Superstition Sunday: A Ghost
Continuing what was started last week, here is the next edition of Superstition Sunday:
A ghost is supposed to be the spirit of a person deceased, who is either commissioned to return for some special errand, such as discovery of a murder, to procure restitution of lands or money unjustly withheld from an orphan or widow — or, having committed some injustice whilst living, cannot rest till that is redressed. Sometimes the occasion of spirits revisiting this world, is to inform their heir in what secret place, or private drawer in an old trunk, they had hidden the title deeds of the estate; or where, in troublesome times, they buried their money or plate. Some ghosts of murdered persons, whose bodies have been secretly buried, cannot be at ease till their bones have been taken up, and deposited in consecrated ground, with all the rites of Christian burial. This idea is the remains of a very old piece of Heathen Superstition: The Ancients believed that Charon was not permitted to ferry over the Ghosts of unburied persons, but that they wandered up and down the banks of the river Styx for an hundred years, after which they were admitted to a passage…
In most of the relations of Ghosts, they are supposed to be mere aerial beings, without substance, and that they can pass through walls and other solid bodies at pleasure….
The usual time at which Ghosts make their appearance is midnight, and seldom before it is dark; though some audacious spirits have been said to appear even by day-light: but of this, there are few instances, and those mostly Ghosts who have been laid, perhaps in the Red Sea, and whose times of confinement were expired: these, like felons confined to the lighters, are said to return more troublesome and daring than before. No ghost can appear on Christmas Eve; this Shakespeare has put into the mouth of one of his characters in Hamlet.
So much for A Christmas Carol and the Ghost of Christmas Past, huh?
