Oh man, there are so many to choose from! Today though, I’ll share a story recorded in the Historia Ecclesiastica by the Anglo-Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis (Book VIII, Ch. XVII). It details the appearance of a phantom army to a young priest named Walchelin, who while traveling in the region of Courcy heard the din of a great army approaching. Thinking it to be Robert of Bellême on his way to besiege Hugh of Grandmesnil at Courcy, Walchelin hid in a stand of four medlar trees, but instead of Robert, the army that approached was comprised of a great crowd, many of whom Walchelin recognized as recently deceased.

Ordered by a giant man to watch the procession, Walchelin observed the rabble as they passed. The first group was comprised of various sorts of peoples on foot, carrying with them their possessions, lamenting and crying as they went. They were accompanied by giants and dwarves, and demons. Various individuals, including a troop of women on horseback, were being tortured for their crimes in life.

The next group consisted of members of the clergy. Though many had been held in high esteem in life, God knew their hearts and their sins would need to be “consumed in the fires of purgatory and purified by suffering.” Orderic, however, does not spend long on this group, and soon Walchelin saw the third and final group, an army of knights cloaked in darkness and in flames, mounted on great war-horses and armed for battle. Walchelin again recognized several of their number and observed,

having seen these countless troops of soldiers pass, on reflection said within himself: “Doubtless these are Harlequin’s people (familia Herlechini). I have often heard of their being seen, but I laughed at the stories, having never had any certain proofs of such things.”(I’ll come back to this)

Thinking that no one would believe him, Walchelin thought to steal one of the rider-less, black war-horses. At that moment, four knights fell upon him and accused him of attempting to steal their property. One of the knights, however, ordered the others to release him, and attempted to persuade Walchelin to deliver a message to his family. When Walchelin refused, the knight in a rage seized the priest by the neck. The burning grip of the knight would leave a mark on the priest, which would serve as the signum, the sign demonstrating the authenticity of the experience.

In dire straits, Walchelin was saved only by the appearance of another knight, none other than his brother, Robert. Walchelin at first refused to recognize his brother, but after much convincing, burst into tears and did so. Robert told the priest that because he had tried to steal from the dead he would have to share in their punishments, but that because he sung the mass every day he would be saved. The two continued to converse, and Robert explained that he was compelled to carry burning weapons and wear spurs caked in blood that burned like fire and weighed heavier than Mont St-Michel. Finally though, Robert was forced to rejoin the departing army, and for a week after the vision, Walchelin was gravely ill. Despite his close brush with death, the priest lived another fifteen years after the ordeal, allowing Orderic time to question him and examine the mark left by the knight’s choke-hold.

Stories of phantasmal and infernal armies have a long history in Europe and reach far back into antiquity. Beginning in the eleventh century, however, we see an increase in the narrative accounts of ghostly armies, ranging from the sober processions of the penitent dead to the downright demonic. Stories of knights suffering on purgatorial journeys were particularly popular among ecclesiastics, critical of the unjust and impious wars waged across Europe. In these stories, a single monk or cleric, often traveling alone, encounters a ghostly army in the wilderness. A knight or small group will then detach themselves and relate their punishments and crimes; in nearly all accounts they are related to unjust violence and the tools of their trade serve as the vehicle of their punishments. The purgatorial punishments are usually connected with a journey across the earth and not as the separate third space of later purgatorial visions. The recipient of the vision is initially unwilling to help, but signs are offered to confirm that the vision is not diabolic or deceptive and function as proof that verifies the tale to the audience, and the vision moves forward. Often the dead individual has some sort of relationship with the living, with a strong emphasis on familial bonds. When those fail, they emphasize the responsibility of the liturgical community to intercede on behalf of the dead, which generally is the main motivation for the visit. The vision will typically end with confirmation that suffrages will be offered on the dead’s behalf and that any sins left unresolved will be addressed.

Obviously, eleventh century theologians and religious writers did not invent the trope of the infernal army, but instead reinterpreted and rationalized extant cultural material within a Christian understanding of the fate of the soul after death. Orderic’s frustratingly non-descript allusion to Harlequin likely refers to earlier traditions of ghostly armies and hunts, which certainly frequent European traditions and folklore. Oddly enough, medieval writers in Britain and Northern France latched onto Harlequin or Hellequin as the leader of the purgatorial army of ghosts. Walter Map, writing in the mid-twelfth century, goes so far as to provide an origin story, connecting the leader of the army with Herla, an ancient king of the Britons, who finds himself in debt to the king of the dwarves underground and is condemned to ride across the earth for eternity without dismounting. In Sicily and southern Italy under the Normans, King Arthur would at times come to take on the role as the ‘king of the dead’ who resides in his palace on Mt. Etna. In some texts, Arthur and Herla (both ‘ancient’ British kings) would be joined together into a single figure, the ruler of a subterranean kingdom of the dead who at times leads his ghostly troop through the countryside.

Near the end of the twelfth century and at the beginning of the thirteenth, the host of the itinerant dead would fall out of favor among theologians as an explanation for the purgatorial suffering the soul endures after death. Instead, ecclesiastics would favor the doctrine that understood Purgatory as a unique and separate place in the cosmological landscape, prompting explanations of what exactly happened to the Hunt. Some (including Walter Map) concluded that the apparitions of the host had ceased, its journey completed. In exempla collections, however, the host of the dead would take on increasingly diabolic connotations, with both Herla and Author also increasingly associated with another ‘king of the dead’: the devil.

Happy Halloween!!

One of my favorites from Icelandic literature appears in the thirteenth-century Eyrbyggia Saga. It features a disagreement between those buried on land and those lost at sea, and it provides an opportunity for insight into change in oral tradition and belief systems. The following is an excerpt from my Introduction to Folklore:

There is at least one example of the successful incorporation of the idea of good and evil into the traditions of the peasantry. This occurs in the legend of the land dead and the sea dead. In this story, a young man walking along the coast at night insults the ghosts of the sea who begin to chase him. The frightened fellow flees through a churchyard and, hurrying past the graves, he cries out, “Up, up, every Christian soul, and save me!” He hears a tremendous noise behind him as he runs to his home. The following morning, the townspeople find jellyfish, sea tangle, and boards from coffins strewn about the churchyard. They conclude that the ghosts of the churchyard must have fought with the sea dead in order to protect the young man.

Christiansen classifies this story as Migratory Legend 4065, “Ghosts from the Land Fight Ghosts from the Sea.” The story serves as an example of peasants applying the Christian dichotomy between good and evil: the dead who are buried in consecrated church ground are helpful and good, while those who were lost at sea without burial rites are outside Christianity and are, therefore, evil. An early variant of the legend illustrates that this was not the original point of view.

The thirteenth-century Icelandic Eyrbyggia Saga includes an episode that is strongly reminiscent of Legend 4065. A series of illnesses left several people dead and buried, but their animated corpses began to haunt a certain farm. Shortly after this, a ship from the same farm was lost at sea and five sailors were never found. The household had a funeral feast for the lost men. No sooner were the people seated then the dead sailors entered the room, leaving seaweed and puddles of seawater wherever they went. The corpses warmed themselves by the fire. They returned each night, even after the funeral feasts had ended, but now even more dead people arrived, these covered with dirt, which they shook off and threw at the dead from the sea. The two groups, those buried on land and those lost at sea, met each night and quarreled until the owner of the household charged them with trespassing, at which the corpses left for good.

This early variant of Legend 4065 lacks a Christian point of view. Both groups of dead are equally troublesome, and neither has assumed a good or evil role although they are clearly antagonistic to one another, anticipating the later legend. Since recent variants of the legend exhibit the Christian dichotomy of the spiritual world, it seems likely that peasants modified Legend 4065 sometime after conversion. Although the legend is an example of the successful integration of the concept of good and evil, it is the exception and not the rule.

John Mompesson was a wealthy, upstanding gentryman in 17th century Wiltshire (England). He regularly hosted the town's minister for an evening meal and hearty discussion, and occasionally a passing visitor of some stature would lodge with his family overnight. Mompesson also took it upon himself to help ensure peace and tranquility in and around his town.

At Lungershall on business one day, he found himself distracted and much vexed by a street musician, a drummer. Complaining to the authorities, he was told that the drummer had presented official papers allowing him to play as he wished. Mompesson would have none of that. He seized the "permit" to read for himself, and promptly judged it a forgery--the names of the officials, Mompesson informed the bailiff, shaking his head in dismay, were completely made up. A bit embarrassed, the local constable was nevertheless quite pleased to round up this nuisance.

Mompesson had returned to Tidworth satisfied to have completed his affairs out of town and to have helped restore God's proper order. Unbeknownst to him, the mysterious drummer had escaped.

And Mompesson awoke to the rat-tat-tattle of Roundheads and Cuckolds, the very drumbeats of war. The drumming only escalated. During a dinner party one night, Mompesson found himself searching for the words to explain when, out of nowhere, a bedpost hurtled through the air and struck the town pastor! Chairs skittered across the room, the boards shook in the walls...even the children's shoes were not safe. And when silence fell again, the scent of sulfur stunk the air.

Over the next year, Mompesson and his family knew little respite. Blue glimmering lights--fairy lights--temporarily blinded anyone who saw them. They unfurled their covers at night to discover the chamber pot had been emptied into their beds! Their soup filled with ash between the stove and the table. Even guests were not safe. An overnight visitor spent a sleepless night slapping away pincers that weren't there--pincers that left visible pinch marks on his nose in the morning.

Of course, even people at the time suspected this was a hoax. This was the late 17th century, after all--a new age! Ghosts and witches were so...Renaissance. Perhaps Mompesson simply sought attention. Perhaps he really wanted that drummer caught again, and punished for real, as a "witch". But the case had caught the fancy of a young, ambitious Puritan minister named Increase Mather.

You know. The Increase Mather whose writings and sermons on the diabolical and supernatural would later help foster the climate of fear that made a certain set of witch trials possible? Yeah, that Increase Mather.

Happy Halloween, Salem!

This is my favorite Greek ghost story - about Periander, one of the Seven Sages and tyrant of Corinth.

“Periandros understood the meaning of what Thrasyboulos had done [this is the story about whacking the heads off the tall stalks of grain] and perceived that he was advising him to murder the prominent men of the city. It was then that he exhibited every kind of evil to the citizens. For Periandros completed all that Kypselos had left undone in his killing and banishing of the Corinthians. And on one day, he had all the Corinthian women stripped of their clothing, for the sake of his own wife, Melissa [whom Periandros had killed while she was pregnant]. He had sent messengers to the Thesprotians on the Acheron River to consult the oracle of the dead there concerning a deposit of treasure belonging to a guest-friend. When Melissa appeared, she refused to tell him about it and said that she would not disclose where it was buried because she was cold and naked and could make no use of the clothes that had been buried with her since they had not been consumed by the fire. She said that the evidence for the truth of her claim was that Periandros had placed his loaves in a cold oven. When her response was reported to Periandros, he found her token of its truth credible, for he had engaged in intercourse with Melissa’s corpse. As soon as he heard the message, he made a proclamation announcing that all Corinthian women were to go to the sanctuary of Hera; and so they went there dressed in their finest clothes as though to attend a festival. Periandros had posted his bodyguards in ambush, and now he had the women stripped, both the free women and the servants alike. Then he gathered their clothes together and, taking them to a pit in the ground, said a prayer to Melissa and burned all the clothes completely. After doing that, he sent to consult Melissa a second time, and her ghost now told him the place where his guest-friend had deposited the treasure."

Talking about having a bun in the oven....

EDIT: Oh, I forgot about message authentication with the afterlife. That's really interesting too!

Ghost stories are actually pretty common in Roman literature, they're something of a feature of most types of epic poetry. Gotta have that ghostly warning and all that. So while it's not strictly historical (or technically a ghost story by our standards, although in antiquity as now the line between all these nasty ghoulish stories is pretty thin) Lucan's description of the witch Erictho's reanimation of a dead soldier is a wonderful passage of the Pharsalia. It's probably the most exaggerated and almost farcical depiction of witchcraft in Latin literature, yet it's so hauntingly horrible. Unfortunately it takes up a good chunk of Book 6 of the Pharsalia, so I can't excerpt more than a tiny bit here (read Book 6 for the rest!). I'll be good and skip most of the actual ritual straight to the incantation itself and the interview with the dead soldier. I'll even break my usual rule of always quoting the Latin or Greek and translating, since it's a rather lengthy passage. This is on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, as the witch Erictho summons the ghost of a dead soldier to tell Sextus Pompey what the outcome of his father's battle will be (using Kline's translation--Lucan's quite a complicated poet, so unfortunately a great deal is lost, but hey, what are you gonna do):

With this, foaming at the mouth, she raised her head/to find the shade of the unburied dead close beside her./It feared the lifeless corpse, the loathsome confinement/of its former prison; it shrank from entering the gaping/breast, the flesh and innards ruined by the mortal wound./Oh wretched ghost, iniquitously robbed of death’s final/gift, that is: to die no more! Erictho marvelled that fate/could be delayed so, and enraged by the dead she lashed/the inert corpse with a live serpent, and through the clefts/where the earth had been split by her spells she growled/like a dog at the shades below and shattering the silence/of their realm, cried: ‘Tisiphone and Megaera, unheeding/of my voice, will you not drive the unhappy spirit with/your cruel whips from the void of Erebus? Or shall I/summon you by your secret names, Hounds of Hell, and/render you helpless in the light above; there to keep you/from graves and funerals; banish you from tombs, drive/you from urns of the dead. And you, Hecate, all pale/and withered in form, who paint your face before you/visit the gods above, I will show them you as you are,/and prevent you altering your hellish form. I shall speak/aloud about that food which confines Proserpine beneath/the vast weight of earth above, by what compact she loves/the gloomy king of darkness, what defilement she suffered/such that you Ceres would not recall her. I shall burst your/caves asunder, Ruler of the Underworld, and admit light/instantly to blast you. Will you obey me? Or shall I call/on one at the sound of whose name earth ever quakes/and trembles, who views the Gorgon’s head without its/veil, who lashes the cowering Fury with her own whip,/who dwells in Tartarus beyond your sight, for whom you/are the gods above, who swears by Styx while perjuring/himself.’ Instantly the clotted blood grew warm, heating/the livid wounds, coursing through veins and extremities/of the limbs. The vital organs, stirred, thrilled in the cold/flesh; and a new life stealing through the numbed innards/contested with death. Each limb quivered, sinews strained,/and the dead man rose, not limb by limb, but bounding up,/swiftly, and at once standing erect. His mouth gaped wide,/his eyes opened, not with the aspect of one living as yet,/but already half-alive. Pallor and rigidity remaining, he/was dazed by his restoration to this world. And the fettered/mouth uttered no sound: a voice and tongue were granted/him but only for reply. ‘Speak as I command,’ the witch/cried, ‘and great will be your reward, for if you speak true/I shall render you immune to Thessalian arts for all time;/I will burn your body on such a pyre and with such fuel,/with such Stygian chanting, that your spirit shall be deaf/to all sorcerers’ spells. Let it be worth that to live again:/and once I again grant you death no herb or spell shall/break your long Lethean sleep. Riddling prophecies may/suit the priests and tripods of the gods; but you must let/any man who seeks truth from the shades, brave enough/to approach the oracles of fierce death, depart in certainty./Do not begrudge this, I pray: give acts a name and place,/yield a voice through which fate may reveal itself to me.’/Then she cast a spell that gave the shade power to know/all that she asked. The sad flesh spoke, its tears flowing:/‘Summoned from the high bank of the silent river, I saw/nothing of the Fates’ mournful spinning, but this I was/able to learn from the host of shades: that savage strife/stirs the Roman ghosts, impious war shatters the peace/of the infernal regions. The great Romans, from diverse/sides, came from Elysian realms and gloomy Tartarus./They made clear what fate intends. The blessed dead/wore sorrowful faces. I saw the Decii, father and son,/lives purified in battle, Camillus and Curius, weeping;/and Sulla railing against you, Fortune. Scipio grieved/that his unhappy scion should fall on Libyan soil; Cato/the Censor, a still fiercer enemy of Carthage mourned/the death his descendant would prefer to slavery. Among/all the pious shades I saw only you, Brutus, rejoicing,/you, Rome’s first consul after the tyrants were deposed./But threatening Catiline, snapped and broke his chains,/and was exulting, with fierce Marius and bare-armed/Cethegus; and I saw Drusus the demagogue and rash/legislator, joyful, and the Gracchi, the greatly daring./Hands, bound by eternal links of steel in Dis’s prison,/clapped with delight, and the wicked sought the plains/of the blessed. The lord of that bloodless realm threw/wide his pallid realm, and with steep jagged cliffs/and harsh steel for chains prepared his punishment/for the victorious. Sextus, take consolation in this:/the dead look to welcome your father and his house/to a place of peace, keeping a bright region of their/realm for them. Let no short-lived victory trouble/you: cometh the hour that makes all generals equal./You proud, with your high hearts, hasten to die,/then descend from so pitiful a grave to trample/on the ghosts of the deified Romans. By whose/grave the Nile or by whose the Tiber will flow,/is in question, yet the conflict of generals/only settles their place of burial: of your own fate/seek nothing, the fates will tell you without my/saying, since your father, Sextus, a surer prophet/will tell you all in the land of Sicily, though even/he is unsure of where to summon you to, or what/to warn you of, what regions, what climes he ought/to order you to avoid. Fear Europe, Africa, and Asia/wretched house! Fortune divides your graves among/the continents you triumphed over. O ill-fated ones,/finding nowhere in the world safer than Pharsalia!’/So ending his prophecy, he stood there sorrowful/with silent face, ready to die again. Herbs and magic/spells were once more needed before the cadaver/could fall, since death having exerted all its power/once, could not reclaim that spirit itself. Then/the witch built a tall pyre of wood; and the dead/man approached the fire. Erictho left him to stretch/out on the burning pile, allowing him to die at last./She accompanied Sextus to his father’s camp as/the sky took on the hue of dawn, but at her order/night held back day producing a veil of darkness/for them till they set foot in safety among the tents.