Whatever its origin, a belief in spirits seems to have been common to all
the nations of the ancient world who have left us any record of
themselves. Ghosts began to walk early, and are walking still, in spite
of the shrill cock-crow of _wir haben ja aufgeklaert._ Even the ghost in
chains, which one would naturally take to be a fashion peculiar to
convicts escaped from purgatory, is older than the belief in that
reforming penitentiary. The younger Pliny tells a very good story to this
effect: "There was at Athens a large and spacious house which lay under
the disrepute of being haunted. In the dead of the night a noise
resembling the clashing of iron was frequently heared, which, if you
listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains; at first
it seemed at a distance, but approached nearer by degrees; immediately
afterward a spectre appeared, in the form of an old man, extremely meagre
and ghastly, with a long beard and dishevelled hair, rattling the chains
on his feet and hands.... By this means the house was at last deserted,
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.
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