Ghosts

A Haunted History

Lisa Morton

• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781780235370
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire du monde

From that cheerful puff of smoke known as Casper to the hunkiest potter living or dead, Sam Wheat, there is probably no more iconic entity in supernatural history than the ghost. And these are just recent examples. From the earliest writings such as the Epic of Gilgamesh to today's ghost-hunting reality TV shows, ghosts have chilled the air of nearly every era and every culture in human history. In this book, Lisa Morton uses her scholarly prowess—more powerful than any proton pack—to wrangle together history's most enduring ghosts into an entertaining and comprehensive look at what otherwise seems to always evade our eyes.Tracing the ghost's constantly shifting contours, Morton asks the most direct question—What exactly is a ghost?—and examines related entities such as poltergeists, wraiths, and revenants. She asks how a ghost is related to a soul, and she outlines all the different kinds of ghosts there are. To do so, she visits the spirits of the classical world, including the five-part Egyptian soul and the first haunted-house, conceived in the Roman playwright Plautus's comedy, Mostellaria. She confronts us with the frightening phantoms of the Middle Ages—who could incinerate priests and devour children—and reminds us of the nineteenth-century rise of Spiritualism, a religion essentially devoted to ghosts. She visits with the Indian bhuta and goes to the Hungry Ghost Festival in China, and of course she spends time in Mexico, where ghosts have a particularly strong grip on belief and culture. Along the way she gathers the ectoplasmic residues seeping from books and film reels, from the Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto to the 2007 blockbuster Paranormal Activity, from the stories of Ann Radcliffe to those of Stephen King.Wide-ranging, informative, and slicked with over fifty unearthly images, Ghosts is an entertaining read of a cultural phenomenon that will delight anyone, whether they believe in ghosts or not.

1

What Are (and Are Not) Ghosts?

When we hear the word ‘ghost’, most of us immediately think of something barely glimpsed or translucent, the spirit of someone who has died. If we give it a few more seconds of consideration, we might imagine a fearful event in a dark, isolated place, or perhaps even a frightening story we have read or a film we have seen.

However, despite certain culturally shared notions, defining a ‘ghost’ is not a simple undertaking. In our contemporary, Western thinking, the ghost is the spirit of a deceased individual that manifests itself to us after their death; but in the past, and in other cultures, the ghost may be very different. Belief in ghosts seems to be nearly universal, but the shape the undead spirit takes varies according to the particular society’s collective imagination.

Even in our own Western European tradition, the very word ‘ghost’ has altered in both meaning and form over the last five or so centuries. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word was originally derived from the German word gást, which in turn evolved out of the pre-Teutonic gaisto-z or ghoizdo-z, meaning ‘fury, anger’; until about 1590 ‘ghost’ referred to the essence of life, rather than the survival after death. This original meaning survives in the phrase ‘give up the ghost’, which dates back to at least 1388, when a translation of Matthew 27: 50 stated: ‘Jhesus eftsoone criede with a greet voyce and gaf vp the goost.’ This use of the word also survives in the name ‘Holy Ghost’, the third part of the Christian Trinity. The Holy Ghost probably has its roots in the Hebrew ruah ha-qodesh; ruah originally meant ‘breath’ or ‘wind’, and ruah ha-qodesh was the holy breath of God that inspired human beings.¹ The fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible rendered this as spiritus sanctus, with spiritus again referring to ‘breath’ or ‘wind’, and by the time of Middle English, the phrase had become holi gost.

The use of ‘ghost’ to refer to a dead spirit that appears to the living first became popular about the time of Geoffrey Chaucer, who in ‘Dido, Queen of Carthage’ (part III of The Legend of Good Women, c. 1385) refers to ‘This night my fadres gost hath in my sleep so sore me tormented.’ When Shakespeare wrote Hamlet (some time between 1599 and 1602), the modern meaning was sufficiently established for a ghost to be included as a major character in the play, complete with the vengeful purpose now frequently ascribed to ghosts. In his poem ‘Venus and Adonis’, Shakespeare also imbues ghosts with the modern qualities of fear and omens:

Look, how the world’s poor people are amazed

At apparitions, signs and prodigies,

Whereon with fearful eyes they long have gazed,

Infusing them with dreadful prophecies.

In this same poem, Death is described as a ‘grim-grinning ghost’, a phrase that would later become the title of the theme music to Disneyland’s famous ghost ride, the Haunted Mansion.

Shakespeare also provides the word as a verb, when, in Antony and Cleopatra (II.6), Pompey refers to Julius Caesar ‘who at Philippi he good Brutus ghosted’. In the military, the use of ‘ghost’ as a verb is applied to a soldier who avoids duty, and in modern British slang, to ‘ghost’ is to move prisoners at night.²

The word has also been twisted into new nouns, manifesting as ‘ghostess’ and ‘ghostlet’, to describe (respectively) a female ghost and a small ghost. Other uses of the word have referred simply to a corpse, to a photograph, to something that lacks force (as in ‘he doesn’t stand the ghost of a chance’) or to someone who secretly performs the work of another (a ‘ghostwriter’). In addition, the word has lent itself to wry slang usage. In the theatre world, for instance, ‘the ghost walks’ means that salary will finally be forthcoming to cast and crew. ‘Ghost turds’ are ‘accumulations of lint found under furniture’.³

Hamlet sees his father’s ghost on the battlements. Illustration by Robert Dudley, published as a chromolithograph, 1856–8.

What about the concept behind the word? If a ghost is the spirit of a dead person, how does that differ from a soul? ‘Soul’ is today synonymous with the original meaning of ‘ghost’ – the essential life force of a human being. Whereas ‘ghost’ has come to refer to that essence after death, most religions believe that a soul is possessed by all living persons, and that the soul survives in some form after death. Where ‘soul’ and ‘ghost’ deviate most, however, is in the interaction with the living: a ghost must be seen, heard or otherwise experienced in a tangible way by the living.

When seen, ghosts are typically described as translucent or dim; they cannot be grasped, although a mortal unlucky enough to encounter one may experience being touched, feeling suddenly cold or smelling a particular scent that meant something to the ghost when alive. A ghostly visitor who was subjected to a gruesome ending may or may not show signs of that bloody demise. The form of the ghost may even shift as it is viewed; in ancient cultures, some spirits suddenly took on animal forms. Occasionally the ghost may appear so solid that it is initially indistinguishable from a human being.

Ghosts need not be confined to the spirits of deceased persons, however: ghost animals are also prevalent in many cultures. In Britain, for example, ghostly hounds are common and accompany a spectral huntsman sometimes named Gabriel Ratchets or Herne the Hunter. Although some who encountered this terrifying pack believed them to be diabolical in nature, rather than ghostly, there were other notions surrounding them, as well: ‘In the neighbourhood of Leeds these hounds are known as “Gabble Ratchets”, and are supposed, as in other places, to be the souls of unbaptized children who flit restlessly about their parents’ abode.’⁴ In Cornwall, an old folk belief held that any girl who died after being heart-broken by a deceitful man would return as a white hare to haunt her beloved. This white hare would invariably cause the man’s death.

The world’s religions treat ghosts in a variety of ways. Judaism and Christianity take a dim view, as outlined in the story of Saul and the Witch (or Medium) of Endor. After the death of the leader and prophet Samuel, Saul (the king of Israel) bans all mediums. However, when the army of the Philistines assembles against him and he receives no direction from God, Saul disguises himself and seeks out the Witch of Endor. She recognizes him and initially suspects a trap, but Saul swears that he only seeks advice from the spirit of Samuel, and assures her safety. She brings forth the spirit, who admonishes Saul for going against the word of God, and warns him of a great defeat in the battle against the Philistines.

George Cruikshank, Herne the Huntsman, 19th-century engraving.

Ghosts often imparted equally dour news in older religions, as well. In Book XI of Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses sacrifices sheep to gain access to the ghost of Tiresias, a great prophet. The ‘shades’ arrive making terrible screaming sounds, drink the blood of the sheep, talk about the darkness of the underworld and foretell great misfortune for the rest of Ulysses’ journey. And in the Sumerian tale ‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Nether World’ (dating from about 2000 BCE), the ghost of Gilgamesh’s friend Enkidu returns to warn the great hero that any description of the afterlife would make him ‘sit down and weep’.⁵

Where do ghosts and deities intersect? In the first volume of his Principles of Sociology, the famed nineteenth-century philosopher and polymath Herbert Spencer suggested that ‘deities are the expanded ghosts of dead men.’⁶ Ghosts may also be synonymous with demons, as in the western Indian belief in the bhūta, a demon that is the spirit of someone who was malicious in life, which may cause harm in death by possessing the living, creating storms or causing disease.

Is a dead spirit encountered in a dream a ghost? Seeing a dead loved one in a dream dates as far back as Homer’s Iliad, in which the hero, Achilles, is visited in his sleep by his beloved friend Patroclus, who pleads for a proper burial and for vengeance. In contemporary culture, psychologists refer to these as ‘visitation dreams’, and suggest that ‘the dreams we have while grieving are an important part of that process.’⁷ Similarly, what of spirits who might be glimpsed while the viewer is in an extreme mental state, such as religious ecstasy? During the Middle Ages, Christian mystics often wrote of speaking with the dead while experiencing ecstatic states. The thirteenth-century nun Gertrude of Helfta, for example, described meeting deceased sisters of the cloth, lay brothers and even a knight during her extensive and excruciating physical suffering (which was caused by various diseases). The apparitions encountered in dreams and visions operate much like their more earthbound cousins in some respects, by delivering warnings or prophecies, but differ greatly in others: they seldom arouse fear, and they are experienced by only one person, usually only a single time. Given that these spirits serve a more obvious psychological function and cannot be encountered by more than one individual, for the purposes of this book they will be considered as outside the realm of true ghosts.

After Henry Fuseli, Achilles Grasping for the Shade of Patroclus, 1806, engraving.

If a ghost is essentially a soul that returns to mortal existence and is experienced in some fully wakeful way by the living, is a ghost different from a phantom, an apparition, a spirit or a spectre? In fact, these words are all essentially synonyms for ‘ghost’. ‘Wraith’, however, is one of the more curious alternative words; although it is often used interchangeably with ‘ghost’, a wraith is technically the spirit of someone who is still alive. In Scottish folklore, a wraith (or ‘fetch’) may appear to warn a loved one or friend; at other times, the wraith is seen at the very moment of its owner’s death. In one of the best-known fetch tales, the Earl of Cornwall has a strange encounter with his good friend William Rufus while hunting in a forest:

He advanced beyond the shades of the woods on to the moors above them, and he was surprised to see a very large black goat advancing over the plain. As it approached him, which it did rapidly, he saw that it bore on its back ‘King Rufus’, all black and naked, and wounded through in the midst of his breast. Robert adjured the goat, in the name of the Holy Trinity, to tell what it was he carried so strangely. He answered, ‘I am carrying your king to judgment; yea, that tyrant William Rufus, for I am an evil spirit, and the revenger of that malice which he bore to the Church of God …’. Having so spoken, the spectre vanished. Robert, the earl, related the circumstance to his followers, and they shortly after learned that at that very hour William Rufus had been slain.⁸

Although the word ‘revenant’ is sometimes used for ‘ghost’, revenant more accurately refers to a dead person who returns in a physical body. A revenant is usually tied to violence – a victim who reanimates to continue a cycle of murder and terror. In his tale The Devil’s Elixir (1815), E.T.A. Hoffmann assigns the revenant the character of the supernaturally lost: ‘I was like a condemned spirit – like a revenant, doomed involuntarily to wander on the earth.’⁹ When the revenant returned in corporeal form to feed on the blood of the living, it was a vampire.

Ghosts also have curious ties to other supernatural entities. The Babylonian edimmu is usually thought to be a ghost, but it also appears in lists of demons that afflict human beings. The second-century CE writer Apuleius, in The God of Socrates, refers to ghosts as demons, and even goes so far as to suggest that good souls can produce good demons. The early Christian writer Tertullian wrote in about 200 CE of ‘the deceit perpetrated by evil spirits that conceal themselves in the characters of the dead’.¹⁰ And in Chinese, the word gui refers to both dead and divine spirits. While ghosts are clearly separated from such creatures as vampires – because the latter continue in physical form after death – in some mythologies it is less clear where ghosts end and demons or gods begin.

The European monster known as the gello aptly demonstrates the confusion that sometimes surrounds the ghostly and the demonic. First appearing in a poetry fragment by Sappho, the gello was a creature that was thought to murder infants and small children by sucking their blood. A human being might become a gello after death, gaining demonic qualities even while retaining human distinctions such as gender (demons are believed to be sexless). The debate over the nature of the gello ignited controversy among eighth-century Christian theologians, who extended belief in the creature to belief in the spiritual nature of Jesus. Even though the Church’s official position was to deny the existence of the gello, infant-murdering spirits called gelloudes are ...