Medieval Ghost Stories

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1:02Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2 % daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. Ghost stories. They've haunted our conversations since the dawn of time. ancient stone records from Mesopotamia, etchings of how to deal with demons and the ghosts of the dead. The Vikings, the Romans, all partial to a good ghost story. And of course, you won't be surprised to know the medieval era was riddled with them.

1:42But medieval ghost stories, well, they're not for parties and scaring kids. They had a very serious message. Live in accordance with the proper way of doing things, with the Bible. If you don't, you'll find yourself visited by a restless spirit. or indeed, become a restless spirit yourself. So to wade through the phantasmagory of our forebears, I am being joined by the iconic YouTube sensation, Dr. Eleanor Janager, as we uncover what the restless dead tell us about the anxieties of living. Enjoy.

2:23Dr. Eleanor Janager, good to see you. So good to see you. It's so spooky, yeah. Oh, whoo. Yeah. How persistent are ghosts? Are ghosts a thing where humans meet and tell stories? Yeah. I mean, I think that fundamentally the thing about ghosts is it's just people telling stories. And indeed, the oldest thing that has ever been written that we still have by anyone is a ghost story. Really? And it comes to us from the epoch of Gilgamesh. It's called Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Underworld. And basically, Gilgamesh's best friend, Enkidu, goes down to the Underworld. He sees all the dead people. He comes back and tells stories about them.

2:58Fascinating. So the minute humans could write about anything, they're like, I got to tell you about ghosts, right? And ghosts, let's just clear up the easy stuff. It's what happens to people when they die. They become ghosts. Everyone becomes ghosts or not? Not necessarily. So as a general rule of thumb, what most ghost stories are going to center on is the idea that ghosts are sort of people with unfinished business. Something's gone wrong. They're here to clear something up. What that is can be all sorts of things. Real common one is like, you didn't bury me right. Real common one is I want to make sure that my inheritance is going the right way.

3:34I was a bad guy. Please pray for me. You know, there are certain things that will come up over and over again. But as a general rule of thumb, they're real unhappy with the way people are doing things. It's so interesting that persistence across cultures, different times and places. So you, I mean, you've gone, you have gone ancient Sumeria to present day in every site you can find and there's ghosts. Yeah, it's just one of the ways that we sort of organize the way we think about, I guess, human interrelationships and what we owe to other people. And this is what I'm really interested in when we talk about ghosts and ghosts as a history, because people bring them up all the time.

4:11So they show us what societies value, right? You know, the older something is, the further back in time it is, the harder it is to get to us, right? And so when we have a ghost story survive, it's very clear to us that the people here really value it and that it is doing some kind of load-bearing social description, right? So one of my very, very favorite ghost stories is actually a Roman one. And it was written in about the second century of the Common Era by Pliny the Younger. And it is about a Stoic philosopher called Athenodorus. Okay. And this is a ghost story that I will tell you, and I bet you you can figure out what the moral is.

4:52Okay. So Athenodorus gets to Athens, and he needs to rent a house. And he notices that there's a very beautiful mansion that is on rent for very cheap. And everyone says, well, why is this on for such a cheap price? And they say, oh, it's haunted. You don't want to rent it because it's got this really terrible ghost in there. And Athenodorus says, no, I'm going in there, right? Come on, of course I am. So here he is, big stoic philosopher. He's writing. He's writing and he's writing his philosophy. And out of the mists behind him comes scary ghost. Scary ghost rattling a chain. Woo. And Athenodorus says, hey, you need to calm down until I'm done writing.

5:30You go wait over there because I'm writing stoic philosophy. And the ghost is like, okay. So Athenodorus finishes what he's saying and he's like, all right, ghosty. Come on, what do you need? Ghost leads him to a part of the house and kind of gestures to it. And Athenodorus goes, got it. next day they go dig up that part of the house they find a skeleton that's all wrapped in chains they then take the skeleton out of there and they go bury it in the proper place bada bing bada boom you don't have a haunted house anymore and athenodorus feels very smug because he's got this really cheap rent so what do you think that story is telling us uh a proper dealing with proper burial yeah proper yes you've got a you've got to bury someone with dignity you gotta break you can't you can't leave that as unbusiness unfinished business can't wrap someone in chains throw them in a shallow grave.

6:11Like in a house? Yeah. Like we're all going to get sick, babe. Like you can't, we're in a densely populated city. We can't just have corpses buried willy-nilly, right? And if you, as a man, were doing your manly duty of being like a nice and stoic, you wouldn't even get scared of ghosts. Well, that's what I like about that story because there's a whole, that trope you get in Hollywood movies, the modern movies, where you're not scared of the ghost. People are like, just hold on a second, ghost. Then the ghost gets annoyed so they're not scared. that's like a real that's a real thing that's from Pliny that's from Pliny but you're right the other lesson is ghosts are there for a reason they're not there to kill you and suck your blood and be you know you just gotta tell it to just back down and you'll deal with its concerns well 100 % right and what we do see though is that over time the concerns the concerns of the ghosts they're going they're going to change yeah and one of the big ones that is always going to be there is going to be this proper burial for, you know, the reasons we've just said, you have to bury bodies correctly because people are going to get sick, right?

7:15You can't just have like a body in somebody's house. You can't have a body out in a field. You don't want bodies like in the lake. We're drinking that water, right? So it stands to reason you're going to want ghost stories that reinforce proper body disposal, right? But one of the things that we do tend to see over time is that ghosts, when they come back for other reasons, like other unfinished business, it tends to reflect whatever it is society values at the time. Because again, like right when sources survive to us, it's because rich and powerful people value this thing. And the stuff that rich and powerful people often value.

7:52This stuff. Exactly. My brother took my money and then killed me and then I need to. Exactly. Exactly. So we will see ghosts all the time who are specifically coming back for the purposes of making sure that wills are resolved correctly. Debt's are paid. A hundred percent. And then what we see a lot of time, especially in the medieval period, because one of the big groups of people that we hear from all the time are the clergy, is ghosts are doing religion things, right? So one of the big things that ends up coming in, in the medieval period, and especially in the high medieval period, is the concept of purgatory.

8:29Okay. And so purgatory is not just neither here nor there. It's not, you're not in heaven. You're not in hell. You're in hell, but you're in hell with a timer. Right. So you're in hell. You're working it off. Exactly. It's the earn out period. Yeah. And it's like, listen, you were kind of bad, so you're just going to have to get tortured lightly for a while. But then eventually they'll say, oh, yeah, that's enough for your bad things. So one of the big reasons ghosts come back in the Middle Ages is to say, hey, this is really too much. And there are a couple of things that you could do that will earn me out of purgatory.

9:01right and those are often good things right so for example a big trope that we see in the medieval period is something called a harlequin haunt and it's kind of like the ghosts get together and have a parade it's nice they come out of hell and you get to see them walk down the road um and they are experiencing ironic tortures so it's like um the ladies who are too sexy are riding side saddle on these saddles that have lots of iron spikes on them and they're lifted into the air and then they fall on them over and over again. Get it? And then you will see, for example, people like Knights who are saying, I need you to help me.

9:43I loaned some money to this miller and the miller paid me back a bunch of money, more than I ever loaned him, but he didn't end up still paying off the principal of his loan, And so I took his mill away from him. And now I made more money with the mill than he ever owed me as well. And then I died. And now it's gone on to my family. And I am crushed by the weight of this. This is, as a result, it feels to me like I'm being crushed by hot wood. And unless someone goes and does something, you need to give the mill back to the miller. Because I'm suffering in hell for what I did. And it just isn't fair.

10:20And, like, that's a perfectly nice thing to say. like yeah maybe don't impoverish your small folk like leave the miller alone you know that kind of thing that's that's a very nice like easy moral story but fundamentally what it does allow you to do if you are a living person is feel like you can still do something for your dead loved ones so you're like all right well i'm not around them now i could never say i'm sorry for you know whatever or i'll never get to see them again but i could have mass said for their soul and hopefully it's going to hasten the process of purgatory up so they can go hang out with god And in other periods, it's revenge.

10:52You've got to, I get Memnon is wandering around just going, you can somebody please kill the people that did this to me. I'm still pissed about this. 100%. We see this all the time, especially in ancient ghost stories where there will be these ghosts who want revenge. It's a really fun ghost story that the ghosts of the Marathon Battle haunt the Marathon battlefield. And you can hear them at night. You'll hear them if you go out there accidentally and you didn't know that they were there and they're fighting this battle again. And if you go out there on purpose because you want to see them, they'll kill you.

11:25Oh, yeah. And they'll tell you to pieces. And the moral of the story is apparently that they should have built a better monument to the Persians. To the Persians? Which is interesting because they're like, well, actually, they did fight valiantly. And it's this interesting story about like, well, what do we owe our enemies? Like, what do we owe these things? I've poked around that battlefield many times. Have you heard the ghosts? And I did not see any ghosts. You never know. You never know, right? Right. And I mean, so like revenge is one of the really fun ones. And it's like one of the most common tropes now.

11:54So when we have common ghost tropes now, the most bog standard ghost at this point in time is a murder victim who is kind of like attempting to let you know they've been murdered. And that's quite Shakespearean as well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, there's like revenge notification. Please bury me correctly. But they're doing all these important things that essentially keep society ticking over. What they are is moral messages, right? I went to a ghost museum in Georgetown in Malaysia the other year. So they had these vignettes of local ghosts and you could dress up like the ghosts and have your picture taken.

12:32It was very fun. And next to every one of them, they would tell you what the ghost was. And then at the end of it, they would say, moral lesson. Oh, interesting. And I was like, oh, my God, they're just saying it. They said the quiet bit out loud. Yeah, and I was like, no, I'm writing a book about this stop at Ghost Museum in Georgetown. In fact, that's where you got your idea. Yeah, exactly. And I'll send him a book when it's done. But it is really interesting to see this play out over and over again, is that these are one of the ways that we patrol society, right? Like fairy tales, so like stories for kids.

13:00Yeah. Okay, that's interesting. Sometimes adults also need to be reminded to not take the Miller's Mill, you know? Yeah. And I'm thinking with our modern ghost culture, I guess that's true as well. it's people that regret things come back have advice for the still living okay interesting you know like a very sometimes it'll just be like you know your grandma's like i loved you tommy or whatever and that's that's nice stop being a venture capitalist exactly pull it together you're making gram gram sad you know that kind of a thing i wish more ghosts would do that actually and what's the golden age of for you as a historian what's the golden age of the way you can you can get your teeth into stories that have been transmitted so we have actually so many interesting ghost stories that it's really difficult i'm writing a book about it but okay so one of my very very favorite sources of ghost stories is something that we now call the byland abbey ghost stories have you never heard of it okay so these are really fun they're from around the 15th century so around early 1400 and we found them at byland abbey you know yeah big repository of stuff in But it's not the fanciest.

14:03It's like a pretty it's a pretty nice. That's a nice abbey. But it's not the fanciest one in the entire world. This is kind of like a bog standard group of monks. Fine. And in a very bog standard set of works, you've got like some Cicero in there. It's always Cicero. It's like Cicero and Aristotle. But then right at the back, this monk is like, I saw some real stuff. It's ghost time. And he tells us these 12 different ghost stories that are local ghost stories in Latin. They're later found by the master of the ghost story, M.R. James, who was a very talented medievalist himself. And he ends up writing all of these out for us.

14:39And they are so cool because they tell us all these different interesting things. The most famous and longest one is a very long thing about a guy called Snowball the tailor who runs into a ghost while he's coming home at night. And the ghost was very bad indeed. And he was naughty. And he needs a certain number of masses set for him. And Snowball sorts that out. but you see all sorts of things in it where there will be ghosts for example there's a ghost of a woman who she gets in a fight with her husband and she signs over the deed of her land to her brother and now she's kind of haunting the laneways around her town because she is in trouble for this and so someone meets her she says what's going on he goes to her brother and says look you got to sort this out your your sister's haunting the laneways and he says i don't care if she haunts till doomsday i think that is the right answer to be honest well listen i'll tell you who did care was that guy's son he was like absolutely not i'm putting auntie in the grave and like he ends up like doing the right thing but then sometimes you have these completely nonsensical ones and the nonsensical ones are actually my favorite because like there's one where there's just like a chick who like finds a ghost gives it a piggyback into a room full of guys and goes found a ghost like a ghost on my back you like this and it's like where's the moral here and they're just and they're like everyone remembers when eliza gave that ghost to piggyback and i'm like we do and so and those ones are actually my favorite because i do think that most of them are serving moral lessons but my favorite are ghost stories that don't mean anything that was mushroom season exactly right i think we can i think we can tell that it's like it's so good and you're like okay okay um fair enough and it's just like it's great it's wonderful You listen to Dan Snow's history This episode is brought to you by TikTok I never thought about the history of coffee You make it, you drink it Nothing more to it Then I've had a TikTok video About how people in the 1700s Would pour their coffee into saucers To let it cool before drinking it I love that sort of discovery A detail, but suddenly you're imagining how people lived and drank and socialized.

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19:43and i guess actually the thing that got me into these uh ghost stories was actually a ghost story and you're listen you don't get to be surprised by when i tell you this source but um the emperor charles the fourth wrote an autobiography okay and he's writing this autobiography when he's kind of like pitching to be holy roman emperor and when he's kind of like saying hey everybody it's fine that it's going to be me your local check or whatever and it's it's pretty standard stuff it is like propaganda propaganda I went to this battle I did this he's got a couple miracles in there it's kind of interesting and then in the middle of it he's like look I got back to Prague and Prague Castle at the time needs to be rebuilt it's it's a bit of a shamble so that that's probably the propaganda bit right is he's like someone's got to rebuild this castle and you taxpayers can help me do that, right?

20:32But he's staying in one of the houses on Old Town Square, and he and his chamberlain are getting ready for bed, and they can hear someone walking around the room. And he hastens to add the fire is built up, they've got a bunch of candles, they can kind of see everything, and they can hear these footsteps, and they're like, what the hell is that? And they kind of get up, and they look around, they can't see anyone, and they're like, okay. They put a few more logs on the fire, and they go back to bed. and then there's a bench kind of in between the beds that has their wine cups on it in case you know you you know how it is you wake up in the middle of the night and you need some wine right and so the chamberlain goes over there and he's like filling up his cup and another and he goes back to bed and another cup from the bench picks itself up and throws itself across the room charles and the chamberlain freak out they're scared as hell they're like saying our fathers they're doing all their christian prayers the next day all the servants come in and they're like, look, do you see where that cup is?

21:27Like something came in through it. And that's the ghost story. It doesn't mean anything. And what I think is interesting about it is here's one of the most important guys to ever live. One of the most powerful men to ever walk the earth. And he's sitting here writing out a bunch of stories for you where he's like the things that this is a public facing. Yeah, that's interesting. This is something you need to know about, right? You need to know that I got really scared one time. And that's so interesting because it can show us that these are really personal stories to some people, even though there's no moral message, there's no nothing.

21:58Clearly, we have these examples of stories where it's just like sometimes people think they just see something, but it's very difficult for those to survive to us historically because of how powerful people want stories that are going to reiterate power. And so you can't have random ghost because random ghost doesn't fit, right? It makes him feel more, I guess, although this is not a democratic era, but almost like, hey, weird things happen to me. I'm like you guys. I'm a normal guy. Yeah. Like I too got spooked out one time. Yeah. I got spooked out and there was wine flying around the room. So let's, if we move on to the early modern period, if I can drag you out if I may.

22:39Oh, no, listen. I love it. Because I'm always confused by the ghost hop from Catholicism to Protestantism. Even though the Protestants, I've always thought, sort of set out their stall in opposition to these kind of strange, superstitious views that Catholics have. And the world is actually very straightforward. If it's not, you know, we read the Bible, we commune with God. All this other stuff is kind of absurd. Well, you are right on one count. One of the big things that happens in the era of the Reformation is Protestants are, they're saying, we need to get rid of these papist superstitions.

23:13And they're like, ghosts are something that is made up. From the mists of time. Yeah. Okay, is there a ghost story in the Bible? Yes, but you're interpreting it wrong. And all the other ghosts were just monks faking it so that you would give money to the church. And like, listen. It's a compelling argument. Yeah. It's fairly compelling. However, they aren't saying, oh, yeah, all of it is made up and there isn't anything spooky. They're like, spooky stuff is real and it's actually demons. Oh, it's demons. It's demons. And so it's like, I'm like, this is somehow worse, right? Especially here in what will become the United Kingdom as a result of James VI and I, he is your number one demons are real guy.

23:54J-pop demon hunter. Sorry. Oh, my God. J-pop. J-pop. Well, he was Charles' pop. J-rex demon hunter. Yeah, there you go. So he writes the demonology in 1597, and it's all about how demons are real and absolutely we need to watch out for that. Also, witches are real. Because ghosts are actually reasonably benign, I guess. But demons, no. But demons are not benign. No, no, exactly. I would argue this is worse. This is much worse. Because it's like, what's the ghost going to do? Throw the wine cup? Yeah. Be like, hey, could he... Remind you about unpaid debts and things? Like, oh, say some masses for me, right?

24:31And it's really interesting because you watch, for example, A big traditional place people will think is haunted is, of course, the graveyard, right? And that's probably a reminder of like, yo, don't go in there. There's a bunch of decomposing bodies, right? Like, it's not great. And they're like, oh, yeah, well, what you're actually seeing there isn't ghosts. It's the devil himself. And because he loves corpses. And so he's just hanging. And I'm like, that's worse, right? And there's this amazing book that is written called Saddukismus Triumphatus. And it is about how witches and apparitions are absolutely real.

25:11And they're like, listen, here's the Protestant way that we explain this. You're not wrong. You did see that thing. It's just that it cannot be a ghost because ghosts aren't real. And if you think a ghost is real, you're a Catholic. So it doesn't get less superstitious. It's just the superstition is different and more violent. So sort of more intense, less amorphous, more rigid and violent and unpleasant. Yeah. But then everyone kind of gets bored of it. It's kind of interesting. It's like, it's not very fun. That's not fun. And I mean, we will see ghosts that are continuing to crop up, particularly in the Enlightenment period.

25:48A big thing that people kind of are doing is they're going around collecting ghost stories and arguing for the possibility of ghosts in a scientific way. Okay. So, oh, maybe these things have a basis in science. Yeah. And they're like, look, we're going to get to the bottom of it. We discovered oxygen. Why not discover ghosts? We could discover ghosts and we begin to ghost hunt and people are looking around. They're trying to find the ghost. So it's not even like with the advent of science that we discard the idea of ghosts more generally. What we attempt to do is explain what they are and how powerful they are.

26:17I guess when we were discovering science, we had to work out where the borders of science were. And we probably still are, right? Oh, absolutely. So before you discard ghosts, you have to just quickly check if they're not one of these phenomenon because we keep finding things. And they're like, well, maybe this is just something about time. Maybe there's particles. It's really interesting the way that people will grapple with the concept of the ghost because it's still very clearly for them kind of a load-bearing way that they think about the world and the way that they think about morality or, you know, indeed just, I suppose, the links that people have with each other, right?

26:53So part of, to them, what it means to be human. There is like this very specific thing that is kind of tied up with humanism as a movement, right? Like as a movement for like the conception of humanitas and the humanities generally. It's like this interest in ghosts because, well, we all kind of owe each other particular things. So, for example, like when John Locke is writing educational treaties about how we should be like raising proper young men so that they learn things. He's like, listen, be careful with the ghost thing. You don't want the babysitters telling the ghost stories. You don't want it to be like the old wives tales because those are bad.

27:30And then they're going to think that ghosts are just necessarily stupid. But actually, maybe there's some truth to it. And we need them to like turn scientific minds to it once they get older, right? The culmination of this is going to be your friends and mine, the Victorians. You listen to Dan Snow's History. Don't go anywhere. There's more to come.

27:54This is actually the culmination of these ideas about scientificness, whilst you're still kind of holding on to the conception of the ghost as a useful way to organize society. Because Victorians are like, we are going to get to the bottom of this. We are going to figure this out. But Dickens is still using them for moral tales. 100%. But they're also then trying to work out, should we just check if these things are real? Listen. Because it would be really helpful if they were, because it would be nice if some guys kind of showed up and said, hey, rich people, maybe don't be total jerks. Right.

28:26It would be great if a Christmas Carol was real. Right. Love that for us. So it's like the Victorians also are going through a lot, I think, in terms of like industrialization. They're really kind of feeling cut off in a lot of ways from what they kind of think of as this bucolic pastoralism. They're being replaced by machines. Yeah. Must suck. So the thing to them that like, well, what makes people people is that we have this possibility of like having ghosts we have this soul we have that we have this thing so they really want to hold on to it and then even when you get into the 20th century it doesn't really go away um after the great war after like the influenza pandemic people have lost so many people that they really are clinging on to these hopes that maybe they can communicate with their loved ones which is really sad and there are a lot of charlatans well there's a lot of people encouraging that yeah do you know one of my favorite things about harry houdini is that he did this huge line of going around and unmasking charlatan feances.

29:23That was his like side hustle. Yeah. Yeah. He was like in his spare time, he was like, you're faking this, leave these people alone. And I'm like, get on it. I love that. I love that. But it's like what we see within this period is a kind of like going back to medievalisms over and over again. M.R. James, who I've already shouted out at this point in time, he wrote a series of his own ghost stories, which are my absolute favorite. and they're kind of all from the 1920s but they will have like lots of little appealing bits of medievalisms uh my favorite mr james uh ghost story is uh canon albert's scrapbook and he like goes to a remote cathedral in france and he gets like this big thing of uh old medieval manuscripts and like it turns out a bishop had sold a soul to the like a thing and now there's a ghostly goblin like following him around great stuff creepy ass great job mr james i mean it's like it's wonderful from a literary point of view when people write these things and you can really see this mashup and i mean still you know what is it when we say oh that place is haunted probably the number one thing we think of is like a castle right so that's what's in there is ghosts right yeah i i'm astonished by how often conversation turns to ghosts in a non-ironic way when i'm with friends and we're eating drinking around the campfire whatever it is it is ghost stories are so if we are as if we you know five six seven generations after after the you know these these advanced in science that you've described in the enlightenment period if we're still as captivated by ghost stories then what of course our ancestors been doing the same thing hundred percent you know everybody has been doing this and what they were doing i think is exactly the same as us they're grappling with what to do with this right they're grappling with how we are going to integrate ghosts into our worldview.

31:15And by that, what they're really doing is they're grappling with what it means to be a person and what it means to be alive. What do we owe each other? How are we going to conduct ourselves within a society? And ghosts are just sort of patrolling the edges of that. And they're also kind of giving people hope for something after death or the idea that the love we have for people doesn't go anywhere when they die. well it's a that's a that is a a desperate wish that we all i know and i i can it makes so much sense thank you dr ellen leoniger for coming on hey you've got a book about this what's it called i've got a book it's going to be it's going to be out uh next year so get ready for force me to do it again but it's called the unquiet dead the unquiet dead so it's gonna be very fun nice well thank you everyone for coming on for this ghostly content make sure you like and subscribe and everything otherwise i will haunt you for years after i'm gone which i will do soon unless you like and subscribe and everything see you next time

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33:07Jack tapping to pay with his Apple Card with Apple Pay is his favorite thing to do. And the pleasant vibration and chime sound means I just got 2 % daily cash back on my latest purchase. Apply in the wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at AppleCard.com. Have you been enjoying my podcast and now want even more history? Sign up to History and watch the world's best history documentary. on subjects like how William conquered England, what it was like to live in the Georgian era, and you can even hear the voice of Richard III.

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34:03Thank you.

34:33Thank you.