The Lake County star., 1876-07-06
The Philosopher and the Ghost.

When was the first ghost story told
At what period in the worlds infancy
did the mind of man first feel the dread
delight, the awful attraction, which
modern skepticism has deprived us all OF
except children and village lasses? We
confess we cannot tell. And instead OF
collecting scattered fragments from
antiquity, we subjoin a translation of a
ghost story, perfect and complete, of the
respectable age of eighteen centuries,
which so terrified the calm philosopher
Pliny, of Christmas-hating reputation,
that he wrote to his friend Sura, the
consul, to ask whether it could be true.
So exactly does this story correspond in
all the ghostly elements to authentic mar
ratives which inundate the waste-paper
baskets of magazine editors every Christ
mas, that we cannot think it the first at
Poets must have lived before Homer, and
dealers in the supernatural must have
traded on mans love for the marvellous
long before the time of Pliny's informant.
We meet with ghosts in the "Iliad," and
Eschylus twice introduces them on the
stage. Indeed, the belief in their appear
ance naturally arises from the idea that,
until a man was decently buried, old
Charon would not convey his soul across
the shiny Styx. but left it to squeak and
gibber on this side the stream. Hence it
was considered greater crime at Athens
to leave APPARENT unburied than to allow
him to starve to death. And that
beautiful play of Sophocles, in which
Antigone suffers death rather than leave
her brothers corpse unburied, had a far
greater charm in Pagan Athens than it
can have in Christian countries. But
we are depressing. Here is the promised
story, from the twenty-seventh book of
Pliny the younger:
"There was at Athens a house. large
and spacious, but with bad name. In
the silence of the night there was wont
to be heard in it the rafting of iron, and,
If you listened more attentively, the
clash of chains, first at distance, then
hard by. Presently there appeared a
ghost-an old man, lean and squalid,
with long beard and rough hair. He car
ried fetters on his legs and gives on Ills
wrists, shaking them as he walked.
Hence every night was spent in wakeful
terror by the inhabitants. Sickness
followed vigils, and death sickness. For
even during the daytime, though the
phantom had departed, the recollection
of it clung to them, and the terror lasted
longer than that which caused it. Ac-
cordingly the house was deserted, con-
demned to solitude, and entirely given
up to the specter. 1t was advertised,
to be let or sold, in case any
one, not knowing the circumstances,
should be willing to purchase.
Athenodrous, the philosopher, came
to. Athens, read the notice, asked the
terms, and, having his suspicious reused
by the low price, made inquiries, and
heard the whole story. So far from
he took the house all the more
eagerly.
his couch to be placed in the front room,
calls for writing tablet and light,
dismisses all his attendants, and devOtes
his attention-eyes, head and hands-to
writing, lest his mind, being employed,
should conjure up fancied sights and
sounds.
"At first there was the silence of
night deep as elsewhere; then the clash
of iron and the rattling of chains. He
neither raised his eyes nor relaxed his
pen, but fixed his attention upon his
work. The click grew louder, came
nearer, and sounded, now at the door,
now within the room. He looks up, sees
and recognizes the specter described. 1t
stood and beckoned with its hand, as if
calling him. He made sign with his
finger for it to wait little, and again
settled down to his tablets. 1t ratified its
chains at his head as he wrote. He
looked up again, making the same sign
as before, and without further delay took
the candle and followed. 1t walked with
slow step, as if weighed with the chains.
After turning into the court t-yard of the
house, it suddenly slipped into the earth
and disappeared. He piled some weeds
and leaves to mark the spot, and the
next day, going to the magistrates, ad-
vised them to order the place to be exca-
vated. A skeleton was found, the flesh
all wasted away by putrefaction, and the
bare bones bound in fetters and chains.
1t was taken up and publicly buried,
and after that the house was no more
troubled"