History
At one time, belief in an afterlife and in ghosts was nearly universal and unquestioned. It was widely held that the soul was responsible for animating the body and that the soul was an exact reproduction of the body in every feature, right down to the clothing. This belief can be seen in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, among other ancient sources, wherein souls of deceased persons are seen as they would have been in life. Another widely held belief was that ghosts consisted of a misty material. This could possibly be due to the fact that the soul was believed to be “the person within the person” and seen as the breath (visible as a mist in colder weather). Stories of ghosts are found in many ancient cultures. The Chinese philosopher Mo Tzu (BC 470- 391) mentioned ghosts in his writings. The Hindu Garuda Purana also contains information about ghosts. The second book of Samuel in the Old Testament contains the story of the witch of Endor and the ghost of Samuel. Pliny the Younger (AD 62- 113) in Athens, Greece recorded one of the earliest examples of the traditional ghost story.
In the 16th and 17th centuries, the Roman Catholic Church believed the spirits in purgatory could gain permission to revisit the earth. This supposition was vehemently denied by Protestants, both the idea of purgatory and the idea of ghosts. The Protestants posited that there was no purgatory and that “ghosts” were the work of the devil and his legions meant to lead people astray. This position is still held by some fundamentalist Protestants today.
The belief in ghosts fell out of favor in educated circles in the 18th century during the rise of reason and scientific theory. However, science could not answer all questions or answer all human needs. The belief in ghosts regained wide spread acceptance again in the 19th century with the rise of Spiritualism.
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