In his letter To Sura, the ancient Roman writer Pliny the Younger recounts one of the oldest and most famous ghost stories of all time.
There was once a Stoic philosopher named Athenodoros of Tarsos. Athenodoros came to the city of Athens, where he learned that there was a large house for sale at an extraordinarily cheap price. When Athenodoros asked why the house was available at such a low price, he was informed that, every night, the clashing of chains could be heard coming from a certain room in the house and that, after a while, the sound of clattering chains would grow louder and louder until, at last, the terrifying apparition of an old, decrepit man would appear, standing in the room with iron chains attached to his arms and dragging along on the floor behind him. The man was said to be extremely emaciated, as though he had been starved to death, and his hair and beard were said to be tangled and matted.
Athenodoros bought the house without hesitation. That night, he set up his writing desk in the room where the ghostly specter was said to appear. For the first few hours of the night there was no sign of paranormal activity. Then, around midnight, sure enough, just as he had been told, Athenodoros could hear the sound of the clashing of irons coming from somewhere within the house. He ignored the sound, however, and continued writing. Soon, the clashing grew louder, but Athenodoros continued to ignore it.
Finally, the ghost itself appeared in the room, rattling its chains and moaning in agony. Athenodoros ignored the specter and continued writing. The ghastly figure walked over to Athenodoros and made a signal for Athenodoros to follow him. Athenodoros glanced up at the apparition and signaled to the spirit to wait for him to finish what he was writing. The ghost, however responded by rattling its chains directly in Athenodoros’s face to attract his attention and making the sign indicating for Athenodoros to follow him once again. Athenodoros stood up, picked up his lamp, and followed after the spirit.
The apparition led Athenodoros out into the courtyard of the house, stood over a certain spot, and then vanished into thin air. Athenodoros carefully marked the spot where the ghost had disappeared with leaves and waited until morning. Then, he contacted the magistrates and advised them to dig up the spot where the ghost had vanished. When they dug up the spot, they discovered the skeleton of a man with iron chains around his wrists. The skeleton had clearly lain there unmarked for many years.
At Athenodoros’s request, the skeleton was given a public funeral with full honors. After that day, the ghost was never seen again.
This story has been retold many times and many modern ghost stories are directly based off of it. It is, however, merely the best-known example of the many ghost stories that have survived from classical antiquity. Be sure to read my future articles in this series, in which I will retell some of the other, less widely known ancient Greek and Roman ghost stories.
SOURCES
Pliny the Younger. To Sura.
IMAGE CREDITS
The featured image at the beginning of this article is an illustration created by Henry Justice Ford sometime around 1900 or thereabouts entitled Athenodorus Confronts the Spectre. This image was retrieved from Wikimedia Commons. This image is in the public domain in the United States of America.
Looking forward to more of these!
I am glad you enjoyed it. I did a bunch of research on ancient Greek and Roman ghost stories back in October of 2015 to share with my classmates for Halloween. Yesterday, it occurred to me that they would be perfect to put on my website since not many people have heard them and they are actually very interesting stories. Thanks for the comment!
Waiting for the next part
The next part has already been published for over a year now. There are actually a whole bunch of articles in this series that have been out for a long time. I am planning on eventually writing more in this series, though, so stay tuned for more!
Interesting.
Even before reading the story, my first glance at the picture with the chains made me think “So that’s where Dickens got the idea for Marley’s ghost!”