most vivid Roman portrait of a necromancer at work appears in Lucan’s Pharsalia, an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey in the twilight of the Roman Republic written a century later (c. 61–65) toward the end of Emperor Nero’s reign. On the eve of a battle in Greece, Sextus, the son of Pompey, sought out a powerful witch named Erictho to divine the outcome of the war. At the culmination of a ghastly ritual, Erictho summoned the ghost of a recently slain soldier, compelling it to reanimate its own corpse and binding it with spells to reveal the future. The reluctant ghost then foretold both the defeat of Pompey and the assassination of victorius Caesar".

These wicked rites and crimes of a dire race would be damned as still too pious by savage Erictho, who had applied her polluted art to novel rites. To submit her funereal head to a city’s roof or to household gods is an unthinkable deed. She haunts deserted graves and lurks in sepulchers from which ghosts have been driven, a welcome friend to the gods of Erebus. To hear the gatherings of the silent dead and know the Stygian halls and buried secrets of Dis, neither the gods above nor being alive prevents her.2 Her ill-omened face is thin and filthy from neglect, her features frighten with Stygian pallor, never knowing the light of day; her head droops heavy with matted, knotted hair. Whenever black storm clouds conceal the stars, Thessaly’s witch emerges from her empty tombs and hunts down the nightly bolts of lightning. Her tread has burned up seeds of fertile grain and her breath alone has turned fresh air deadly. She doesn’t pray to gods above, or know the ways to offer entrails and receive auspicious omens. She loves to light altars with funereal flames and burn incense she’s snatched from blazing pyres. At the merest hint of her praying voice, the gods grant her any outrage, afraid to hear her second song. She has buried souls alive, still in control of their bodies, against their will death comes with fate still owing them years. In a backward march she has brought the dead back from the grave and lifeless corpses have fled death. The smoking cinders and burning bones of youths she’ll take straight from the pyre, along with the torch, ripped from their parents’ grip, and the fragments of the funeral couch with smoke still wafting black, and the robes turning to ashes and the coals that reek of their limbs.

But when dead bodies are preserved in stone, which absorbs their inner moisture, and they stiffen as the decaying marrow is drawn off, then she hungrily ravages every single joint, sinks her fingers in the eyes and relishes it as she digs the frozen orbs out, and gnaws the pallid, wasting nails from desiccated hands. With her own mouth she cuts the fatal knotted noose, plucks down hanging bodies, and scours crosses ripping at guts the rains have pounded and innards exposed to the sun and cooked. She takes the nails piercing the hands and the black decaying poison and coagulated slime oozing through the joints. If a tendon resists her bite, she throws her weight into it. Whatever corpses lie out on the naked ground she seizes before the beasts and birds; not wanting to pick the bones with iron or her own hands, she waits and snatches pieces from the thirsty jaws of wolves.

Her hands don’t flinch from slaughter either, if she needs fresh blood, first gushing from an opened throat, if her graveyard feasts demand still-throbbing entrails. So, too, from a belly’s wound, not as nature would do it, a fetus is removed and placed on blazing altars. And every time she needs forceful savage shades, she makes the ghost herself. She finds a use for the death of every man.

She plucks from a youthful body the blossom on its cheek, and her left hand shears off the lock from a dying teen. And at a relative’s funeral the dire Thessalian often bends down over the body and feigning kisses she mutilates the head, opens the clenched mouth with her teeth and, biting the tongue that cleaves in a dry throat, pours her murmurings into the chilly lips, sending commands for secret crimes down to the shades of Styx.

Once Pompey’s son had heard the country’s rumors about her, when night was high in heaven—that time the Titan draws midday beneath our earth—he makes his way . . .

His faithful servants, used to crime, wandered about the grave mounds and plundered tombs and spied her afar, seated on a sheer rock cliff where Haemus slopes down reaching Pharsalia’s hills.3 She was trying out words unknown to magicians and their gods, crafting a spell for strange new purposes. For fearing lest fickle Mars go elsewhere in the world and the land of Emathia lose out on so much slaughter, the sorceress had forbidden Philippi to let the wars pass through, polluting the land with charms and strewing her dire poisons, so that she would have so many deaths for her own and she would enjoy the profit from the world’s blood.4 She hopes to mutilate the slaughtered carcasses of kings and to steal the ashes of the Hesperian nation and the bones of nobles, and to own so many souls. Her passion now and final toil is what she’ll snatch from Magnus’s downcast body, what pieces of Caesar she’ll manage to pounce on.

Pompey’s worthless offspring addressed her first: “Splendor of Haemonia’s ladies, you can reveal people’s fates, and deflect things coming from their course. I pray you, let me learn for certain the end that this war’s fortune is preparing. I’m not some lowly member of the Roman mob, but a most illustrious child of Magnus—either the world’s master, or heir to a mighty funeral. My mind quakes, stricken by doubts; nonetheless, I’m ready for definite horrors. Take away from chance the power to rush down blind and all of a sudden. Either torment divine spirits with questions or spare them and disclose the truth from ghosts. Unlock the abodes of Elysium and call forth Death herself, and force her to confess to me which ones of us she’s hunting. It’s no small task. It’s worth your trouble, too, to ask what way this weighty die of fate is leaning and will fall.”

The evil Thessalian, thrilled to hear her name was famous and well known, responded, “If you’d asked of lesser fates, young man, it would have been easy to rouse unwilling gods and attain your wish. My art can cause delay when the rays of stars have marked one death, or even if all constellations would grant one an old age, we can cut his years in half with magic herbs. But once a series of causes has descended from the world’s first origin and all fates struggle if you want to change anything, when the human race is subject to a single blow, then Thessaly’s ilk admits it—Fortune is stronger. But if you’re intent on knowing events beforehand, there are many easy paths that open onto truth. The earth and skies and Chaos, the seas and plains and crags of Rhodope speak to us.5 But it’s simple—since there’s plenty of fresh dead—to lift one body from Emanthia’s fields, so that the mouth of a corpse just slain and still warm will speak with full voice, and not some deathly ghost with sunburned limbs rasping out things dubious to our ears.”

She spoke, and with her craft redoubled the shadows of night; her dismal head shrouded in squalid mist, she wanders among slain bodies cast off and denied their burial. Straightaway fled wolves, hungry birds of prey pulled out their talons and fled, while the Thessalian selects her prophet; probing entrails chilly with death, she finds the fibers of strong, unwounded lungs and seeks the voice in a body discharged from life. Many fates of slain men already hanging there—which one would she want to call back up to life? If she had tried to raise up all the ranks and return them to war, the laws of Erebus would have obeyed, and that powerful monster would have hauled out of Stygian Avernus a people ready to fight.6 At last she picks a body with its throat cut, takes and drags it by a hook stuck in its fatal noose, a wretched corpse over rocks and crags, then lays it high up under a mountain’s cave, which gloomy Erictho damned with her sacrifice.

The ground sheers off and sinks down nearly to the blind caverns of Dis; it’s hemmed in by a dreary wood with stooping branches, and a yew, which no sun penetrates nor crown beholds the sky, throws shadow over it. Darkness droops inside the caves and, due to long night, gray mold hangs; no light shines, except that cast by spells. The air in the jaws of Taenarus doesn’t sit so stagnant—a dismal boundary between the hidden world and our own, where the rulers of Tartarus wouldn’t fear to let ghosts enter.7 For though the Thessalian witch can ply the Fates with force, it’s doubtful whether she visits with shades of Styx by drawing them up or descending to them.

Clad in motley dress like a Fury’s mottled robe, she bares her face and binds her tangled hair up with a crown of vipers. When she sees the young man’s friends are quaking and he himself is trembling, his fixed eyes staring with the life drained from his face, she says, “Put off the fears your fretful minds have conjured. Now new life in its true form will be restored, so that even the horrified can hear him speaking. If indeed I show you the swamps of Styx and the shore that roars with fire, if by my aid you’re able to see the Eumenides and Cerberus, shaking his necks that bristle with snakes, and the conquered backs of Giants, why should you be scared, you cowards, to meet with ghosts who are themselves afraid?”8

First she fills the chest with boiling blood through new wounds that she opens, then washes out the bowels of putrefaction and liberally applies poison from the moon. To this she adds whatever nature has brought forth in inauspicious birth. She doesn’t leave out froth of dogs afraid of water, nor guts of lynx nor joint of dread hyena and marrow of a stag that had fed on serpents; nor echenais, which hinders ships although east winds strain at their ropes, and eyeballs of dragons, and stones that sound when warmed under a pregnant eagle; nor Arabia’s flying serpent and the Red Sea’s viper that guards the precious oyster, nor the skin that Libya’s horned snake sheds while still alive nor ash the phoenix left on its eastern altar.9 And once she’d mixed together these common banes with well-known names, she added leaves soaked through with evil spells, and plants her wicked mouth had spat on as they grew, and every other poison she herself gave to the world. Last, her voice—stronger than any plant to bewitch the gods of Lethe—pours forth cacophonous murmurs in great discord with the human tongue. It contained the bark of dogs and howl of wolves, the fearsome eagle owl’s and nocturnal tawny owl’s laments, the shrieks and cries of beasts, the serpent’s hiss, and it expressed the crash of waves that beat upon the rocks, the rustle of forests, and thunder from fractured clouds—one voice held all these things.

The rest she then spelled out in a Haemonian chant, piercing Tartarus with her tongue: “Eumenides, Stygian crime and punishments of the guilty, Chaos, greedy to pour disorder on countless worlds, Ruler of the earth, tortured through long ages by Death, delayed for gods, Styx and Elysium, which no Thessalian witch deserves, Persephone, loathing heaven and her mother, and the third part of our Hecate, through whom commerce between the ghosts and me occurs with quiet tongue, doorman of the open halls who throws our guts to the savage dog, and sisters who will spin out threads anew, and you, O ancient ferryman of the burning river, weary by now from bringing shades back up to me.10 Pay heed to my prayers!

“If I call on you with a mouth that’s sinful and polluted enough, if I never sing these songs while still famishing for human entrails, if I’ve often bathed a hacked-up breast still full of soul divine and brains still warm, if any infant whose insides and head I’ve laid upon your platters would have lived if I had not—obey me as I pray!

“We don’t want one hiding out in Tartarus’s chasm, long accustomed to the darkness, but a soul who has just been exiled from the light and is just now descending, who still clings in the jaws of murky Orcus and will, so long as it pays heed to my drugs, go to the ghosts but once.11 For the general’s son let the shade of this one who is now our solider sing all the Pompeian affairs—if civil wars deserve your gratitude.”

With these declarations she lifted her head and frothing mouth and saw stand forth before her the shade of the cast-off corpse, afraid of its lifeless limbs, those hateful confines of its old prison. It dreads to enter that opened chest and guts and innards ruptured by lethal wounds. Poor man, unfairly stripped of death’s last gift—to not be able to die!

Erictho is astounded that Fates are so free to linger, and, angry at the dead, she whips the motionless body with a living serpent, and down the gaping fissures in the earth her spells had opened up she barks at the ghosts of the dead, disturbing their kingdom’s silence:

“Tisiphone! Indifferent to my voice? Megaera!12 Aren’t you driving with your savage lashings through the emptiness of Erebus that hapless soul? Soon I’ll conjure you by your real names and then abandon you Stygian dogs in the light above. I’ll stand guard, hunt you down through graveyards and burial grounds, expel you from tombs, drive you from every urn. And I will reveal you, Hecate, to the gods in your pale, wasting form when you are used to going before them in a different guise, but I will forbid you from changing the face you wear in Erebus. And I will declare what banquets hold you, lady of Henna, under earth’s great weight, by what marriage bond you love night’s gloomy king, what pollution you suffered that your mother, Ceres, would not call for your return. And against you, worst of the world’s rulers, I’ll send the Titan Sun, bursting your caverns open and striking with sudden daylight. Will you obey? Or must I address by name that one at whose call the earth never fails to shudder and quake, who openly looks on the Gorgon’s face, who tortures the trembling Erinyes with her own scourge and dwells in a Tartarus whose depths your eye can’t plumb? To him, you are the gods above; he swears, and breaks, his oaths by the waters of Styx.”

Just then the cold blood clots warmed and nourished the dark wounds, running into veins and to the ends of every limb; his insides pulse, shaking under his frozen chest, as new life creeps back into unused marrow, mingling with death. Every muscle palpitates, every nerve goes tense—then the body rises from the ground, not slowly, limb by limb, but thrown straight up from the earth all at once. He did not yet look alive, but like someone who was now dying. Still pale and stiff, he stands dumbstruck at being thrust back into the world. But no sound comes from his closed mouth; his voice and tongue are only allowed to answer.

“Speak,” said the Thessalian, “at my command and great will be your reward. For if you tell the truth, we promise to make you immune for all ages from Haemonian arts; I will burn your body on such a pyre of logs, with Stygian chants, that your shade will never be summoned by spells of any magicians. Living twice is worth this much! No words or herbs will dare disturb your slumber of long forgetfulness once you’ve died at my hand! Ambiguous sayings are suited to tripods and seers of the gods. But anyone who bravely comes and seeks true oracles of callous death from the shades should leave with certainty. Don’t hold back, I pray—give names to events, give places, and give voice so that the Fates may speak with me.” She added a spell that gave the shade the power to know whatever she asked of it.

Dripping with tears, the wretched corpse said: “Well, I did not see the sad threads of the Parcae since I was called back from the edge of the silent bank. But what I happened to learn from all the shades is that brutal discord troubles the Roman spirits and impious arms have disrupted the quiet of hell. Some leaders have left their homes in Elysium, others come up from sad Tartarus; they have made it clear what the Fates are preparing.

“The blessed shades wore sorrowful faces. I saw the Decii, son and father who offered their souls in battle, Camillus weeping, the Curii and Sulla, complaining about you, Fortune. Scipio mourned that his ill-fated offspring would fall in the land of Libya. Carthage’s greater enemy, Cato, cried for the fate of his great-grandson who would not be a slave. Only you, Brutus, first to be consul after the kings were expelled, I saw rejoicing among the dutiful shades.

“Suddenly, Catiline the menace, breaking his chains, ran riot, thrilled, with the fierce Marii and Cethegi, their arms bared. I saw delighted demagogues, the Drusi, immoderate legislators, the Gracchi, who dared outrageous deeds. Eternal chains of steel bound their hands applauding in the prisons of Dis—a criminal mob demanding the plains of the pious. The landlord of that idle kingdom is opening his gray estates and sharpening his jagged rocks and solid adamant for fetters, putting in order his punishment for the victor.

“Take this solace with you, young man: the spirits await your father and his house in their peaceful hollow and are reserving a place for Pompey’s line in a calm, clear part of that realm. Don’t let the glory of this brief life disturb you. The hour comes that will level all the leaders. Rush into death and go down below with pride, magnanimous, even if from lowly tombs, and trample on the shades of the gods of Rome. Which tomb the Nile’s waves will wash and which the Tiber’s is the only question—for the leaders, this fight is only about a funeral.

“Don’t ask about your fate. The Parcae will grant you knowledge where I am silent. A clearer seer will sing you all, your father, Pompey, himself, in Sicily’s fields, but he, too, will be unsure where to call you, where to drive you from, which tracts or skies of the world he should order you to shun. Unhappy men, beware of Europe, Libya, Asia—O pitiful house, you will look on nothing in all the world safer than Emathia.”

So once he finished the words of fate, he stands with muted face and sad, then asks again for death. She must resort to magic spells and drugs before the corpse will fall, since Fate’s law had been used once and could not take the soul back. Then she heaps up a great wood pyre; the dead man approaches the fire. Erictho left the youth lying on the kindled pile and let him die at last.

She accompanied Sextus back to his father’s camp as dawn’s light drew its colors in the sky; but till they bore their steps safe into their tents, she ordered the night to keep day back; it complied with deep, dark shadows.

II. EARLY CHRISTIAN HAUNTINGS

The earliest Christians inherited a rich tradition of beliefs about interactions between the living and the dead from the Greeks and the Romans, but the texts that comprised the New Testament added surprisingly little to this heritage. Many early Christian authors followed the apostle Paul in believing that the followers of Christ would join him immediately in paradise when they died. In the Gospel accounts of the Passion, Jesus likewise promised the repentant thief who was executed with him that “today you will be with me in paradise.” On the other hand, the souls of the sinful dead departed without delay to the dark realm of Hades. The Gospel of Luke contrasted the fates of Lazarus, a destitute man whose soul the angels carried to the bosom of Abraham, and an unnamed rich man, who proceeded directly to Hades where he was tormented for neglecting to give alms to the poor.

While the authors of the New Testament texts took for granted the existence of ghosts, they made no new claims about where they came from or how they behaved. In fact, the geography of the ancient otherworld remained largely unchanged in the imagination of the earliest Christians. The apostles employed the Greek term Hades alongside Hebrew words like Sheol and Gehenna to denote the abode of the dead, but they did not contribute to a new understanding of the meaning of these words. The behavior of the restless dead remained the same as well. In early Christian texts, the spirits of the deceased still visited their loved ones in dreams, crowded menacingly around visitors to their domain, and haunted the places where their bodies lay unburied or slain by violence, much like they did in Greek and Roman antiquity.

These similarities stem in part from a shared funerary culture throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. For several centuries after the death of Jesus Christ, early Christians did not have death rites or burial places separate and distinct from their pagan neighbors. In the Roman Empire, the interment and commemoration of a deceased person was largely a family affair. Many Christians attached a new significance to the day of a person’s death, believing it to be the day of their rebirth into a new life with Christ, and some of them sought burial in proximity to the tombs of the martyrs, but it was only in the early Middle Ages that Christian communities developed the preference for burial in the hallowed ground of churchyard cemeteries.

Unlike the Greeks and Romans, however, ancient Christians were strict monotheists who recognized the God of the Hebrews as their own. From the very beginning of the Christian movement, they appropriated the Hebrew scriptures as a foreshadowing of their claims about the meaning of the life and death of Jesus Christ. In doing so, they became the heirs to a long and ambivalent tradition about the practice of necromancy in the ancient Near East. Christian readers found in the Book of Deuteronomy an ancient prohibition against speaking with the dead, a practice outlawed by Moses as an affront to God. In contrast, they also read the story of King Saul’s consultation with the witch of Endor, who performed a necromantic ritual to summon the ghost of the prophet Samuel on the king’s behalf. Thus, the classical tradition and the Hebrew scriptures each played formative roles in shaping how the early Christians thought about the restless dead. Despite this inheritance, Christians abandoned commerce with professional diviners like Erictho. As these stories show, God granted the authority to communicate with the dead to martyrs and saints for purposes far removed from the unsavory activities of ancient necromancers.

SPEAKING WITH THE DEAD IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

"The practice of necromancy is not mentioned very often in the Hebrew scriptures, but it was common enough in the ancient Near East to prompt strict prohibitions against its use in legal and prophetic texts written by the Israelites. Like many other divinatory and magical practices, necromancy was considered to be an insult to God and punishable by death. Despite these condemnations, King Saul’s consultation with the witch of Endor clearly shows that speaking to the dead for the purpose of divination persisted for centuries among the Jews. This unusually vivid description of a necromantic ritual was widely read by ancient and medieval Christians, who argued at length about the efficacy of this practice and the identity of the spirit conjured by the witch".

(A) A PROHIBITION AGAINST NECROMANCY1

When you have come into the land that the Lord God will give to you, beware that you do not wish to imitate the abominations of the people who already dwell there. Let there not be found among you anyone who sacrifices while leading his son or daughter through fire or anyone who consults fortune-tellers or interprets dreams and omens. Do not become a sorcerer or a conjurer or one who consults with soothsayers or supernatural spirits or one who seeks the truth from the dead. For the Lord hates all of these things and it is because of these evils that He will destroy these people at your coming. You will be perfect and without blemish before the Lord your God. Those peoples, whose land you will possess, pay heed to soothsayers and diviners, but you have been instructed otherwise by the Lord your God.

(B) KING SAUL CONSULTS THE WITCH OF ENDOR2

It came to pass in those days that the Philistines gathered their forces in preparation for war against Israel . . . Now Samuel was dead and all Israel mourned him and they buried him in Ramatha, his own city. And Saul exiled magicians and soothsayers from the land. And the Philistines gathered and marched and camped in Sunam. And Saul also marshaled all of Israel and came to Gelboe. And Saul saw the forces of the Philistines and feared and there was a great trembling in his heart. And he consulted the Lord and He did not respond to him, neither through dreams nor through priests nor through prophets. And Saul said to his servants, “Find for me a woman with the power of divination and I will go to her and consult her.” And his servants told him that there was a woman with the power of divination at Endor.

So Saul changed his garments and put on different clothes and departed and two men went with him. And they came to the woman by night and he said to her, “Divine for me with a spirit and raise up for me whomever I say.” And the woman said to him, “Behold, you know what Saul has done and how he has banished the magicians and fortune-tellers from the land. Why then are you attempting to snare my life and bring about my death?” And Saul swore to her by the Lord, saying, “As the Lord lives, no harm will come upon you because of this act.” And the woman said to him, “Whom shall I raise up for you?” He said, “Raise up Samuel for me.” But when the woman saw Samuel, she cried out with a great voice and said to Saul, “Why have you tricked me? You are none other than Saul!” The king said to her, “Do not fear. What do you see?” And the woman said to Saul, “I see gods rising up from the earth.” And he said to her, “What does he look like?” She said, “An old man rises and he is shrouded in a cloak.” And Saul knew that it was Samuel and he bowed with his face to the ground and paid him respect.

Then Samuel said to Saul, “Why have you disturbed me to raise me up?” And Saul said, “I am in a very tight spot, for the Philistines wage war against me and God has turned away from me and does not answer me, neither through the power of the prophets nor through dreams. Therefore, I have summoned you, so that you may show me what to do.” And Samuel said, “What is the use of asking me, when the Lord has turned away from you and gone over to your rival? For the Lord has done to you just as he said through my power, and he has torn your kingdom from your hand and he will give it to your neighbor David. Because you did not obey the voice of the Lord and you did not take out the wrath of his anger against Amalek, for this reason you endure what the Lord has done to you today. Moreover, the Lord will also give Israel with you into the hands of the Philistines. Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me, but the Lord will give the camps of Israel into the hands of the Philistines.”

And immediately Saul fell stretched out on the ground, for he feared the words of Samuel and there was no strength in him because he had not eaten any bread that whole day. And then that woman came to Saul—he was still very shaken—and said to him, “Behold, your servant obeyed your request and I have taken my life in my hands and listened to the words that you spoke to me. Now, therefore, listen to me and heed the voice of your servant. I will set a small morsel of bread before you so that you may eat it and recover your strength to get on your way.” He refused and said, “I will not eat it.” But his servants and the woman urged him to do so. He heeded their pleas and got up from the ground and sat upon a bed. Now that woman had a fattened calf in the house, so she quickly prepared it for slaughter. And then taking some flour, she kneaded it and baked unleavened bread and put it before Saul and his servants. Once they had eaten, they rose and walked all night back to their camp.

A GHOST UPON THE WATERS1

Spirits of the dead are largely absent from the texts that comprise the New Testament. An exception is the Gospel of Matthew (composed 80—90), which recounts how Jesus walked upon the water of a lake to catch up with the followers, who had gone ahead of him in their boats. When the apostles saw the form of a man that seemed to hover over the water in the early morning light, they thought for certain that it was a spirit of the dead and cried out in fear.

And immediately Jesus ordered the disciples to get into the boat and go on ahead of him across the lake, while he dismissed the crowds. After he had dismissed them, Jesus climbed up the mountain by himself to pray. When night fell, he was alone there. The boat was already a good distance away, tossed by the waves because the wind was against it. Just before dawn, Jesus came to them walking upon the lake. And when the disciples saw him walking upon the lake, they were upset, saying “It is a ghost!” and they cried out in fear. Jesus immediately spoke to them, saying “Have faith, it is I. Do not fear.” And Peter responding to him said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you upon the waters.” And he said, “Come!” And coming down from the boat, Peter walked upon the waters and came to Jesus. But seeing a strong wind, he was afraid, and when he began to sink, he cried out saying “Lord, save me!” Immediately reaching out his hand, Jesus caught him and said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” And when they climbed up into the boat, the wind died down. And everyone who was in the boat worshipped him saying “Truly you are the son of God!”

DREAMING OF THE DEAD1

"Before the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312, Roman authorities frequently persecuted Christians for rejecting the rites of worship owed to the pagan gods. During these persecutions, many Christians suffered martyrdom, that is, they died for their faith rather than sacrifice to false deities. One of the most remarkable documents of the early Christian period is a diary kept by a North African woman named Perpetua, who was imprisoned in Carthage in 203 for being a Christian and died in the Roman coliseum. In the days before her death, Perpetua recounted in her diary how the spirit of her brother Dinocrates, who had died a pagan, visited her in her dreams and how her prayers earned for him the refreshment and relief of a Christian afterlife".

A few days later, while we were all praying, suddenly in the midst of a prayer a voice came to me and I spoke the name Dinocrates. I was astonished because he had never before now entered into my mind, and the memory of his misfortune made me sad. And I knew at once that I was worthy and that I should pray for him. So I began to pray for him in earnest and to groan to the Lord. Then, that very night, this vision was shown to me. I saw Dinocrates coming out of a place of shadows, where many others dwelt with him. He was very hot and thirsty, covered in dirt and pale in color, and on his face was the wound that he had when he died. This boy Dinocrates had been my brother in the flesh, but at the age of seven he died horribly due to a cancer of the face and his death filled everyone with loathing. Thus, it was for this boy that I made my prayer. But between me and him there was a wide gulf with the result that neither of us could approach the other. But there was in that place where Dinocrates stood a basin full of water, the lip of which was higher than the height of the boy and Dinocrates was stretching himself toward it as if he were going to drink. I was saddened because that basin held water and yet because of the height of the rim he was not able to drink from it. Then I woke up and I knew that my brother was suffering, but I was sure that I could help him in his trouble and I prayed for him every day until we were transferred to the military prison. For we were to fight in the military games on the birthday of Geta Caesar [March 7, 203]. And I said a prayer for him, groaning and crying night and day, so that this favor might be granted to me.

On the day that we remained in chains, this vision was shown to me. I saw that place that I had seen before and Dinocrates was there, his body cleansed, well-dressed, and refreshed. And where his wound had been, there was a scar, and that basin, which I had seen before, now had its lip lowered to the height of the boy’s navel and he could draw water from it without any hindrance. And upon the lip of the basin there was a golden cup full of water and Dinocrates approached and began to drink from it and the cup did not empty. And once he was sated, he began to play in the water joyfully as children do. And then I woke up and I knew that he had been freed from his suffering.

THE DISCERNMENT OF THE SAINTS

"In the Christian tradition, men and women who died for the faith or who lived virtuous lives of self-denial were recognized as saints. Christian authors narrated the stories of these heroic individuals in works of hagiography, a Greek word meaning “writings about the holy.” The lives of the saints were not biographies in the modern sense. They were written to promote the holiness of their subjects by relating how the power of God allowed them to perform miracles of healing and exorcise demons. Two early works of hagiography—the Life of Saint Martin by Sulpicius Severus (written in 396) and the Life of Saint Germanus of Auxerre by Constantius of Lyon (written around 480)—included stories about hauntings. In each case, the saint demonstrated his holy power by compelling the spirits of the dead to reveal their identity and the cause of their unrest. The story about the fifth-century missionary, Saint Patrick, was written down in the eleventh century, but it derived from a much older oral tradition. Like the saintly bishops of late antique Gaul, the apostle to Ireland had the God-given authority to make the dead speak .

(A) SAINT MARTIN AND THE BANDIT’S GHOST1

There was a place not far from the town [Tours] and near to the monastery [Marmoutier], which the false belief of men considered to be sacred, as though martyrs had been buried there. And there was even an altar there, set up by past bishops. But Martin, not one to believe idly in rumors, sought the name of this martyr and the date of his death from presbyters and priests older than him. He felt considerable doubt because no established tradition had been passed down. For a while he stayed away from that place, neither speaking out against the veneration of the martyr, because he was unsure of his identity, nor lending his authority to the rumor, because he did not wish to strengthen a false belief. Then one day, he went to that place with a few of the brethren. Standing upon the very grave, he prayed to the Lord to reveal who this man was and the reason why he had been buried there. Then turning to the left, he saw standing close at hand a wraith that was ragged and grim. Martin commanded the spirit to speak its name and to explain the reason for its presence there. The wraith shared his name and confessed to a crime. He had been a bandit, who was executed for his wicked deeds only to be venerated by a widely held mistake. He had nothing in common with the martyrs; they had earned glory, while he had only earned punishment. Amazingly, those who had accompanied Martin could hear the voice of someone speaking, but they could not see who it was, so Martin described what he had seen and ordered that the altar be removed from that place and thereby freed the people from the error of their false belief.

(B) SAINT GERMANUS QUIETS A SPECTER2

Once when Germanus was on the road in the winter and had passed the entire day in fasting and weariness, he was advised to find shelter somewhere with the approach of evening. There was a little house some distance from the road. Now long abandoned, its roof had partially collapsed and it was covered in foliage due to general neglect, so it seemed almost better to brave the night in the cold of the open air rather than to find shelter in that place of danger and horror, especially since two old men had claimed that this particular house was uninhabited because something terrible dwelt there. When the most blessed man learned this, he approached the dreadful ruin as though it was a place of beauty, and among what had once been many dwellings he found one that just barely retained the semblance of a living space. There his few companions placed their light packs and prepared a modest meal, but the bishop ate nothing at all.

As the night wore on, one of the priests assumed the duty of reading aloud and Germanus, exhausted by fasting and weariness, was overcome by sleep. Then, suddenly, a dreadful shadow appeared before the reader and rose little by little in front of his eyes, while a shower of hail struck the walls. The terrified reader implored the aid of the bishop. Springing up immediately, Germanus stared down the image of the fearful apparition. Once he had invoked the name of Christ, he commanded the ghost to say who he was and what he was doing there. Putting aside its frightful façade, the ghost replied in a low voice like a suppliant that he and his companion had been the perpetrators of many crimes, that they lay unburied and because of this they disturbed living men, as they were unable to find rest themselves, and they asked Germanus to petition the Lord on their behalf so that He might receive them and grant them eternal rest.

The holy man grieved to hear this story and ordered that the ghost reveal the place where their bodies lay unburied. Then, with a candle lighting the way, the shade led the way, and amid great difficulties caused by the ruins because the night was stormy, he indicated the place where their bodies had been thrown. When the day returned once more, the bishop invited some of the locals and encouraged them to help, while he stood by to oversee the completion of the work. Heaps of debris that had piled up over time were cleared away with rakes. The bodies were found strewn about in disarray, the bones still fastened with iron bindings. According to the law of burial, a grave was dug, the remains were freed from their chains and wrapped in linen, earth was thrown upon them, and the prayer of intercession for the dead was recited. Rest for the dead was achieved and relief for the living as well, for after that day the little house, without any hint of its former terror, prospered with new inhabitants.

(C) SAINT PATRICK SPEAKS TO THE DEAD3

It was Patrick’s custom to make the sign of the cross one hundred times every day and every night. And whether he was in a chariot or on horseback, he would visit every standing cross, sometimes leaving the road to do so, even if it was a thousand feet away, provided that he saw it from a distance or knew that it was there. Once on a certain day Patrick did not visit a standing cross that was on his route. In fact, he did not even realize that it was there. Then at the end of the day, his chariot driver remarked that the saint had passed by a standing cross without stopping to visit it. Hearing this, Patrick abandoned the guesthouse where he was lodged and his dinner to seek out this standing cross.

While Patrick was praying at the cross, he realized that it was a grave and asked, “Who is buried here?” From the depth of the grave, a corpse answered, “I am a wretched pagan. While I was alive, great pain wracked my soul and I died and then I was buried here.” Patrick asked, “Why was a cross, the symbol of the Christians, erected on your grave?” “The answer is easy,” the corpse said. “A woman who lived in a distant land lost her son in this country and he was buried hereabouts. When she came from her home faraway, she mistook my grave for his and raised this cross upon it. Her grief did not allow her to realize her mistake.” “That is why I passed this cross by,” said Patrick, “for this is a pagan grave.” So Patrick had the cross moved to its rightful place over the grave of the Christian son.

NOTES

ODYSSEUS IN THE HOUSE OF DEATH

1. Homer, The Odyssey 11.13-256, trans. Robert Fagels (New York: Viking Penguin, 1996), pp. 250–256.
2. Erebus was the name of the place of darkness beneath the earth where the dead were thought to dwell.
3. Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, who became queen of the underworld after her abduction by Hades.
4. Aeaea was the name of the island where Circe lived and where Elpenor still lay unburied after his accidental death.

PLINY CONTEMPLATES THE EXISTENCE OF GHOSTS

1. Pliny the Younger, Letter 7.27, in The Letters of the Younger Pliny, trans. Betty Radice (New York: Penguin Books, 1963), pp. 202–205 (slightly altered).
2. Curtius Rufus was a first-century magistrate of the senatorial rank, who may also have been the author of a history of Alexander the Great that proved to be very popular in the Middle Ages.
3. The veracity of the spirit’s prediction indicated that she was a manifestation of the divine will (numen) rather than an empty hallucination.
4. Domitian was the emperor of Rome from 81 to 96.
A MISTRESS OF THE GRAVES
1. Lucan, Civil War 6.565-928, in Lucan, Civil War, trans. Matthew Fox (New York: Penguin Classics, 2012), pp. 164–175 (slightly altered).
2. Dis Pater is the Roman name for the god of the underworld, the equivalent of the Greek Hades.
3. Haemus refers to the Balkan mountain range, which is nowhere near Pharsalus, the town in ancient Greece, in the vicinity of which Caesar defeated Pompey in battle in 48 BCE. Lucan seems to be associating the name of the mountain with Haemonia, a poetic name for Thessaly.
4. Emathia is an ancient reference to Macedonia.
5. Rhodope is a mountain in western Thrace.
6. Avernus was the name of a crater located near Cuma in Italy. In the ancient period, it was believed to be an entrance to the underworld.
7. Taenarus was another entrance to the underworld in ancient lore. It was located on the southern tip of one of the peninsulas in the Peloponnese.
8. The Eumenides were the Furies, the Greek deities of vengeance. Cerberus was the great three-headed dog that guarded the gate to the underworld.
9. Echenais were small fish, whose name means “holds back ships” (Gr. Echein naus). In antiquity, they were a common ingredient in magical spells.
10. Elysium is the name of the isles of the blessed, the abode of dead heroes.
11. Tartarus and Orcus are synonyms for the underworld or the gods thereof.
12. Tisiphone and Megaera are the names of the Furies.

SPEAKING WITH THE DEAD IN THE HEBREW SCRIPTURES

1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Deut. 18.9–14.
2. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of 1 Sam. 28.1 and 3–25.

A GHOST UPON THE WATERS

1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from the Latin Vulgate version of Matt. 14:22–33.

DREAMING OF THE DEAD

1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Passio sanctarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis 7-8, ed. H. Musurillo, in The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 114 and 116.

THE DISCERNMENT OF THE SAINTS

1. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Sulpicius Severus, Vita sancti Martini 11, ed. Jacques Fontaine, in Sulpice Sévère, Vie de saint Martin, 3 vols., Sources chrétiennes 133-135 (Paris: L’Éditions du Cerf, 1967–1968), vol. 1, p. 276.
2. Translated by Scott G. Bruce from Constantius, Vita sancti Germani 10, ed. René Borius, in Constance de Lyon, Vie de saint Germain d’Auxerre, Sources chrétiennes 112 (Paris: L’Éditions du Cerf, 1965), pp. 138, 140, and 142.
3. Recast in modern English from the translation of Whitley Stokes in The Tripartite Life of Patrick with Other Documents Relating to that Saint (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1887), pp. 125 and 127.

In "The Penguin Book of The Undead- Fifteen Hundred Years of Supernatural Encounters", Translation, introduction, notes and selection by Scott G. Bruce, edited by Scott G. Bruce, Penguin Books, New York, USA, chapter 1, sections I and II. Digitized, adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.