Tomorrow Shall You and Your Sons be With Me: A Look at Ancient Ghost Stories and Hauntings

 By Rook Hawkins

 

Ghost stories hold a special place in human culture.  It has been given as evidence throughout the generations of man as evidence for an afterlife.  The stories always involve supernatural occurrences, but the events vary.  At times there are white apparitions, doomsayers, fortune tellers, and even more violent crimes like rape and murder.  These stories capture our imaginations and make the hair on the back of our necks stand up straight.  This fascination with the spirit world doesn’t stop at the box-office, or in Steven King novels.  As far back the Hellenistic Age and the Roman Empire, people have discussed Ghost stories.  In Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey, Odysseus sails to the edge of the world, where he conjures up the souls of the dead from Hades.  The spirit or breath (psuchê) of a young soldier, Elpenor, appeared before Odysseus and told him of his sad story.  Apparently Elpenor had fallen from the roof of a building to his death while inebriated, and sought a proper burial.  (Ody. 10.550-565, 12.8-15) Elpenor pleads with Odysseus to fulfill his desire for this burial:

 

“Leave me not behind thee unwept and unburied as thou goest thence, and turn not away from me, lest haply I bring the wrath of the gods upon thee. Nay, burn me with my armor, all that is mine, and heap up a mound for me on the shore of the grey sea, in memory of an unhappy man, that men yet to be may learn of me. Fulfill this my prayer, and fix upon the mound my oar wherewith I rowed in life when I was among my comrades.” (Ody. 11.72-78)

 

Odysseus agrees, honorably, to help his fallen comrade.  Another scene in the Odyssey involves the spirits of the slain suitors.  Telemachus and his father Odysseus kill the suitors of Odysseus’ wife Penelope, and later the spirits of these suitors gather in Hades to discuss these events with the spirits of Achilles and Agamemnon.  In Book 24, Homer writes:

 
“Meanwhile Cyllenian Hermes called forth the spirits of the wooers. He held in his hands his wand, a fair wand of gold, wherewith he lulls to sleep the eyes of whom he will, while others again he wakens even out of slumber; with this he roused and led the spirits, and they followed gibbering. And as in the innermost recess of a wondrous cave bats flit about gibbering, when one has fallen from off the rock from the chain in which they cling to one another, so these went with him gibbering, and Hermes, the Helper, led them down the dank ways. Past the streams of Oceanus they went, past the rock Leucas, past the gates of the sun and the land of dreams, and quickly came to the mead of asphodel, where the spirits dwell, phantoms of men who have done with toils. Here they found the spirit of Achilles, son of Peleus, and those of Patroclus, of peerless Antilochus, and of Aias, who in comeliness and form was the goodliest of all the Danaans after the peerless son of Peleus. So these were thronging about Achilles, and near to them drew the spirit of Agamemnon, son of Atreus, sorrowing; and round about him others were gathered, the spirits of all those who were slain with him in the house of Aegisthus, and met their fate.” (Ody. 24.1-20)

 
A conversation ensues.  Achilles asks why all these valiant men have come to Hades, for he and Agamemnon are astonished to see them all, and the story is laid out by Amphimedon.  The story is telling of the ideology surrounding death and the afterlife to the Greeks at this time.     

 
Another amusing poem comes from Aristophanes Peace, where his character Trygaeus returns from a journey to visit the gods.  Upon his return from Heaven, he turns to the audience and delivers this comment:  “How small you were, to be sure, when seen from heaven you had all the appearance too of being great rascals; but seen close, you look even worse!”  His servant appears and asks him to tell him of his adventures.  “What?”  replies the weary Trygaeus.  “Did you see any other man besides yourself strolling about in heaven?”  Trygaeus responds in a coy tone, “No, only the souls of two or three dithyrambic poets,” to which he adds were “seeking to catch some lyric exordia as they flew by immersed in the billows of the air.”  His servant continues to ask the tired Trygaeus about what he had seen, “Is it true what they say, that men are turned into stars after death?”  Trygaeus nods and affirms the question.  Interestingly enough about this story, Trygaeus has brought back with him two girls from Heaven, as apparently a God or two is running a Heavenly brothel by which these two young lassies have been bought.  I would be doing you a disservice by leaving out a humorous line from this part of the play, even though it is irrelevant to the subject of the article, in which the servant questions his master about what to feed the girls.  “No,” Trygaeus remarks, “for she would touch neither bread nor cake; she is used to licking ambrosia at the table of the gods.”  To which the servant replies in a burst of wit, “Well, we can give her something to lick down here too.” 

   
The Ghostly stories and drama continue throughout literature in antiquity, but the most strikingly similar to the stories we share around campfires today are found in the letters of Pliny.  In a letter to his friend Sura, Pliny the Younger recounts several events that leads him to believe in Ghosts, and he questions if his friend does also:

“I am extremely desirous therefore to know whether you believe in the existence of ghosts, and that they have a real form, and are a sort of divinities, or only the visionary impressions of a terrified imagination. What particularly inclines me to believe in their existence is a story which I heard of Curtius Rufus. When he was in low circumstances and unknown in the world, he attended the governor of Africa into that province. One evening, as he was walking in the public portico, there appeared to him the figure of a woman, of unusual size and of beauty more than human. And as he stood there, terrified and astonished, she told him she was the tutelary power that presided over Africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life: that he should go back to Rome, to enjoy high honours there, and return to that province invested with the proconsular dignity, and there should die. Every circumstance of this prediction actually came to pass. It is said farther that upon his arrival at Carthage, as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure met him upon the shore.” (Pliny, Letters, LXXXIII, LCL)    

Another rather humorous event recorded by Pliny in the same letter needs to be explained, if only because it makes me chuckle.  In this story, Pliny recounts a house in Athens, by which the tenants of the house heard the clanging of chains and the moans of a spirit.  The visions of this spirit (idolon) were of a skinny old man (senex macie), bound and shackled.  The man was, as Pliny put it, ‘filthy’ (squalore) with ‘disheveled hair’ (horrenti capillo).  The spirit so frightened the tenants that many came down with fever and even died (longiorque causis timoris timor erat).  Eventually the house was abandoned and left to the whims of the spirit.  In order to try to sell the property, the city attempted to sell it to travelers unbeknownst to the spectre living there.  One day, Athenodorus the philosopher (who was the teacher of both Octavius and Augustus Caesar) came along, and saw the bill on the house.  Upon seeing how cheap the price was for the house, Athenodorus became suspicious and inquired about it.  When he was told about the Ghost, he immediately bought the house, due to his interest in the stories.  The first night in the house, he sat on his couch, with his tablets and writing tools and started writing.  Soon enough, the spectre appears, waving around his chains.  In a humorous display of nonchalance, Athenodorus waves the spirit away, as if to say “I’m working here, come back later.”  To Athenodorus’ dismay, the spectre got closer and rattled his chains over the head of the philosopher, who frustratingly stood up and followed it.  The spectre, per Pliny, walked around the house as if held down by his shackles, and then vanished through the wall of estate.  Athenodorus marked the spot where the spirit rested, and the next day Athenodorus ordered the land owners to dig up the spot, where a body of a man was discovered, bound in chains.  The body was exhumed from the spot, and buried publicly, and thus after the hauntings stopped.

What is fascinating about this story is how detailed it is.  It is unfortunate that Pliny does not provide a source for this story as he did for the first.  I almost wonder if he invented the story with the intent of persuading Sura to believe the testimony and accept the position that Ghosts exist.  But, that would be a bit speculative on my part.  Even still it would not be without merit that I raise this concern.  Inventing stories or altering them to be more persuasive is, of course, part of rhetoric, and such courses on rhetoric were common.  Pliny is no doubt skilled in rhetoric being a Roman official and a former lawyer.  But, this is neither here nor there.  The stories are telling though.  The detailed accounts here also give us insight into the concept of a soul, especially a restless soul who still has work to do.  But there is another side to the supernatural in antiquity which is very important.

In antiquity, specifically during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, the world was left up to bizarre forces.  As it was put, “the cosmos bristled with hostile supernatural powers bent on making human life unbearable and dangerous as possible, and an inexorable Fate controlled the destiny of everyone.” (Mary Ann Tolbert, Sowing the Gospel, 1996. p. 40)  It was not just spirits of humans running around houses and chasing after future political figures.  There were also the daimonos.  Today, we know them as demons, but to the ancients, demons were not the minions of Satan.  The daimonos were the lesser deities or territorial gods, those who might control a river or local crop season.  They were also mischievous, playing with the minds of man for their pleasures, or sometimes they could even be beneficial.  Socrates had often discussed what he felt was his inner demon refered to as ‘the deity’ (diamonion) that possessed him, spoke to him and taught him things. (Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.1.2) There is a story spoken of in Homer, where Glaucus, while in the company of fellow soldiers, speaks of his grandfather Bellerophon, from the Greek Bellerophontes (lit. Killer of Belleros, a demon).  Euripides writes that “Divine strength is roused with difficulty, but still is sure. It chastises those mortals who honor folly and those who in their insanity do not extol the gods. The gods cunningly conceal the long pace of time and hunt the impious. For it is not right to determine or plan anything beyond the laws. For it is a light expense to hold that whatever is divine (diamonion) has power, and that which has been law for a long time is eternal and has its origin in nature.” (Bacchae 885-895)  In one of Demosthenes speeches, he writes (and later speaks) on the nature of holding secret voting sessions:

 “The legislator wisely discerned herein the essence of secret voting, that no suppliant shall know the name of the juror who has granted his prayer, but the gods and the divine spirit will know him who has cast an unrighteous vote. Far better for each of you to make good his hopes of the blessing of Heaven for himself and his children, by recording a righteous and a dutiful verdict, than to bestow on these men a secret and unacknowledged favor, and acquit a man convicted by his own testimony….You, who thought it necessary to implicate in so grievous a calamity one who purposed to bring a part of your misconduct to light, must surely have expected a terrible retribution if the jury should learn the true history of your deeds.” 

To the audience, this was no mere threat.  The thought of having the divine powers bring about justice was a very real concept to the Greek, and later to the Romans.  (Even to Paul, who blames the rulers of the aeons—the Greek archon, or those who arche, or initiate—for crucifying Jesus)  So much so were the diamonos revered and feared, that when Socrates suggested that he was possessed by one, he was sentenced to death as the city feared retribution from the diamonos on behalf of Socrates claims.  To the Greek, and later the Hellenized populace of the ancient Near East, the world was a very tricky place.  Insecurity drove these fascinations and delusions.  Imaginations sprung forth with all sorts of stories about necromancy, ghosts, evil trickster gods, and Fate, making life seem, for these Hellenes and Romans, out of control. They felt powerless.  So powerless, in fact, that many people joined mystery cults and became even more superstitious as ways to calm their fears and deal with what they thought to be a doomed reality. 

Jews who were Hellenized were also known for this.  Many mystery cults were started and remained in existence until the Constantine made Christianity the official religion of Rome.  We know of over a dozen different sects of Jews in antiquity, particularly in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.  This list is not comprehensive,[i] but particularly, we have the Pharisees, Sadducees, Scribes, Hemerobaptists, Nasaraeans, Ossaeans, Herodians, Therapeutae, Bana’im, Hypsistarians, Maghariya, Masbotheans, Galilaeans, Qumran, Samaritans, Essenes, Dosithaens, Sebuaeans, and Gorothenes.[ii]  I would also add Christianity to this list, but I feel that the Essenes were what Christianity initially started as.[iii]  Why is this important?  The Jews of the Hellenistic and Roman periods were not void of their own night terrors.  The Jews also had their own ghost stories and a vengeful group of daimonion as well.  Most fascinating about these stories is how they appear in the New Testament, as well as the Old Testament and in pseudepigrapha. 

The New Testament is of course filled with diamonios and spirits.  Jesus cures people of their possessions of these beings, driving them out.  At times he even sends them into livestock and then kills the livestock.  In Matthew 27:52, “The tombs were also opened.  Many bodies (sôma) of the saints (hagios)[iv] who had fallen asleep were raised.”  Additionally, the two scenes in which Jesus is mistaken for a ghost raise questions about the nature of the Gospel author’s intent.

Consider Matthew 14:25-27, “In the fourth watch of the night Jesus came to them, walking on the sea. When the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, "It's a ghost!" (phantasma) and they cried out for fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying "Cheer up! I AM! Don't be afraid.”

Additionally, Luke 24:36-43, “As they said these things, Jesus himself stood among them, and said to them, "Peace be to you." But they were terrified and filled with fear, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. (pneuma) He said to them, "Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is truly me. Touch me and see, for a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones, as you see that I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they still didn't believe for joy, and wondered, he said to them, "Do you have anything here to eat?" They gave him a piece of a broiled fish and some honeycomb. He took it, and ate in front of them.”

But even more fascinating than the disciples nitwit understanding of the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel narratives is what can be found in other Jewish fiction.  In the book of 1 Samuel, Saul is about to lose his kingdom to the Philistines.  Knowing that Yahweh has left him, Saul seeks the council of a soothsayer (eggastrimuthos – sort of like a ventriloquist).  Knowing he must disguise himself, he shrouds his identity and requests the woman to conjure up the spirit of Samuel.  Samuel possesses the soothsayer and speaks through her.  The soothsayer sees Samuel and immediately realizes that Saul has deceived her, but under Saul’s pressuring, she continues.  She tells Saul, “I see a god coming up out of the earth….An old man comes up; and he is covered with a robe.”  Saul perceives this to be Samuel, who demands to know, “Why have you disquieted me, to bring me up?”  Saul then tells Samuel his predicament, and Samuel tells Saul his dismal future. He informs Saul that god has abandoned him, and has decided to give over Saul’s kingdom and its people to the Philistines as punishment for Saul’s disobedience.  Ironically enough, Yahweh will comdemn Saul for not obeying “the voice of Yahweh, and didn't execute his fierce wrath on Amalek.”  For Saul’s inaction at destroying a kingdom, God will destroy Saul.  Before Samuel leaves the soothsayer, he leaves Saul with one final, chilling remark, “tomorrow shall you and your sons be with me.”

And one can hardly read the book of Job without thinking of the Devil (Diabolos – literally, Slanderous) and the angels in the story as demons.  When God questions where Diabolos he has been, he answers “I have come from traveling the earth, and walking up and down under heaven.”  The dialog between God and Diabolos is a lot like a Greek play or poem, like something you’d find in Homer.  When Diabolos causes calamity on Job, one cannot help but think of Io and her fate put on her by a jealous Hera after she was seduced by Zeus.  Who would not think of Diabolos as a daimonios?

But when it comes to Ghost stories in Jewish fiction, my favorite has to be the one found in Tobit.  Tobit really takes the award for best representation of a Greek ghost theme in a Jewish narrative.  The background of the story is that Tobit, now blind and old, sends his son Tobias on a journey to retrieve his family’s wealth that has been kept safe and hidden.  The family is growing poor, and needs the money to live.  When Tobias leaves, he is accompanied by a strange companion, a man who claims to be kin of the family.  Tobit graciously accepts the aid from kin on this journey which he sends his only son.  He knows the road is long and dangerous.   Meanwhile, in Media, a young girl prays for death and seeks to commit suicide.  This is where the haunting takes place.  Here is a condensed version of this particular haunting (spanning Tobit 3:7-8:3).  The young woman, Sarah, has been spied by a demon or spirit (diamonion) who wants her.  She tries to marry, in fact she marries seven times, but each night in the bed chamber the demon or spirit kills the husbands before they can do ‘married bed things’.  In dread and despair, Sarah contemplates hanging herself in her father’s bedchamber.  But after contemplating, decides she can not do this to her father, and prays to God instead.  That mysterious figure traveling with Tobias is actually the angel Raphael[v], who hears her prayer as God does, and sets out to make both Tobias’ and Sarah’s wishes come true by helping Tobias cure is fathers ailment, get the wealth, and marry both Sarah and Tobias.  To do this, they needed to kill a fish.  But this was no ordinary fish.  Various parts of this fish had healing properties and another very special purpose.  Upon their arrival at the house of Raguel, Sarah’s father, Tobias and Sarah had a connection, and the father grants Tobias the rights to marry his daughter according to the laws of Moses.  Sarah cries, because she is afraid for Tobias, but Tobias has been instructed by his mysterious companion to burn the liver of the fish, and the demon will be so disturbed by its scent it will flee the chamber.  Tobias does this, and just as Raphael had said, the demon took flight.  But, Raphael followed the demon, and “at once bound him there hand and foot”.  This story is so interesting in that it uses two motifs; Dualism and hauntings both appear here.  Both Tobias and Sarah are haunted, but the good demon (Raphael) must overcome the evil (Asmodeus the daimonios). 

Hellenized Jews also elaborated on inscriptions.  In Egyptian cemeteries, Jewish head stones are written in the first person, in Greek, often describing the life and death of the person buried there.  The impression makes on feel as though it is the spirit that is speaking to you from beyond the grave. This is another example of how interested the concept of death was, and the afterlife to many Jewish communities in the Diaspora.  I have a few favorites that really interest me; keep in mind these are the headstones of real people.  Here is one of the inscriptions (some of the characters have worn off the tablet):

“This stele bears witness. – ‘Who are you that lie in the dark tomb?  Tell me your country and your father.’ ‘Arsinoe, daughter of Aline and Theodosius, and the land which nourished us is called the land of Onias.’[vi] ‘How old were you when you slipped down into the shadowy region of Lethe?’ ‘At twenty years old I went to the mournful place of the dead.’ ‘Were you joined in marriage?’ ‘I was.’ ‘Did you leave him a child?’ ‘Childless I went to the house of Hades.’ ‘May the earth, the guardian of the dead, be light upon you.’ ‘And you, stranger, may it bear fruitful crops.’ In the 16^th year, Payni 21.[vii]”

And another that makes me sad:

“Look on my gavestone, passer-by, and having considered it, weep.  Beat with your hands five times for the five-year-old.  For now I lie in the tomb, without even having shared in marriage.  My parents suffer likewise for the son who pleased them, and my friends look for their comrade and companion; but my body lies in this blessed place. Weeping say: Untimely dead, deeply mourned, you who were always renowned for all virtue.”

This fascination with being able to speak out from the dead, although obviously the dead did not write these epitaphs, I what spawned some of the very ghostly stories that circulated throughout this time.  By the meter, they are written in a form of rhetoric, spoken to persuade the passer-by to read and feel remorse.  It has been suggested that some people even communicated with the stone.  “Who are you?” they may ask.  The inscribed epitaph would be your reply.  I want to end this article with this thought in mind; What is the purpose of ghost stories?  Do they exist as real testimony of witnesses who experience real ghosts and apparitions?  Or, do these stories exist to persuade the speaker and the audience of an unlikely outcome – that we can escape death?  Is it that people want to see spirits to believe in the perspective that there is no real end to life, like the names of this stele and the words inscribed in them we will live on as well?  That answer, I will leave until the second part of this article is complete.  I plan to write a follow-up article on modern ghost stories, and show how these various ideas developed and evolved through history, and how this evolution of these literary tropes and superstitions make it so easy to create imaginary hauntings today all over the world, and indeed how easy it is to exploit the victims of these delusions by con-men and women, as well as frauds.  I hope you enjoyed this article on ancient hauntings and ghost stories in antiquity.  Stay tuned.         

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[i] Richard Carrier, Spiritual Body, The Empty Tomb, (2005) Pg. 108-9

[ii] Ingrid Hjelm and ‘the Copenhagen school’ argue, persuasively in my opinion, that the Samaritans are not a sect of Jews nor were they Jews at all.  See: The Samaritans and Early Judaism, Copenhagen International Seminar 7 (SAP: Sheffield, 2000); idem, Jerusalem's Rise to Sovereignty: Zion and Gerizim in Competition, Copenhagen International Seminar 14 (T&T Clark: London, 2004); idem, "What do Samaritans and Jews Have in Common? Recent Trends in Samaritan Studies," Currents in Biblical Research 3,1 (2004), 9-59.

[iii] This case will be made in an upcoming book, but I feel the reason why this sect of Judaism, so prominent and vast according to attestation by several sources, even many secular sources, was not mentioned in the Gospel narratives is because the authors of these narratives were painting themselves as the better of the “big Three” (the Pharisees, Sadducees and Essenes).  I believe the Therapeutae discussed in Philo to be the Essenes as well, or at least a branch of Essenes.  There are too many similarities between the two sects to have been that separate. 

[iv] Although hagios it means “devoted to the Gods”, it can also mean “accursed”, leaving one to wonder if Matthew had intended it to be read with two meanings in mind.

[v] The angels generally play the rule of the good, minor deities in ancient Hebrew folklore.

[vi] ‘The land of Onias’ is the district of Leontopolis, and her reference to this area as belonging to Onias is a testament to her Jewish heritage.    

[vii] Around the turn of the first century CE.