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Comment by wrp | Hacker News Reader

I've only read lightly on the historical literature of ghosts, but I think TFA has some basic misconceptions. Through most of history, ghost sightings appeared to be of regular people, with the witness only realizing later that it was a ghost. The conception of ghosts having ethereal appearance appears to have become widespread in the late 19th century.

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There are accounts of spirits/ ghosts much earlier than 19th c that aren't "regular" people.

In Homer's Odyssey (8th c. BC), while in the underworld Odysseus attempts to hug his mother Anticlea but is unable to do so.

Thrice I sprang towards her, and my heart bade me clasp her, and thrice she flitted from my arms like a shadow or a dream..... “‘My mother, why dost thou not stay for me, who am eager to clasp thee, that even in the house of Hades we two may cast our arms each about the other.... Is this but a phantom (ghost) that august Persephone has sent me, that I may lament and groan the more?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shade_(mythology)

Ancient Romans used "umbrae" (shadows) to refer to ghostly spirits, which for me invokes the figures on the wall of Plato's cave

I'm always leery of translations like this, as they are often translated with the world view of the day.

Interesting regardless though.

The latest translation was made just a few years ago. [1] I wish someone could track down all translations of it and post it somewhere, so one could try do compare different passages through time, the Italian Wikipedia has a good list of international translations.

One should not that Homers dialect is arcane from the start of the Greek golden age, so translation is always going to be interesting.

https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traduzioni_dell%27Odissea

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_translations_of_Homer

And in the 19th century with the advent of cameras and their “ghosting” of images with people moving.

See also the rise of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantasmagoria in the 19th.

I read that they fade over time. A famous one was a lady in red who appeared in a castle in the UK. Over a couple hundred years of sightings the color if her dress faded from deep red through crimson then pink then finally white.

Well, yes, I suppose repeated washings over a few centuries would do that.

Probably dried it on the sun too much.

Homer describes them as a vapor or smoke I believe

Roman writers used "umbra" or "shadow"/"shade" as a word for specters, phantoms, ghosts, etc. They had many other words, too, but this is probably closest to how dead apparitions were physically perceived.

I remember some tradition that Roman ghosts were often associated with or seen as blue for some reason? That's only my fuzzy and likely incorrect memory though, from when I was studying in college. I have a memory of a play or piece of literature where a candle flame turns blue and it was meant as a cue to what was about to happen.

skia - shade / shadow

The Witch of Endor described Samuel as a "god" coming up out of the earth in the appearance of an old man in a robe.

for me horror movies with ghosts shown as regular people in foggy daylight (for example the kid in the original Omen) are scarier then the ones that fly at night or have heavy makeups with abnormal bodies etc.

> HORATIO A countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

> HAMLET Pale or red?

> HORATIO Nay, very pale.

~1600

Thanks, that was enlightening.

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