This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Stories of wandering spirits and the restless dead were common in the Middle Ages. These ghostly encounters were recorded in a wide variety of medieval literature.
Medieval ghost stories combined folklore traditions with religious doctrine. The widespread belief in purgatory—a place where souls were cleansed of sin before entering heaven—helped fuel the belief in ghosts. Spirits of the departed were thought able to return, exhorting the living to pray for them and make amends on their behalf to aid their passage through purgatory.
As a result, medieval ghost stories often contained a strong moral and religious message. Historians have long been fascinated by a series of 12 ghost stories written down in the early years of the 15th century at Byland Abbey, a Cistercian monastery in north Yorkshire. They recorded a bizarre and eclectic array of ghosts, featuring shape-shifting spirits, miracle stories and the walking dead, who crept up on the living.
These tales were clearly intended to scare people. They referred to the "terrors of the night" and to spirits rising from their graves to "disturb and terrify villagers." One graphically described a woman sinking her hand into a spirit's flesh as if it were rotten and insubstantial. Some of those who encountered these spirits were even said to have been hurt or fallen "ill and languished for many days" afterward.
Yet the primary aim of most of the ghosts was not to physically harm the living. In one story, a spirit threw a man over a hedge but then caught him on the other side so he did not get hurt. Instead, ghosts most often sought the help of the living.
In one of the stories, two men were walking in a field when suddenly one fled "in great terror" as the other man was "left struggling with a spirit who badly tore his clothes." The man managed to "conjure" the ghost—a vital step enabling the living and dead to communicate. The ghost then confessed that he had been excommunicated for stealing silver spoons. He begged the man to restore the spoons and request absolution on his behalf, which he duly did.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
