Ghosts Traced Back Through Ages, From Ancient Lands to Roman Britain

THE INTERNET — The ghost, it appears, is no recent arrival. According to a feature published by the website Spooky Isles, the earliest accounts of such apparitions stretch from ancient civilisations to Roman Britain and on into the medieval chronicles.

The article is credited to Robert Radakovic, who is described in the source as celebrating Halloween with an in-depth look at the history of ghosts. The piece is titled "First Ghosts: From ancient civilisations to Britain."

The text available to this newspaper consists only of the introductory summary. It does not set out which accounts are discussed, nor where they were recorded, nor what the chroniclers themselves made of their visitors. Readers wishing to learn the particulars are directed to the full article on the Spooky Isles site.

What the summary does establish is the scope of the inquiry: a long span of recorded human experience, from the oldest civilisations to the written records of Britain's Roman and medieval periods. Whether such accounts describe genuine spirits, or merely the enduring habit of people to tell stories of the dead, is a question the summary does not address.

This correspondent notes only that, if the claim of the headline holds, the English-speaking world has been reporting ghosts for a very long time indeed.