On the evening of the first day he dismissed his servants and remained
alone in the front room, writing and occupying himself, purposely, with
grave and abstract questions, so as to allow no opening for his
imagination. As soon as all was quiet around him the clanking and
rattling of chains begins; but he pays no heed and continues to write.
The noise approaches and enters the room; as he looks up he sees the
well-known weird shape before him. It beckons him, but he demands
patience and writes on as before; then the ghost shakes his chains over
his head and beckons once more imperatively. Now he rises, takes his
lamp, and follows his visitor through the passages into a court-yard,
where the ghost disappears. The philosopher pulls up some grass on the
spot and marks the place. On the following day he appeals to the
authorities to cause the place to be dug up; and when this is done, the
bones of an old man, loaded with heavy chains, are found. From that time
the house was left undisturbed, as if the departed had only desired to
induce some intelligent person to bestow upon him the honors of a
decent burial, which among the ancients were held all-important.
("Letter to Sera," l. vii. 27.) The story told by Lucian
("Philopseudes," xxx.) is almost identical with that of Pliny. Here,
also, a house in Corinth, once belonging to Eubatides, was left
unoccupied, for the same reasons, and began to decay, when the
Pythagorean, Arignotus, determined to ascertain the reality of these
nightly appearances. He goes there after midnight, places his lamp on
the floor, lies down and begins to read. Soon a horrible monster
appears, black as night, and changes from one disgusting beast into
another, till at last it yields to the stern command of the intrepid
philosopher and disappears in a corner of the large room. When day
breaks, workmen are brought in to take up the floor; a skeleton is found
and decently interred, and from that day the house is left to its usual
peace and quiet. ("Epist." l. vii. 27.) Plutarch, also, in his "Life of
Cimon," states that the baths at Chæronea were haunted by the ghost of
Damon, who had there found his death; the doors were walled up and the
place forsaken, but up to his day no relief had been devised, and
fearful sights and terrible sounds continued to render the place
uninhabitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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