When did humans first start believing in ghosts and spirits? Maybe the question more important is why did they believe in these things? It doesn’t seem like our closest relatives chimpanzees have any thoughts about spirits or ghosts so why do we? Is believing in ghosts a part of evolution? Supposedly evolution improves things, corrects mistakes and makes a better life form. We are assuming evolution actually takes place and that it is not just a bunch of hogwash fed to us by scientists who suspect it may not be true, but are too scared for their jobs to admit this. Where did the idea come from humans have an immortal soul? It seems to be as old as the oldest cultures on earth and could even date back to some of the early cave dwellers. Some people give credit to the ancient Egyptians as being the first to believe this, but I believe we haven’t gone back near far enough if this is what we think.

When it comes to the first ever reported ghost sightings some people claim it is in the first book of Samuel in the Bible. Saul goes to a medium and asks her to conjure up the deceased Samuel and she does and Samuel appears in the form of an old man covered with a mantle. Lately many people have been taking the Bible text as history since many of the places cited in the Bible are being found. Does this mean everything mentioned in the Bible actually happened? Perhaps  or perhaps not. There have been a lot of very old accounts of ghosts being seen. The ancient Greeks seem to be very concerned about ghosts and so do the ancient Egyptians. In ancient Greece a man named Pausanius wrote about a ghost sighting in 150 A.D. The sighting he spoke about was said to have taken place in 490 BC. He talks about an area where men were attacked by ghosts and their horses whinny and men fight, but he goes on to say the ghosts don’t get angry with anyone who was forced to go there against their will.

One thing to be considered is in the ancient world, even the sighting of one person’s dead relatives was usually not a welcomed sight. Why wouldn’t a person be happy to see a deceased relative again? People believed the dead went to their own land and they were not supposed to come back and they were not to be seen again until someone died. It was felt the only time a ghost would appear is if there was a problem with the person who saw the ghost and the person had the duty to find out what the problem was and solve it. The ancient Mesopotamians and peoples of the ancient near East all had ghost stories. A Gidim was thought to be created when a person died and it had the memory and personality of that person. When you died you traveled to the netherworld and your relatives were expected to make offerings to ease your conditions and if they didn’t it was thought the ghost sent illness and all sorts of misfortune on you. Offerings for the dead were a duty and had to be carried out or else.

The ancient Babylonians believed the same thing about offerings, but they also believed if you died and were set on fire in the desert you would have no ghost. They also believed physical ailments could happen just from seeing or hearing a ghost. There were certain cures for these physical ailments which involved offerings, libations, ritual burial and many other things. Many diseases were blamed on gods and ghosts. It was thought ghosts interacted with the living.

One of the most amazing things in history is how the Romans adopted much of the Greek religion and also Greek art. It was thought to be quite an honor for a Roman to have a Greek slave teach their children. The Romans also adopted the idea of ghosts. In ancient Rome it was thought that ghosts would appear only at certain times of night. Ghosts were spoken about in many ancient writings even though they may have been works of fiction. An example of this was the ghost of Elpenor in the Odyssey XI and also the ghost of Patroclus in the Iliad XX111. This shows the ancients had the same idea of what ghosts were as some people do today. While belief in ghosts was prominent in many ancient societies, if not all, modern people didn’t pay too much attention to this belief until the Victorian Age, when the belief in ghosts seems to have reached its peak. There were probably more mediums around in Victorian times and the beginning of the 20th century than there ever were before or after. When the famous magician Houdini’s mother died he sought out mediums, but found everyone he went to was a trickster and he made a lot of enemies by debunking them.

Here are some Victorian ghost sightings. A young woman named Kate Morgan checked into the Hotel del Coronado in 1892. She was very ill at the time and it was believed she was depressed from an abortion she had performed on herself. She became very distraught and her body was found on the steps leading to the beach with a single bullet hole in her temple and the gun nearby. That was not the end of things, but the beginning. From that point on the hotel lights flickered on and off at times, guests heard strange noises and claimed they saw the ghostly appearance of a woman in Victorian garb wandering through the halls.

Some of you might be surprised to learn that the ghost of Abraham Lincoln has been spotted by many visitors and residents of the White House. It is said Lincoln had a dream before he was assassinated and saw himself being shot and dying. Some of the famous people who have seen Lincoln’s ghost include a first lady, Grace Coolidge, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Winston Churchill. Churchill claims he was getting out of his bathtub and walking into the living quarters when he saw Lincoln standing in front of the fireplace and claims he said good evening Mr. President you seem to have me at a disadvantage after which Lincoln smiled softly and disappeared.