Greek And Roman Ghost Stories

Apparitions Of The Dead
Among the tall stories in Lucian's _Philopseudus_[79] is an amusing account of a man whose wife, whom he loved dearly, appeared to him after she had been dead for twenty days. He had given her a splendid funeral, and had burnt everything she posse...

Necromancy
The belief that it was possible to call up the souls of the dead by means of spells was almost universal in antiquity. We know that even Saul, who had himself cut off those that had familiar spirits and the wizards out of the land, disguised himse...

Stories Of Haunting
In a letter to Sura[30] the younger Pliny gives us what may be taken as a prototype of all later haunted-house stories. At one time in Athens there was a roomy old house where nobody could be induced to live. In the dead of night the sound of clan...

The Belief In Ghosts In Greece And Rome
Ghost stories play a very subordinate part in classical literature, as is only to be expected. The religion of the hard-headed, practical Roman was essentially formal, and consisted largely in the exact performance of an elaborate ritual. His rela...

The Power Of The Dead To Return To Earth
Though there is no period at which the ancients do not seem to have believed in a future life, continual confusion prevails when they come to picture the existence led by man in the other world, as we see from the sixth book of the _AEneid_. Combi...

Visions Of The Dead In Sleep
In most of the Greek and Roman stories that survive, the wraiths of the dead are represented as revisiting their friends on earth in sleep. These instances I have not, as a rule, troubled to collect, for they cannot strictly be classed as ghost st...

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