Around the world and throughout our entire written history, humanity has believed that the dead can return to the land of the living, even if only for a short time. Through ancient texts and archaeological research, we can trace how people long ago understood hauntings, feared the unburied, and tried to keep the dead at rest.

In this Halloween special, discover just a few of the stories of ghosts, revenants, vampires, and other restless dead from ancient to medieval sources. From the oldest texts in the world in Ancient Mesopotamia that speak of the ghosts that walked among the living, to the first Classical story to identify necromancy in Ancient Greece, to the Norse sagas of heroes defeating terrifyingly strong draugr, and the origins of vampires in Slavic lore. Explore archaeological discoveries of graves referred to as "deviant" or "anti-vampire" burials from Greek and Slavic cemeteries where the dead were physically stopped from rising again.

These ancient tales of the dead also reveal what the living feared, what they valued, and how they coped with loss.

Offline works cited:

• D. Karakantza, Efimia, Alexandros Velaoras, and Marion Meyer. 2025. Ancient Necropolitics: Maltreating the Living, Abusing the Dead in Greek Antiquity. BRILL.
• Gardela, Leszek. Gardeła L. 2015. Vampire Burials in Medieval Poland. An Overview of Past Controversies and Recent Reevaluations, Lund Archaeological Review 21, 107-126.
• Sulosky Weaver, Carrie Lynn. 2022. Marginalised Populations in the Ancient Greek World: The Bioarchaeology of the Other. Edinburgh University Press
• Wypustek, Andrzej. Sorcery Among Powerless Corpses. An Interpretation of the ‘Restless Dead’ in Greek Curses, Imprecations and Verse Inscriptions. The Wisdom of Thoth. Magical Text in Ancient Mediterranean Civilisations, 121-129. Archaeopress.

Links

• See photos related to episode topics on Instagram
• Loving the macabre lore? Treat your host to a coffee!
• Free English Translation of The Odyssey by Homer - Project Gutenberg
• Greek Phasmata (Ghosts) by Greek Myth Comix
• Video: Mesopotamian Ghost Busting with Dr. Irving Finkel
• Open Access Article: Apotropaic Practices and the Undead A Biogeochemical Assessment of Deviant Burials in Post-Medieval Poland
• Open Access Article: The Living and the Dead in Slavic Folk Culture Modes of Interaction between Two Worlds

Transcripts

For transcripts of this episode head over to: https://archpodnet.com/tpm/25

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