Truemors
By Thomas Verenna
General Introduction to this Article
It’s not hard to get an eerie chill walking through the streets of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, passing by the many houses which were standing during the great battle there generations ago. The history of the small community, the blood that was spilt there, the emotions that raged in the streets and the farmland beyond, all inspire an empathy that is hard to ignore. For those of us interested in the details of the battle, the horrors of the day are easy to imagine, with a wish that they will never been seen again. And yet with this knowledge comes a fear, at least for some, that the horrors are being relived daily by spirits who will forever roam the town of Gettysburg and the hills surrounding it.
Gettysburg may just be the most haunted town in America; it is rumored to be the resting place of perhaps hundreds of ghosts. In every instance, they are of soldiers who died. Their souls forever planted where they were killed or suffered the most. It is said that they were but young men, barely adults, who spent great amounts of energy and died with much unfinished business to go with an unfinished life. Some say they haunt the area because they do not know they are dead. Others suggest that they were buried inadequately or their bodies still rest in shallow graves on the battlefield and desire their bodies to be sent home to their loved ones or family. Or in the case of one ghost, the Woman in White, it is rumored she ran off to the Spangler Springs to meet the man she loved, but he never showed and in her grief she took her own life, and now she haunts the springs in sorrow. Floors creak in old houses used for field hospitals after the battle and the apparitions of soldiers without limbs or doctors tending to patients can be seen in some of the basements and attics of the houses on Baltimore Street. The headless spirit of General Reynolds is said to roam the halls of Gettysburg College and the Theological Seminary, and one very quaint tourist photo center near Cemetery Ridge which once housed his corpse before being sent away from the battle. A phantom regiment of Union soldiers is said to drill and practice on the fields near Bloody Run and Devils Den. A drummer boy apparition has been seen looking innocent and cold in the Triangular Field.
These stories hold a very special place in the hearts of those who visit Gettysburg, because it brings the horrors of the battle to life again; it is an emotional reaction to the empathy they feel. But it does not end here. On any afternoon, watching the Discovery Channel can lend you dozens of stories of people moving into a home and finding out that it is haunted. These stories show patterns, usually first time buyers or buyers moving into a house they cannot fully afford. After a few weeks, maybe even immediately, odd things happen that defy explanations. These events cause more fear and as result the events get stranger. Religious or standard paranormal investigators come in, confirm the haunting, and decide a manner at which to cleanse the property. There is immediate relief after the cleansing, but soon the events start happening again. Do these stories have any scientific backing? No, of course they don’t. From somebody who has not only camped out on the Gettysburg battlefield countless times but has walked around in a Civil War uniform when reacting there, I have never encountered anything supernatural. I have only felt for the people who died or were wounded, and those who had to live their lives with the atrocities fresh in their minds. Perhaps the dead were the lucky ones and the living were the worse off. I do not believe these stories. But it is not because of my skepticism that I refuse to accept their genuine nature. Nor is it because of my atheism and my rejection of the belief in a soul. It is because these urban legends play a part in a larger cultural scheme; it is a cultural necessity that has reared its head for millennia and for very specific reasons.
The point I am trying to make evident in this discussion is that the ghost stories and possessions and hauntings in our modern era are little more than memes that have progressed and adapted to time. Today the word ‘demon’ makes us conjure up mental pictures of horned beasts that work for the Devil to possess or harm good, Christian people. But really a demon is no more ‘satanic’ than satyrs in both Roman and Jewish mythology (more on this below). A ghost or spirit come from classical Greek and later Roman imaginations, in that they were fashioned by intelligence and believed by the uncritical. They’re fictions that stem from the very human desire to tell a very scary story for a very edifying reason. In other words, these stories do not come about sui generis, that is, from memory of a real event. In fact, no stories come into existence ex nihilo, all are formed from experiences reading and hearing about other stories as our imagination works with images and sensations that we get from others and other experiences. These are fictional creations of the human mind, like all legends and tall tales, like Bloody Mary and the Woman in White, these stories reflect subconscious fears of adulthood, responsibility, of death, of life (in some cases), and of love or rejection. These narratives reflect our own emotional instability in a world which is often chaotic and unfair. Not all of the stories we’ll discuss will be edifying to everyone, mind you, however the intentions behind these stories often reflect fears and hopes inside all of us. This reason above all others is why ghost stories persist in so many cultures and so many languages yet somehow remain so similar. They reflect literary tropes and legendary development much in the same way religious literature also does. (But more on this point at the end of the article) I have broken up the stories into categories to better reflect the reasons for their telling and the development of the legends. Because I started this article with a discussion of Civil War ghosts, I will start with that trope first. Don’t worry; if you start getting scared, remember that these are only narratives. What lies behind the narratives, however, are the things worth being afraid of.
Ghost Soldiers
The trope of the soldier who desires a proper burial or has unfinished business can be found first in the written works of Homer. In Homer’s 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 a shocked Odysseus. His shock comes from his friendship with Elpenor; Odysseus did not know of his friends passing and this upset him. Elpenor is questioned about his death and he gives Odysseus his sad story. Apparently Elpenor had fallen from the roof of a building to his death while inebriated. This is a tragedy for a soldier who yearns to die in combat, not far away from combat at the whim of an accident. His death is troubling, but more so is his desire for a proper burial. (Ody. 10.550-565, 12.8-15) Elpenor pleads with Odysseus to fulfill his wish, as without a proper burial he cannot enter the underworld and be at peace:
“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. The sorrow felt by Elpenor is of his brotherhood with those who he fought with and rowed with against Troy. He would forever haunt the land if he could not be buried; he would fall into unrest and people would forget his name. The reasons for which he fought and died would fall into oblivion and to a soldier is a fate worse than death. To die and be remembered, per this story, is honorable.
This story was not invented whole cloth, however. It mimics another story found in the Iliad, where it is not Odysseus who is haunted but Achilles. Achilles finds himself in sorrow at the death of his friend Patroclus. He has slain Hector in revenge, had vowed to give Patroclus the proper burial once Hector had been killed. But in his vengeance he had forgotten why he was fighting. To remind him, a ghastly Patroclus visits Achilles in his sleep:
“…than the ghost of stricken Patroclus drifted up…he was like the man to the life, every feature, the same tall build and the fine eyes and voice and the very robes that used to clothe his body, Hovering at his head the phantom rose and spoke: ‘Sleeping, Achilles? You’ve forgotten me, my friend. You never neglected me in life, only now in death. Bury me, quickly—let me pass the Gates of Hades. They hold me off at a distance, all the souls, the shades of the burnt-out, breathless dead, never to let me cross the river, mingle with them…they leave me to wander up and down, abandoned, lost at the House of Death with the all-embracing gates. Oh give me your hand—I beg you with my tears! Never, never again shall I return from Hades once you have given me the soothing rites of fire. Never again will you and I, alive and breathing, huddle side-by-side, apart from loyal comrades, making plans together—never…Grim death, the death assigned from the day I was born has spread its hateful jaws to take me down….’” (Il. 23.70-90)
Achilles says he will obey the wishes of his friend, reaches out to hug him, but the elusive spirit lets out a wail and falls beneath the earth. Homer reminds us that we have forgotten the dead, neglected, ignored, their sacrifices become for naught. Like Achilles, like Odysseus, we should not forget that we buried the fallen heroes who died, per Homer, at the will of fate, who will likewise determine our own deaths. This trope touches also upon the fears of our own mortality, how easy life goes on with our passing. Homer’s remembrance of the dead is really a call to us to recognize our fears of being forgotten. The world will continue on past the day that marks our ends, but to not be forgotten is a hope we all have—that is true immortality. This trope is very popular in epic fictions in antiquity, particularly among Romans and Greeks. The same trope is found in modern ghost stories about those soldiers in the Civil War who died, unknown, buried in unmarked graves improperly resting. The tale of the Ghosts who haunt the battlefield, forever tormented to stay where they died. The trope of the fallen soldier haunts all sorts of literature.
The Trope of a Haunted (House, Person, or Otherwise)
The haunted house trope is one that is universally similar no matter what century you live in. To make this case more specific, I can draw on two instances where the same haunted house story was told, around the same time, by two different Roman writers with only subtle differences and one major difference. The subtle differences are in the details; who bought the house and how they handled the ghost are changed between the stories. The major difference is how the story is taken by the author. In the case of the first author, Pliny the Younger, he suggests to his letter’s recipients that he believes in ghosts and particularly in this story. He then goes on to tell the story in his letter.
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 the estate. Athenodorus marked the spot where the spirit rested, and the next day Athenodorus ordered the land owners to dig up the spot. When the spot was cleared of a few layers of dirt, 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.
The second instance this story is told, it is done so by Lucian of Samosata, who satires it. (I do not believe Lucian had access to Pliny’s letters, but rather Lucian and Pliny may both be recounting another, now lost, story from some other author in antiquity) Lucian does not believe in ghosts, supernatural occurrences, and is thus a man after my own heart. But his manner in telling the story is through the words of a superstitious man who does believe in ghosts (although the man is a fictional character). To give the reader who may not be familiar with the primary source some background, Lucian’s story involves the very rational Tychiades, a man who detests those who believe in Ghost stories and fanciful tales, and his young friend Philocles, to whom Tychiades asks the question “why is it that so many people are fond of telling lies?” Tychiades goes on to show disdain for even Homer and Herodotus for inventing stories, calling them “lovers of lies” (Philopseudes, where the satire gets its name). He then goes on to recount a discussion he has had recently with one such lover of lies, a man named Eucrates. It starts out with only a discussion between Eucrates and Tychiades, but others make an appearance, including the philosopher Arignotos. This is where Lucian retells this story about a haunted house:
“Well,” he said, “if you ever go to Corinth, ask where the house of Eubatides is, and when it is pointed out to you beside the Cornel Grove, go there and tell the door-keep Tibeios that you wish to see where the Pythagorean Arignotos bested the spirit (daimon) and made the house habitable from then on…the house was uninhabitable for a long time…because of a terrifying phenomena, and any person who tried to live there soon fled, panic-stricken, pursued by some fearful and menacing phantom. So the house was starting to collapse, and the roof was falling in, and in short there was no one brave enough to enter it.
“When I heard this, I gathered up my books—for I have quite a few Egyptian books about this very subject—and went to the house at the hour when people usually go to sleep. My host tried to turn me back, and all but physically restrained me when he learned where I was going—to face a known evil, he thought. I went n alone, taking a lamp, and put the lamp down in the largest room. Sitting on the ground, I was reading peacefully, when the spirit (daimon) appeared, thinking he was approaching just any man, and hoping to frighten me just as he had the others. He was filthy and long-haired and blacker than darkness itself. Standing over me, he made an attempt on me, attacking from all sides to see if he could conquer me, changing himself now into a dog, now into a bull or lion. But I had ready the most horrible Egyptian curse, and speaking in the Egyptian tongue I drove him away and bound him in a corner of a dark room. Observing where he sank down, I rested for what was left of the night.
“Early in the morning, when everyone had given up hope and expected to find a corpse like the others, I came out entirely unexpected, and went to Eubatides with the good news that he could live once more in the house, which was now purified and freed from fear. Then, taking him and many others—they followed along because the incident was so marvelous—I led them to the place where I had seen the spirit (daimon) sink into the earth, and I urged them to dig with hoes and shovels. Doing this, they found, buried nearly six feet down, a rotting corpse, with only bones remaining in order. After we dug it up and buried it, the house from then on ceased to be troubled by phantoms.” (Philopseudes 30-31)
Although both stories have differences, the similarities are impossible to refute, even in the details. That the philosopher in Pliny’s tale and the philosopher in Lucian’s story both dig up a corpse and release a restless spirit is telling of the literary trope from Homer discussed above. The concept of a spirit who needs to be buried properly before it can rest is something that transcends time when it comes to ghost stories.
But there is a darker, more practical reason why these types of hauntings occur. Haunted houses speak of our fear of new places, of change, facing new challenges and new stress. But ultimately, even though the hauntings are nothing but projections of these new fears, the trope often imagined is the same one found in Homer’s tale and those above. The ghosts who do the haunting are the representations of those whose life had ended leaving behind unfinished business or they are stuck at a location because they died there and perhaps are still improperly buried there. In many instances with haunted houses or even haunted people, doing some form of a ritual seems to “cure” the haunting, for a short while at least. Much in the same way that Arignotos speaks a curse at the spirit and “confined it,” a modern day priest or pastor may “bless” a home and make the person experiencing the haunting feel more at ease. The ritual is nothing supernatural. In some cases, lighting candles or burning sage, speaking a few words, placing flowers at locations, these very natural rituals are not removing the ghosts or putting dead souls to rest. The actuality of the ritual reflects something more psychological. Just like attending church on Sunday and singing in the choir may be a ritual which inspires people to feel the “touch of God” in their lives, rituals for curing hauntings are no different. They are therapeutic. The person is invested too emotionally in fear, which is why people imagine hauntings. Fear spreads like butter over bread in a house hold, its all empathetically felt between the family members which is often why you see whole families experiencing hauntings and not one particular person (yet everyone experiences the haunting in different ways under different circumstances). The ritual of a cleansing calms the fears of a person. (You often will hear people say they felt a “calm” come over the house, as if a weight had been “lifted”) The cleansing only helps in the short term specifically because stress will always reemerge and come back, as that is the way of life. Thus the hauntings continue.
In antiquity, another type of haunting occurs, where specifically people are visited by spirits who they knew who have unfinished business. This occurs in two ways: (1) Ghosts who are uncomfortable in the afterlife who require something and (2) those Ghosts which return from the dead to warn their loved one of either good fortune or impending doom (perhaps both). The latter will be covered in the next section, while the former applies to this one. Specifically where a spirit returns and their unfinished business is causing their unrest and why they are haunting places.
Several stories survive from antiquity and the trope itself is also alive and well. One semifamous incident can be found in Herodotus, where the tyrant of Corinth, Periander, in hopes of learning about a deposit a friend had given. He inquires of an oracle to bring up his wife to learn about this. The story is recounted below:
“Periander, however, understood what had been done, and perceived that Thrasybulus had counseled him to slay those of his townsmen who were outstanding in influence or ability; with that he began to deal with his citizens in an evil manner. Whatever act of slaughter or banishment Cypselus had left undone, that Periander brought to accomplishment. In a single day he stripped all the women of Corinth naked, because of his own wife Melissa. Periander had sent messengers to the Oracle of the Dead on the river Acheron in Thesprotia to enquire concerning a deposit that a friend had left, but Melissa, in an apparition, said that she would tell him nothing, nor reveal where the deposit lay, for she was cold and naked. The garments, she said, with which Periander had buried with her had never been burnt, and were of no use to her. Then, as evidence for her husband that she spoke the truth, she added that Periander had put his loaves into a cold oven. When this message was brought back to Periander (for he had had intercourse with the dead body of Melissa and knew her token for true), immediately after the message he made a proclamation that all the Corinthian women should come out into the temple of Hera. They then came out as to a festival, wearing their most beautiful garments, and Periander set his guards there and stripped them all alike, ladies and serving-women, and heaped all the clothes in a pit, where, as he prayed to Melissa, he burnt them. When he had done this and sent a second message, the ghost of Melissa told him where the deposit of the friend had been laid.” (Herodotus, Histories 5.92g)
As it has been pointed out accurately, this story is clearly a fiction as well. It was invented by Herodotus as a means of explaining the tyranny of Periander, his cruelness and monstrous manners. Remember we’re not just discussing ghost stories in antiquity, but how they were imitated and used as models for other ghost stories in antiquity. This mimetic practice is not lost here on Herodotus who is recalling the Homeric trope of the improper burial. Likewise, this ghost story continues to churn and is later satired by Lucian in a manner that is reflexive of Homer’s burial trope as well. Once more we turn to his Philopseudes, where Eucrates recounts a similar tale as if it happened to him. In his story, it is his own wife who returns from the grave. While he is reading Plato’s Phaedo (ironic), lying on his couch, seven days after the death of his wife, her apparition appeared to him and sat down next to him. She was mad at him (in Lucian’s words, she “rebuked” Eucrates) for only burning one of her sandals with her favorite clothes. Here, the sandal had fallen behind a piece of furniture and when Eucrates could not find it and burned only one of her sandals. She vanishes in thin air as a dog runs into the room and barks at her. After which Eucrates takes the sandal and burns it soon after. Unlike the ghost stories of Homer and Virgil, the ghost of Eucrates wife Demainete has solid mass, as Eucrates can hug her and hold her whereas most ghost stories have people grasping at air.
The Ghost of Impending Doom or Good Fortune
The second type of haunting, where a spirit or apparition appear to a character in ancient literature, are those which involve spirits of fortune. This trope seems to be popular cross-culturally in antiquity. Even the Jewish authors of the Hebrew Bible decided to include a scene where this occurs (Although, this scene could likewise fit into “Possessions” as well).
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.” Many may recognize parts of this story from the story of Periander who, likewise, uses a soothsayer to conjure up a spirit through them. This was probably a very popular superstition in antiquity.
Another sort of fortune telling ghost can be found in Euripides’ play Hecuba. The ghost of Priam’s son Polydorus, butchered at the hands of false friends, goes to his mother in a dream, recounting to her the horrors that are to befall her.
“Disembodied now, I hover as a wraith over my mother’s head, riding for three long days upon the air, three hopeless days of suffering and fear since she left Troy and came to Chersonese. Here on the shore of Thrace, in sullen idleness beside its ships, the whole Achaean army waits and cannot sail. For Achilles’ ghost appeared, stalking on his tomb, wailing, and stopped the ships as they stood out for sea on the journey home. He demanded my sister Polyxena as a prize, the blood of the living to sweeten a dead man’s grave….On this day destiny shall take my sister down to death. Ah you, poor mother, you must see your two last children dead this day, my sister slaughtered and my unburied body washed up on shore at the feet of a slave. These were the favors I asked of the gods below—to find my mother and be buried by her hands—and they have granted my request. Now I go, for there below I see my mother coming, stumbling from Agamemnon’s tent, still shaken by that dream in which she saw my ghost.” (Euripides, Hecuba 30-54)
This scene contains several ghost story tropes (Achilles’ ghost is a longing fallen soldier, Polydorus’ ghost was not buried) but ultimately it is Polydorus’ fortune telling that will win the day. He comes to his mother and tells her the sad news, who then must cope with the realization that this is what will come to pass.
The Romans shared the Greek aspect of this trope. Virgil, in his Aeneid, recounts the story of Sychaeus and Pygmalion. In the story, Pygmalion and Sychaeus hated each other, pitted against themselves in a feud. One day, Pygmalion, so lusting with greed and hatred, ran Sychaeus through and stabbed him at an altar. He hid the body away, lying to his enemy’s wife, Dido. It was in her sorrow, one night, that “the true ghost of her husband, not yet buried, came and lifted his face—ashen, awesome in death—showed her the cruel altar, the wounds that pierced his chest and exposed the secret horror that lurked within the house.” The showing of wounds is interesting, as it a trope found in Homer’s Odyssey, where Odysseus shows his father Laertes his scars so his father recognizes him. (It is also a trope used by the Gospel authors) It is interesting as it is more evidence of Virgil’s interest in Homer as a model, once more alluding to a ghost who is not properly buried.
In a letter to his friend Sura, Pliny the Younger recounts several events that leads him to believe in Ghosts (including the one case of the haunted house discussed in the last section), and he questions if his friend does also, leading him to a story about a fortune telling ghost:
“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 honors 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, 83)
Today, modern fortune telling ghosts are mostly used by con artists pretending to be able to speak with the dead to determine peoples’ futures. But at times, these stories do pop up from time to time in modern hauntings. The sociological nature of hauntings in this case is not far from the religious belief in predeterminism and having a set fate that God has set. The ghosts’ in the story of the Greeks often recount fates that were predetermined and likewise ghosts of modern hauntings of this sort also reflect this state of being, where the ghost is acquainted with Gods plans through death. Really this is a reflection of our own desires of greatness and fears of failure. Often times the predictions of spirits in modern hauntings are hindsight, vague and interpreted whimsically. Such is the case with religious predictions of the future as well, where everyone seeks the inevitable concern for life’s meaning.
Possessions and Demons in Antiquity
It is probably hard for Christians who will inevitably read my blog to understand that Demons, as they are known today, are really little more than bastardized, Christianized interpretations of much more benign entities with different aspirations. While demons today are often thought of as minions of Satan (lit. “slanderous”) whose goal it is to possess virgins, pious people, or men and women who live in trailer parks and backwater towns (the same folk who are also victimized by alien abductions) for the soul reason (pun intended) to stealing away people’s faith, the Demons in antiquity represented two main types of entities. The first group were lesser gods, native gods (like those patriarchal or matriarchal gods of specific areas), or natural/elemental gods (like those of the sea, the air, wind, fire…etc…). The second category that demons fell into happens to be fell spirits. In many ways, these two categories are not so dissimilar. The nature of the world in antiquity through the eyes of men living in these eras was one of predeterministic hell. 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) The world was entangled in dualism, battles of continuous good versus evil. But in the end, all fate was determined and whether a wayward demon sought to make your life miserable was the way of things. All one could do was cope with it. Or so those in antiquity thought. Several stories of possession and life disruption at the hands of demons have been recorded and passed down in literary traditions (once again these are only literary tropes and not any sort of historical recorded events).
This also includes Jewish fiction, particularly Tobit comes to mind. The background of the story is thus; 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 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 cannot do this to her father, and prays to God instead. That mysterious figure traveling with Tobias is actually the angel Raphael, who hears her prayer as God does, and sets out to make both Tobias’ and Sarah’s wishes come true. By the time the narrative ends, Raphael will have to cure Tobit’s ailment, help Tobias obtain the treasure his father sent him to find, and marry both Sarah and Tobias. Raphael, the power that he is, determines the best way to fix the solution is to go fishing (seriously). But they caught 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 found each other very attractive (in the vein of a Greek romance novel). The father grants Tobias the rights to marry his daughter according to the laws of Moses. Sarah cries, because she is afraid for Tobias’ life, but Tobias has been instructed by his mysterious companion to burn the liver of the fish. Tobias complies. The smell of the burning magical liver exorcises the demon from the bedchamber. Raphael follows the demon and “at once bound him…hand and foot.” But does not slay him (who knows why). This story utilizes two motifs; dualism and hauntings. Both Tobias and Sarah are “haunted,” but the good demon (Raphael) must overcome the evil (Asmodeus the daimonios).
The demons in antiquity were sometimes evil like they are in Tobit, but other times were helpful. Socrates, for example, had often recounted that his demons were what gave him the ability to think outside the norm. ‘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.
Today, this same urban legend has inspired many types of evangelical socio-cultural reactions. Preachers charge a yearly sum to cure people of their possessions and priests are often called to homes to cleanse a youthful teen going through normal life changes (which their parents perhaps don’t understand, or the teen will use possession as an excuse to avoid punishment, etc…) through a process of speaking a magic verse (blessings) not at all different from Arignotos’ Egyptian spell exorcizing the spirit of the dirty old man. Just as today, people dream of a world where good and evil rage on terrestrial battlefields but really this is nothing more than our own projections of our inner dualism. Our own fights between right and wrong in our lives are projected outward and manifest in our imaginations. In one particular case, an evangelical once told me he was possessed by a demon that made him want to be gay. This instance is just an example of how our judgments of right and wrong influence our understanding of the so-called spiritual elements in our lives. Was there an entity possessing this evangelical who was trying to force him to be gay? No. But there was a “demon,” and that demon is the guilt that this particular evangelical feels at wanting to be gay while knowing it goes against his religious belief that what he desires naturally is ‘wrong.’
Conclusions
Ghost stories are a means of our expressions of self. Souls, although they do not have an actual existence, do represent our own existences. This is why we envision souls as the images of the dead, because we assume our essence to be an entity of its own. We express our ghosts outward, as a projection of what is inward. We desire to be treated with respect, even in death, and many of these stories reflect this desire, as well as the fear that comes from the ignorance of what happens after. We hate to feel alone, so when we are alone we invent reasons to continue being afraid of it. We are not comfortable with change, so when change happens we rationalize it in all sorts of crazy ways. Sometimes we feel guilt and handle that guilt by blaming it on something that has no substance. Ghost stories persist because we do. But if man were to fall from the face of the world, no ghosts would exist because the concept would vanish along with us. This is telling of our nature. It is also indicative of our desire to live. Certainly these stories helped the ancients in coping with the questions they had no means to answer. Today, these same stories help many cope with their own ignorance. But are these stories useful or hurtful? I tend to lean towards hurtful; it does not help that there are clearly people alive to use the fiction of the wandering dead to take advantage of the living. And there is no doubt in my mind that these stories will continue to be the foundation of more stories in the future. A person does not even have to have read Herodotus or Homer to know of the trope, and that is just how powerful fiction is. But we must all remember we are talking about fictions. After all, that evangelical is hurting himself by not recognizing the folly of his guilt by not accepting his own natural desires.
More importantly, we should recognize where these traditions stem from, as so many of our modern fictions come from antiquity. For a full range of modern ghost stories and hauntings, this website keeps a rather large eyewitness catalog of them.
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