GREEK GHOSTS

One of the oldest ghost stories in the world comes from Ancient Greece!  In the hills outside the city of Athens there was a village.  It was big and airy, and had wonderful courtyard with potted trees and a fountain.  But no one lived in it for long. 


At night, tenants used to hear the rattling of chains in the corridor outside their bedroom.  It went on from sundown to sun-up. Sometimes they could a loud wailing too.  It sounded like a man in pain.  Nobody dared leave their room at night, in case they bumped into ghost.


Then one night a guest looking for the bathroom bumped into the horrible ghost on the landing.  She got such a fright she died on the spot.  After that no one wanted to live in the villa in the hills, and the owner shut it up.


He got so worried about the house falling into disrepair, he agreed to let a student live in it for free.  The very first night the lad was there, he heard the howling and rattling of chains.  Instead of hiding in his room, the student went out into he corridor and, right on the spot where the old lady had died, he saw the figure of a man with a huge beard, bent double.  His feet were tied together with enormous chains so he had to shuffle to move.


The student stood very still and watched the ghost hobble right past him.  He followed it down the stairs and out into the courtyard where the fountain was tinkling again.  The ghost stopped near an olive tree in a huge pot.  It stamped on the ground with its left foot and then disappeared.


In the morning, the student dragged the potted tree aside.  The flagstones under it where spattered with what looked like dried blood.  The student prized them up with an axe and, buried in the soil below, found the remains of a skeleton.  Its legs were tied up in chains.  Who knows who the old man could have been in his life?  Perhaps an old slave, perhaps an old slave who'd made his master angry, or a poor old relative nobody wanted to care for  The student had no idea, but he knew what he had to do. 


He fetched the landlord and a priest from the local temple.  Together, the three of them dug up all the bones and gave them a proper burial in the local graveyard.  At last, the soul of the man in chains was at rest, and the villa in the hills of Athens was free of its ghost.