Tucked away in the mountains of Tuscany, outside Lucca, lies a lonely little wood called Petraplana. In our day (c.1425), many hermits of great and deserved spiritual renown made their home there. One of them, named Francis, has such a reputation for his piety and wisdom that travelers from across Europe made the trip just to seek him out. No less a man than the bishop of Mallorca had sought him out to ask an anxious question: "Has the Antichrist been born?"

Francis, who always guarded his words carefully, did not answer.

The bishop came back a second day. "Has the Antichrist been born?" Again, no response.

On the third day, the bishop again received no response. "Look," he finally said in exasperation, "the reason I'm asking is this. A certain friar of the Order of Preachers from Lombardy was preaching across the Kingdom of Aragon. And with this story he stirred the people to anxiety and restlessness. Back home, he told me, a man dressed in white had sought him out specifically to say that he had come from the mountains of Lucca to relay the message that the Antichrist had come into the world. So I ask you, the most pious hermit of all, has the Antichrist been born?"

Francis turned slowly and considered the bishop, considered his actions. At length, he spoke. And this was his story:

~~

Ten years ago, at time of the Council of Constance, I was a simple hermit here at Petraplana. One night, a stranger suddenly appeared at the door to my cell, much like you. "Francis!" he exclaimed. "It is so good to see you, my old friend!" I was quite certain I had never seen this man in my life. Nevertheless, I continued the jest and greeted him as a brother, invited him to stay among us hermits for a spell.

And, my lord, you should have heard his words! With great eloquence he spoke of the mysteries of theology, guidance towards the highest perfection based on his own experience. And we did marvel at him. But we marveled even further when we invited him to sing Mass with us. And at the time of the general confession, when we all spoke its litany, he stayed silent. "But don't you fear for your soul?" we asked afterwards.

"I cannot, will not lie," he said. "And if I confessed to sin I would be lying, because I have never sinned in my life."

Those words discomfited us, and I informed him that the Gospel according to John asserts that if we say we have no sin we are deceived, because all men sin. "Those words," said he, "were written for you and not for me." And a certain queasiness came over me, a lightheadedness, as he and I walked, almost without my knowing, down a secluded path further into the mountains.

A low thunder in the distance grew louder and louder, and suddenly a herd of cattle appeared moving towards us, leaving no room on the path. But then the man commanded the cattle to stop.

They did! These wild, untamed beasts stood motionless on the path. The man saw my fear and entreated me to go pet the cattle, see that they posed no danger. I stood fixed to the spot. "Okay," he said, "do you wish them to be gone?" When I nodded, he made the Sign of the Cross and ordered the cattle to depart. As they had stopped, so now they left.

We, too, turned back towards my cell. But his conversation, while no less wondrous, was different. He spoke truths of the faith and (what seemed to me like) truths of my life and inner spirit, but he mixed in words of danger and error with the sweet. As we arrived, I begged him to tell me who he really was.

"By origin I am a Briton," he said at once. "But I had died and been justly damned. The fires of hell revived in me the soul that now animates this body. I have come now to judge the world, and then I shall lead the demons to salvation."

At first I laughed--another jest, surely?--but later I felt compelled to counter his story with truth from Scripture, which met what I felt was acceptance.

Days later, we were walking in the mountains again. At the sun's brightest, he suddenly stopped, threw back his head, and with eyes sealed open he stared directly into the sun. "Justice without mercy!" He screamed. And again: "Justice without mercy! Justice without mercy!" From his lips began to pour forth prophecy against the bishops and popes, the masters of theology in the universities, the heretics in the east. The Council of Constance was too little too late: "O hypocrites, your destruction is at hand!" He turned towards me with blazing eyes and addressed me by name. "Francis, within five years' time I shall obtain the tongues of all languages, and come to Rome humbly riding a donkey. I shall be raised up as pope."

Again I supposed, I knew, this was a jest. And I played along again, for six days I played along, but my spirit was nevertheless troubled. When he noticed this, in the afternoon of the sixth day while he was drinking a cup of wine that he had mixed with salt, he stopped our conversation and began making incantations. The spirits of heaven he named, and the spirits of hell, and he made the Sign of the Cross again and again over the wine. "If there be sin in me, take me to hell!" At last he invoked Lucifer's name: "If there be sin in me, take me to hell!"

But with those words--the expression on his face--I was so filled with horror at this changed semblance that I could not bear to look at him further.

It was little surprise, and some relief, that he chose to leave us the following morning. I prepared food and drink for him on his journey. But eventually I could not help myself: "Who are you?" I asked.

And the man, who had been quietly eating, stopped. Fear cast over his face. And then presently, it became rage. He rose to his feet. "I," he growled, "am Beelzebub." And with that he told me many admonitions, most about myself. I will not share them here because they seemed to me at the time to flatter me. Abruptly, the rage vanished from his face like water thrown onto fire. "Francis," he told me, "you hold to the good and spiritual life. Do not stray from it." And he vanished into the daylight.

~~

The bishop of Mallorca could not speak. Francis--older, wiser, and ever more resolute in the good and spiritual life, said, "Whether this man was the Antichrist, or one of his signs, I must leave to those with greater judgment. But I do not know the hermit of whom you speak.

~~ With deepest apologies to Daniel Hobbins, "Heresy, Belief, and Doubt: The Arrival of Antichrist in Fifteeth Century Italy," in 'Christianity and Culture in the Middle Ages: Essays to Honor John Van Engen,' who probably wishes I had simply copied the superior medieval version, and to my advisor, who probably wishes I had simply copied the superior medieval version in Latin.

Anyone who's read the Republic is familiar with 565d, in which Plato refers in passing to a rather odd story:

τίς ἀρχὴ οὖν μεταβολῆς ἐκ προστάτου ἐπὶ τύραννον; ἢ δῆλον ὅτι ἐπειδὰν ταὐτὸν ἄρξηται δρᾶν ὁ προστάτης τῷ ἐν τῷ μύθῳ ὃς περὶ τὸ ἐν Ἀρκαδίᾳ τὸ τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Λυκαίου ἱερὸν λέγεται; τίς; ἔφη. ὡς ἄρα ὁ γευσάμενος τοῦ ἀνθρωπίνου σπλάγχνου, ἐν ἄλλοις ἄλλων ἱερείων ἑνὸς ἐγκατατετμημένου, ἀνάγκη δὴ τούτῳ λύκῳ γενέσθαι. ἢ οὐκ ἀκήκοας τὸν λόγον; ἔγωγε.

What is the beginning of the change from protector to tyrant? It is clear, is it not, that it is when the guardian begins to act as in the legend which they tell about the temple of Zeus Lycaeus in Arcadia? Which story? he said. The one that whoever tastes the human entrails, the ones cut up with the other entrails from the other victims, it is necessary that he become a wolf. Or have you not heard the story? I have, he said.

This story was quite commonly told among the Greeks, appearing in Pausanias, and Theophrastus, with related stories being told of Lycaeon (the ancestral king of the Arcadians) by Ovid and even Clement of Alexandria. It's such a bizarre story that Walter Burkert even devoted an entire chapter of Homo Necans to it. This story of Arcadian werewolves transforming after cannibalistic ritual meals in honor of Zeus Lycaeus (whose epithet derives from an alternate ethnic term for the Arcadians but is literally "wolfy Zeus") fascinated the Greeks. Naturally, the cult did not exist outside Arcadia, and so far there has been little evidence that this ritualistic cannibalism actually took place. Arcadia was a bit like Wales to the Greeks. It was pastoral (although as far as I recall it wasn't until Virgil that bucolic poetry was explicitly set in Arcadia), it was more rugged than most of the mainland, heavily forested, and importantly it was ancient. The Arcado-Cypriot dialect, a remnant of Mycenaean Greek, survived only in Arcadia and Cyprus--traditionally the Arcadian mountains had been the stronghold against the Dorians. Weird, presumably incredibly ancient, cults and rituals persisted in Arcadia alongside its incredibly archaic dialect, and much like medieval Wales Arcadia was seen as existing in a sort of inbetween world, where the supernatural (especially Pan) often appeared in the material. Lycaon, who in Pausanias' story murdered his son to see if he could fool Zeus, was turned into a wolf as punishment. Therefore, says Pausanias, whoever partook of the hidden Man Meat at the Lycaea (the festival to wolfy Zeus) became a wolf. If he abstained from human flesh for nine years he was allowed to change back into a man. If he ate human flesh during that time, he was a wolf forever. Lots of stuff has been written about this story and the supposed cult it was related to, some of it stupid, all of it highly speculative. But werewolves are a lot more interesting that stupid Thessalian witches calling down the moon (although the bit in Lucan is pretty fire). And werewolves, or the idea of the wolf-man, appear not uncommonly in Greek literature. Homer says that Odysseus' maternal grandfather was Autolycus ("Himself a wolf"), who in Hesiod as the son of Hermes was a great thief--eventually he was caught by Sisyphus while stealing his cattle. And naturally of course the Romans had their own native wolf-man tradition, in the miraculous twins--the Lupercalia was an extremely ancient ritual

I struck out along the roads and across the fields toward the lone farmhouse built by Townsend Bishop in 1636, and in 1692 inhabited by the worthy and inoffensive old widow Rebekah Nurse, who was seventy years of age and wished no one harm. Accused by the superstitious West Indian slave woman Tituba (who belonged to the Reverend Samuel Parris and who caused the entire wave of delusion) of bewitching children, and denounced blindly by some of the hysterical children in question, Goodwife Nurse was arrested and brought to trial. Thirty-nine persons signed a paper attesting to her blameless conduct, and a jury rendered a verdict of 'not guilty'; but popular clamour led the judges to reverse the verdict (as was then possible), and on 19 July 1692 the poor grandam was hanged on Gallows Hill in Salem for a mythological crime. her remains were brought back from Salem and interred in the family burying-ground - a ghoulish place shadowed by huge pines and at some distance from the house. In 1885 a monument was erected to her memory, bearing an inscription by the poet Whittier.

As I approached the spot to which I had been directed, after passing through the hamlet of Tapleyville, the afternoon sun was very low. Soon the houses thinned out; so that on my right were only the hilly fields of stubble, and occasional crooked trees clawing at the sky. beyond a low crest a thick group of spectral boughs bespoke some kind of grove or orchard - and in the midst of this group I suddenly descried the rising outline of a massive and ancient chimney. Presently, as I advanced, I saw the top of a grey, drear, sloping roof- sinister in its distant setting of bleak hillside and leafless grove, and unmistakable belonging to the haunted edifice I sought. Another turn - a gradual ascent - and I beheld in full view the sprawling, tree-shadowed house which had for nearly three hundred years brooded over those hills and held such secrets as men may only guess. Like all old farmhouses of the region, the Nurse cottage faces the warm south and slopes low toward the north. It front on an ancient garden, where in their season gay blossoms flaunt themselves against the grim, nail-studded door and the vertical sundial above it. That sundial was long concealed by the overlaid clapboards of Gothic generations, but came to light when the house was restored to original form by the memorial society which owns it. Everything about the place is ancient - even to the tiny-paned lattice windows which open towards on hinges. The atmosphere of witchcraft days broods heavily upon that low hilltop.

My rap at the ancient door brought the caretaker's wife, an elderly unimaginative person with no appreciation of the dark glamour of the ancient scene. This family live in a lean-to west of the main structure - an addition probably one hundred years less ancient than the parent edifice. I was the first visitor of the 1923 season, and took pride in signing my name at the top of the register. Entering, I found myself in a low, dark passage whose massive beams almost touched my head; and passing on, I traversed the two immense rooms on the round floor - sombre, barren, panelled apartments with colossal fireplaces in the vast central chimney, and with occasional pieces of the plain, heavy furniture and primitive farm and domestic utensils of the ancient yeomanry. In these wide, low-pitched rooms a spectral menace broods - for to my imagination the seventeenth century is as full of macabre mystery, repression and ghoulish adumbrations as the eighteenth century is full of taste, gaeity, grace and beauty. This was a typical Puritan abode; where amdist the bare, ugly necessities of life, and without learning, beauty, culture, freedom or ornament, terrible stern-faced folk in conical hats or poke-bonnets dwelt 250 and more years ago - close to the soil and all its hideous whisperings; warped in mentality by isolation and unnatural thoughts, and shivering in fear of the Devil on autumn nights when the wind howled through the twisted orchard trees or rustled the hideous corpse-nourished pines in the graveyard at the foot of the hill. There is eldritch fascination - horrible buried evil - in these archaic farmhouses. After seeing them, and smelling the odour of centuries in their walls, one hesitates to read certain passages in Cotton Mather's strange old Magnalia after dark. After exploring the ground floor I crept up the black crooked stairs and examined the bleak chambers above. The furniture was as ugly as that below, and included a small trundle-bed in which infant Puritans were lulled to sleep with meaningless prayers and morbid hints of daemons riding the nightwind outside the small-paned lattice windows. I saw old Rebekah's favourite chair, where she used to sit and spin before the Salem magistrates dragged her to the gallows. And the sunset wind whistled in the colossal chimney, and the ghouls rattled ghastly skeletons from unseen attic rafter overhead. Though it was not supposed to be open to the public, I persuaded the caretaker to let me ascend to that hideous garret of centuried secrets. Thick dust covered everything, and unnatural shapes loomed on every-hand as the evening twilight oozed though the little bleared panes of the ancient windows. I saw something hanging from the wormy ridge-pole - something that swayed as if in unison with the vesper breeze outside, though that breeze had no access to this funereal and forgotten place - shadows ... shadows ... shadows... And I descended from that accursed garret of palaeogene arcana, and left that portentous abode of antiquity; left it and went down the hill to the graveyard under the shocking pines, where twilight showed sinister slabs and rusty bits of fallen iron fence, and where something squatted in shadow on a monument - something that made me climb the hill again, hurry shudderingly past th venerable house and descend the opposite slope to Tapleyville as night came.

• H. P. Lovecraft to Frank Belknap Long and Alfred Galpin, 1 May 1923, Selected Letters 1.221-223

There is the famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge called The Rime of the Ancient Mariner published in 1798. It was partially inspired by an event described by the English privateer George Shelvocke while sailing around Cape Horn (only a few hundred miles from the South Pole) in 1719. The first mate Simon Hatley decided to shoot an albatross that had been following the ship for several days because he believed it was a bad omen:

...nor of one sea-bird, excepting a disconsolate black albatross, who accompanied us for several days, and hovered about us as if he had lost himself, till Hatley (my second captain) concluding, in a gloomy fit, that the company of this melancholy bird brought us ill luck; resolved to destroy him, in hopes we might then have better weather, and more favorable winds than we had hitherto had to deal with in these remote tempestuous seas. (A Voyage Round The World by Way of the Great South Sea by George Shelvocke, p. 75).

Coleridge expanded on this so that after the mariner shoots the albatross, it angers the icy spirits and a ghostly ship comes with a female incarnation of Death that plays dice for their souls to punish them:

Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a DEATH? and are there two? Is DEATH that woman's mate?

Her lips were red, her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold.

The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' Quoth she, and whistles thrice.

The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark.

Then they all die except for the mariner who had shot the albatross and he is forced to look into all the dead sailor's eyes:

Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one.

The souls did from their bodies fly,— They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow!

...

The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I.

...

I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust.

...

The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they: The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away.

An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die.

Eventually the bodies get up again animated by spirits and continue working the ship:

They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise.

The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up-blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools— We were a ghastly crew.

The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me.

The mariner is scared at first but it turns out they were good spirits:

'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!' Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest:

For when it dawned—they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed.

Then there is also of course the tale of Davy Jones Locker and "Davy Jones" himself. This was actually a saying that goes back to at least the early 18th century and it's meaning was elaborated on by Tobias Smollett in a novel published in 1751:

This same Davy Jones, according to sailors, is the fiend that presides over all the evil spirits of the deep, and is often seen in various shapes, perching among the rigging on the eve of hurricanes; ship-wrecks, and other disasters to which sea-faring life is exposed, warning the devoted wretch of death and woe.

My favourite Middle English “ghost story” (in a broad sense), is John Lydgate’s Legend of Saint Austin at Compton (c.1420x40), which you can read here. It retells the miraculous involvement of Augustine of Canterbury, archbishop and converter of the Anglo-Saxons, in a tithing dispute. Lydgate’s version translates a Latin legend (sadly unpublished) from perhaps the late thirteenth century, and its account of a grisly miraculous resurrection is by no means unique in the Middle English canon; similar stories are preserved in The South English Legendary, and Saint Erkenwald. Nevertheless, Lydgate’s tailoring of this slightly unusual (if not strictly unorthodox) miracle to his favoured high style, and his rendering of an amusing exchange at the end of the story, makes Austin at Compton an interesting example of its kind.

Augustine arrives in Compton (perhaps Long Compton, Warwickshire, or Combe, Oxfordshire) in the course of his preaching and conversion, and is there sought out by the parish priest. The priest asks for his counsel in a local dispute. The lord of the village refuses to pay his tithes despite many requests from the Church, and will accept no argument that he should do so – even Scriptural law. The priest has had no choice but to excommunicate him (Lydgate in fact says he has cursed him, which could include the spookier shades of the word’s modern usage). The priest begs Augustine to intercede and find a more amicable resolution to the conflict. Augustine speaks with the lord, but it quickly becomes clear that he will not be cowed by a man of greater authority or holiness – the lord considers his property the fruits of his labour, and beyond the rights of the Church.

Later, at Mass, Augustine bids any excommunicant (again, “cursyd man”) to leaves the space of the church, and something unexpected and portentous occurs:

Present that tyme many creature,

Withoute abood or any long taryeng

Ther roos up oon out of his sepulture

Terrible of face, the peeple beholdyng,

A greet paas the chircheyeerd passyng,

The Seyntuarye bood ther a greet whyle,

Al the space the Masse was seyeng,

Feerfully afore the chirche style.

In the presence of many people at that moment, immediately and without delay, someone rose out of his sepulchre; frightful of face, in the sight of the people he flew from the churchyard at great speed and lurked beyond the cemetery for some time, the whole length of the Mass, fearsomely [or perhaps reverently/in fear] beyond the church gate.

At the urging of the people, Augustine gets his cross and holy water and with a little power-of-Christ-compels-thee persuades the corpse to speak (the dead man is explicitly a physical, rotting “corps” with “stynkyng flessh” and not a ghostly apparition). The corpse confesses that 150 years ago he was a lord of the Britons, and he too paid no tithes in his life, was therefore excommunicated and never made restitution. He describes the torments he has thus received in Purgatory:

This hundryd yeer I have enduryd peyne,

And fifty ovir by computacioun;

Greet cause have I to moorne and to compleyne

In a dirk prisoun of desolacioun

Mony firy flawmys, voyd of remission.

This hundred and fifty years past I have suffered pains; I have had great cause to lament, in a dark and desolate prison, surrounded by flame, without forgiveness.

Augustine and the villagers forget their fear and take pity on the corpse, weeping “as if they would melt into water”. Augustine then finds a somewhat unconventional solution to both Compton’s problems at once; he goes to the tomb of the priest who cursed the dead lord, and raises his corpse too! He hands him a scourge, and asks him to give the dead lord his penance. In the sight of the whole village, the scene plays out:

Oo ded man assoiled hath anothire

(An unkouth caas merveilous texpresse),

Oon knelith doun, requerith of the tothire

Pleyn remissioun of oold cursidnesse;

Bete with a scorge, took it with meeknesse,

Hopyng that Jhesus shuld his soule save.

Seyn Austyn bad him in hast he shuld hym dresse,

Thankyng our Lord, ageyn unto his grave.

One dead man had absolved the other – an untold wonder, marvellous to recount – one knelt down, required of the other open forgiveness of his old excommunication; beaten with a scourge, he took it with meekness, hoping [or knowing] that Jesus would save his soul. Saint Augustine told him to return to his grave, thanking the Lord.

The ancient dispute is resolved, and the dead lord returns to his tomb. The living lord, astounded by the miraculous goings on, begs forgiveness of Augustine and the living priest, pays his tithes, and follows Augustine’s teachings for the rest of his life. One more thing has to be resolved before the legend can conclude, and this is my favourite part. Augustine asks “a straunge questioun” of the dead priest, who is still hanging about (and cannot return to death without Augustine’s permission). Augustine asks him to come with him on his mission, to remain in the world of the living and aid in converting rest of the land. Amusingly, the dead priest’s response amounts to: “Erm... if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not.” He laments the mutability of the world in conventional terms, and requests to remain in meditative rest until Judgement Day, which Augustine permits.

There is of course an “orthodox” rationale for this sentiment – Lydgate has Augustine compare the dead priest’s options to the difference between the Active and Contemplative Life, and agrees that “this choys is for thy beste!” Nevertheless, Lydgate expands on this section of his source somewhat, and as an aging cleric himself (he would probably have been in at least his late fifties when he wrote Austin at Compton, and perhaps rather older) it is tempting to think that this portrait of a dead priest wanting to return to his rest is a more personal and human touch than it first seems.

A fun little tale (many of Lydgate’s saints’ legends are unfortunately rather duller), and interesting in its moves between the initial awe at the risen corpse, to sorrow at its plight, to actively raising another corpse so that the dead can sham the actions of the living, to the unusual touch with the question offered to the dead priest. Such encounters with the risen dead, and with the spectre of one’s own death, are a fairly common feature of later medieval literature. Lydgate himself was probably the first person to translate that spookiest of medieval encounters with Death, the Danse Macabre, into English. Another popular one is The Three Living and Three Dead, discussed with some very evocative images from the BL here. All are more explicitly concerned with self-reflection than with frights, but there does often seem to be an at least aesthetic interest in the gorily supernatural.