The World’s Oldest Ghosts: Hauntings in Ancient Rome and Babylon
While we often associate ghost stories with the 18th and 19th centuries, humans have been telling tales of hauntings for far, far longer. So where can we find evidence of the world’s oldest known ghost stories and hauntings?
The Oldest Recorded Haunting
The oldest ghost story currently known was recorded by Roman politician and writer, Pliny the Younger in the 1st century AD. The story comes from Pliny’s Epistulae, or “Letters”, which is an incredibly important piece of written history that provides a detailed glimpse into the everyday lives of the Roman people from 2000 years ago. The Letters were split into 10 separate books, with the first 9 being prepared for publication by Pliny the Younger. Our ghost story can be found in Letter 27 of Book 7 and was written to Roman senator Lucius Licinius Sura.
In the beginning of the Letter, Pliny the Younger asks Sura, “I am extremely desirous therefore to know your sentiments concerning spectres, whether you believe they actually exist and have their own proper shapes and a measure of divinity, or are only the false impressions of a terrified imagination?” This question is interesting as it shows the same level of skepticism that many have about ghosts today.
Pliny the Younger follows his enquiry with his first ghost story, which he feels has swayed him into possibly believing that ghosts exist:
What particularly inclines me to give credit to their existence, is a story a which I heard of Curtius Rufus. When he was in low circumstances and unknown in the world, he attended the newly made governor of Africa into that province. One afternoon as he was walking in the public portico he was extremely daunted with the figure of a woman which appeared to him, of a size and beauty more than human. She told him she was the tutelar Genius that presided over Africa, and was come to inform him of the future events of his life: that he should go back to Rome, where he should hold office, and return to that province invested with the proconsular dignity, and there should die.
Every circumstance of this prophecy was actually accomplished. It is said farther, that upon his arrival at Carthage, as he was coming out of the ship, the same figure accosted him upon the shore. It is certain, at least, that being seized with a fit of illness, though there were no symptoms in his case that led his attendants to despair, he instantly gave up all hope of recovery; judging, it should seem, of the truth of the future part of the prediction, by that which had already been fulfilled; and of the misfortune which threatened him, by the success which he had experienced.
Epistulae, Book 7, Letter 27
This first story focuses on a prophecy delivered to Curtius Rufus by an unearthly woman while travelling in Africa. Pliny the Younger sees the fulfilment of the prophecy provided to Rufus by the unknown woman as an intriguing example of how ghosts might be real.
The second story as told by Pliny the Younger in Epistulae is not only one of the earliest recorded ghost stories, but also the earliest recorded instance of a haunted house:
To this story, let me add another as remarkable as the former, but attended with circumstances of greater horror; which I will give you exactly as it was related to me. There was at Athens a large and spacious, but ill reputed and pestilential house. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of fetters; at first it seemed at a distance, but approached nearer by degrees; immediately afterward a phantom appeared in the form of an old man, extremely meagre and squalid, with a long beard and bristling hair; rattling the gyves on his feet and hands.
The poor inhabitants consequently passed sleepless nights under the most dismal terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, threw them into distempers, which, as their horrors of mind increased, proved in the end fatal to their lives. For even in the day time, though the spectre did not appear, yet the remembrance of it made such a strong impression on their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and their terror remained when the cause of it was gone. By this means the house was at last deserted, as being judged by everybody to be absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this great calamity which attended it, a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold.
It happened that Athenodorus the philosopher came to Athens at this time, and reading the bill ascertained the price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicion; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged, that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew towards evening, he ordered a couch to be prepared for him in the fore part of the house, and after calling for a light, together with his pen and tablets, he directed all his people to retire within. But that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and apparitions, he applied himself to writing with all his faculties. The first part of the night passed with usual silence, then began the clanking of iron fetters; however, he neither lifted up his eyes, nor laid down his pen, but closed his ears by concentrating his attention. The noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked round and saw the apparition exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before him, beckoning with the finger.
Athenodorus made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and bent again to his writing, but the ghost rattling its chains over his head as he wrote, he looked round and saw it beckoning as before. Upon this he immediately took up his lamp and followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with its chains; and having turned into the courtyard of the house, suddenly vanished. Athenodorus being thus deserted, marked the spot with a handful of grass and leaves. The next day he went to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot to be dug up. There they found bones commingled and intertwined with chains; for the body had mouldered away by long Iying in the ground, leaving them bare, and corroded by the fetters. The bones were collected, and buried at the public expense; and after the ghost was thus duly laid the house was haunted no more.
Epistulae, Book 7, Letter 27
This account has the blueprints for nearly every haunted house tale ever written: a family is driven from their home by a ghost, the house sits desolate for an unspecified time until a curious buyer comes along and rents the home, eventually discovering the key to freeing the spirit and rendering the house liveable once more. Pliny the Younger’s tale, despite being written 2000 years ago, would fit into the modern horror zeitgeist with ease. I actually think it would be quite successful if someone was ambitious enough to make a movie about a ghost in Ancient Athens. I’d certainly be first in line to see it!
The third ghost story Pliny the Elder relays to Sura tells of two alleged witnesses that had physical encounters with an aggressive ghost:
This story I believe upon the affirmation of others; I can myself affirm to others what I now relate. I have a freed man named Marcus, who has some tincture of letters. One night, his younger brother, who was sleeping in the same bed with him, saw, as he thought, somebody sitting on the couch, who put a pair of shears to his head, and actually cut off the hair from the very crown of it. When morning came, they found the boy’s crown was shorn, and the hair lay scattered about on the floor. After a short interval, a similar occurrence gave credit to the former. A slave boy of mine was sleeping amidst several others in their quarters, when two persons clad in white came in (as he tells the story) through the windows, cut off his hair as he lay, and withdrew the same way they entered. Daylight revealed that this boy too had been shorn, and that his hair was likewise spread about the room. Nothing remarkable followed, unless it were that I escaped prosecution; prosecuted I should have been, if Domitian (in whose reign these things happened) had lived longer. For an information lodged by Carus against me was found in his scrutore. Hence it may be conjectured, since it is customary for accused persons to let their hair grow, that this cutting of my servants’ hair was a sign I should defeat the peril that hung over me.
Epistulae, Book 7, Letter 27
Pliny the Younger ends his letter with a plea for Sura to consider the three ghost stories told and to share his truthful opinion on whether or not they are acceptable proof that ghosts do in fact exist:
I beg, then, you will apply learning to this question. It merits your prolonged and profound consideration; and I am not myself an unworthy recipient of your abounding knowledge. And though you should, after your manner, argue on both sides; yet I hope you will throw your weightiest reasons into one scale, lest you should dismiss me in suspense and uncertainty, whereas I consult you on purpose to determine my doubts. Farewell.
Epistulae, Book 7, Letter 27
The Oldest Drawing of a Ghost
And what about the oldest visual record of a ghost? We can go back even further, around 3,500 years, to ancient Babylon to find the first known example of a person drawing a ghost.
In 2021 Dr Irving Finkel, curator of the Middle Eastern department of the British Museum, reexamined an ancient Babylonian tablet that he believed was misinterpreted when it was originally acquired by the museum. The tablet was part of a collection of thousands of other tablets that had been found 60 miles south of Baghdad, Iraq and given to the British Museum during the nineteenth-century. He concluded that the tablet was a guide on how to exorcise a ghost, likely the ghost of a family member who was having difficulty moving on. The goal of the exorcism was to help the ghost be at peace, as it had come back to wander the Earth due to loneliness in the afterlife. The tablet explains that a woman was found for the ghost and that he was brought peace through romantic companionship.
Through the translated cuneiform text, the tablet explains the ritual of creating figurines of a male and female and giving the male figure travel provisions and the female figure furniture. The figures are then buried at sunrise and the exorcist performing the ritual recites a spell (which is unfortunately incomplete on the tablet), addressing the sun god Samash who was responsible for helping the dead move into the underworld. The final line of the cuneiform text reads “do not look behind you”, but it is unknown to whom this warning is directed.
The tablet’s message had been previously misinterpreted since the drawing is incredibly faint and only visible with the proper lighting, as shown in the image above. Difficulty in seeing the drawings is exemplified by how tiny the tablet. Dr Finkel believes this particular tablet was part of a larger collection within a library of magic held in the house of an exorcist or in a temple.
This ghost has the honour of holding the Guinness World Record for the ‘Oldest Depiction of a Ghost‘. But a discovery this recent shows just how little we know about hauntings in the ancient world and the wealth of ghostly knowledge that still awaits researchers and historians.
Sources and Additional Reading
BBC – ‘Oldest ghost drawing’ found in British Museum (2021)
Guinness World Records – Oldest depiction of a ghost
Live Science – Oldest ghost drawing discovered on Babylonian exorcism tablet (2022)
The Guardian – Figures of Babylon: oldest drawing of a ghost found in British Museum vault (2021)
VRoma – Book Seven, Letter 27
Wikipedia – Athenodorus Cananites / Epistulae (Pliny) / Lucius Licinius Sura / Pliny the Younger
