Origins of Modern Ghost Stories

A fire crackles on a cool autumn night, its embers glowing as a beacon to the ghost stories of apparitions crossing into our realm. Around the circle, friends gather and venture into the most twisted corner of their minds. Local legends and folklore about ladies in white wandering lonely highways or fiendish entities guarding ominous bridges are recanted. They all laugh and carry on as the tales they tell grow more horrendous, ignorant of the true ghost stories that may have spawned these haunting myths. 

The ghost stories of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are spectacles, pieces of consumable entertainment designed to draw laughter and shock from desensitized masses. That wasn’t always the case, though. There was a time when haunting sagas were either raw and horrifying or cautionary fables.

Even before the works of Shirley Jackson and Henry James tormented readers, ghost stories took form in legendary epics and ancient musings of long-since-vanished civilizations. Hear modernized stories spun from the themes of these haunting compositions and explore real ghostly legends on a US Ghost Adventures ghost tour in your state.

What Is The First Modern Ghost Story?

The origins of the modern ghost story tend to point to an early 19th-century short narrative written by Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott. Published in time for Christmas 1828 in the “The Keepsake for MDCCCXXIX” annual publication, “The Tapestried Chamber” is brief but effective. 

It captures many of the elements that have carried throughout the evolution of the ghost story: a grizzly and corpselike figure, a hapless victim, and a grim discovery confirming the reader’s every fear.    

How Old Are Ghost Stories?

Considering what pops into mind when someone asks, “Do you know a good ghost story?” It’s not unfathomable that many people don’t know just how old the concept is. While the first modern ghost story was a 19th-century work, civilizations long gone were the true first crafters of spectral tales—at least, so says Irving Finkel, the British Museum’s Middle Eastern curator. 

Finkel’s exploration of ancient ghost stories stems from a tablet acquired by the museum in the 19th century. Though it surfaced centuries ago, the tablet only became of public interest when Finkel realized society had such a narrow idea of spiritual history. 

According to the curator, the tablet depicts a shackled male spirit being led to the underworld by a young woman. The story behind who the phantom may be is up for interpretation. Still, one thing Finkel notes is that ghosts of ancient Mesopotamia weren’t the horrifying fiends they tend to be depicted as today. Instead, they were sympathetic as it was believed they were being kept from their eternal slumber.

The mysterious tablet is just one example of ancient tales of life after death, and it isn’t even the only Mesopotamian piece to touch on the topic.

Ancient Spirits in The Epic of Gilgamesh

Possibly even older than the British Museum’s find are the tablets scribed with the “Epic of Gilgamesh.” The Mesopotamian saga isn’t inherently a ghost story, as it follows the titular Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, and his unlikely kinship with Enkidu, the man sent to stop the oppression of the Uruk people. However, its themes border on the spiritual, particularly after Enkidu’s death.

When Enkidu returns to the realm of the living, he emerges from the underworld with a vivid memory of an unusual plane of existence. Though the text is said to contest it, many experts believe that Enkidu must be a ghost. He clearly dies of an illness early in the epic. 

Scholarly interpretations are further supported by Enkidu’s accounts of the dark dimension of the afterlife.

Athenodorus Canaanites and the First Haunted House 

Known as fanciful storytellers, it’s no surprise that one of history’s earliest ghost stories would come from a Roman author. Pliny the Younger is best known today for the Epistulae, or a collection of letters he wrote to his friends. 

Though the letters mostly discussed important events like the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, one tells the story of Athenodorus Canaanites, a 1st-century Stoic philosopher, and his encounter with a rather persistent spirit.

In Pliny’s recount, the philosopher sought accommodations in Athens, eventually agreeing to purchase a curiously inexpensive large home. If you’re familiar with modern ghost stories, you can guess the events that unfolded after Athenodorus moved in. 

Though warned of the home’s spectral inhabitant, the philosopher ignored the locals, only to be met with the truth behind the rumors during his first night. The philosopher was visited by an elderly spirit in chains. 

The ghost, desperate for attention, bothered his new housemate until Anthenodorus finally heeded the calls for attention and followed the old apparition out to the courtyard. When it reached a specific spot, the ghost vanished. 

The following morning, at Athenodorus’s urging, local authorities dug in that same spot and uncovered the remains of a man locked in chains.

The 18th Century and Gothic Horror

Though Pliny’s letter is among Rome’s more popular ghostly tales, plays like Plautus’ “Mostellaria” hinged on the idea of a haunted house, a concept that seemed to stem from Roman writings. However, ghost stories morphed throughout the centuries, eventually leaving behind early Roman tellings. 

Through the Dark Ages, ghosts took on a more sinister appearance as the Catholic Church likened them to demons and posed encounters with these fiends as scary, true stories to warn against sinful acts. Tales of fictional spirits tapered off in favor of religious passages that spoke of purgatory and the villainy of demonic entities. 

By the 18th century, we can see the early makings of the modern scary story. Gothic horror took shape as a menacing evolution of the ghostly compositions of Roman authors. At the root of these classic stories were dark and grim themes, often revolving around murder and mystery. Though they bordered the line of common ghost stories of today, there was often a living presence behind the machinations core to the narrative’s darkest corners.

A key work of Gothic literature is Horace Walpole’s “The Castle of Otranto” (1764). An underlying presence thins the fabric of reality and ultimately makes itself known at the story’s climax, but it’s still the darkness within man that’s responsible for the blood spilled. 

Elements of Gothic horror are still prevalent in modern ghost stories. Often up for debate is the 19th-century holiday horror classic, “A Christmas Carol,” within which Charles Dickens summons terrifying visions from beyond. That’s jumping ahead a little, though, as we’ve still yet to touch on the crux behind the modern ghost story.

Spiritualism and the Development of the Modern Ghost Story   

The Romans and Sir Walter Scott may have laid the foundation for what makes a ghost story, but the Spiritualist movement of the 19th and 20th centuries tends to get credit for the belief in ghosts as intelligent entities capable of interacting with the world around them. 

At the forefront of this movement, spinning their own stories of lost souls, were Kate, Margaret, and Leah Fox. After moving into a new home in Hydesville, NY, with their father, Kate, and Margaret allegedly began speaking with the spirit of a murdered peddler through rappings. Whether the pair ever actually connected with a specter in their new home is up for debate, but regardless, it was the catalyst for their rise to infamy as bunco artists who held fake seances. 

While the sisters were deemed frauds, their influence spread throughout the United States and Great Britain. From their trickery, Spiritualism eventually came to rise, and with that came the common depiction of what a ghost is. 

As spiritualism grew more popular, its influence could be seen in the works of great authors. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of Sherlock Holmes, wrote one of his first ghost stories in 1883 for the London Society periodical. Its release came only one year after the Society for Psychical Research, later responsible for the Committee on Haunted Houses, was founded in London.

The rest, as they say, is haunted history. Classic works like “Haunting of Hill House,” “The Turn of the Screw,” “The Shining,” and “The Woman in Black” all capture the essence of the unspoken greats that paved the way for the modern ghost story.

Experience the Modern Ghost Story

Whether you believe Sir Walter Scott was the purveyor of the modern ghost story or the roots dig back to the earliest civilizations, one thing likely remains true: You actively seek out these frightening tales and other true scary stories.

Why we love ghost stories is a discussion for another time, but it’s evident that the appreciation for anecdotes of local apparitions and yarns of haunted houses is nothing new. The structure and purpose of the stories may have changed, but the audience has remained engrossed in the unusual and the unknown. 

Our ghost tours in cities nationwide are ripe with local legends and real scary stories that lift the veil between realms. For even more ghostly history and to learn more about the haunts in your state, be sure to read our blog and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.