Medieval Ghost Stories

by Andrew Joynes

  The warrior’s hall resounded. There was panic among all the Danes, the dwellers in the stronghold, nobles and the heroes every one. Both the raging guardians of the house were furious; the building rang again. Then was it a great wonder that the wine-hall stood fast against the mighty warriors – that the fair earthly dwelling did not fall to the ground. Yet it was made firm by iron clamps, inside and out, forged with curious art. There, where these foe-men fought, many a mead-bench adorned with gold, started from the floor, as I have heard. Until then the wise men of the Scyldings [Hrothgar’s Danes] never thought that any man could shatter it in any way, splendid and horn-bedecked as it was, or ruin it by craft, unless perhaps the embrace of fire should consume it with flame.

  A din arose, strange and mighty. A horrible fear came to the North Danes, to every one who heard the shrieking from the hall – heard the adversary of God chant his grisly lay, his song of defeat, a prisoner of hell wailing over his wound. He who was in might the strongest of men in this life’s day held him fast! By no means would the defender of nobles allow the murderous intruder to escape alive – he did not consider Grendel’s life to be of value to any people. Then many a noble of Beowulf’s company brandished the well-tried weapon of his ancestors – they wished to protect the life of their lord, their famous chief, if they could. They did not know, brave-minded warriors, when they took part in the contest, and thought to hew at him on every side, hunting out his life, that no war-blade on earth, not the best of iron swords, could touch the cursed foe, who used enchantments against conquering weapons and every sort of blade.

  In this world he was to make a wretched departure from life – the cast-out spirit was to journey far into the power of fiends. Then he who for so long had been active in crimes, in wickedness of heart, against mankind: he, the rebel against God, discovered that his body and frame could help him no more, for the bold kinsman of Hygelac had him by the hand. While each of them lived, each was hateful to the other. The horrible monster suffered deadly hurt. On his shoulder gaped a mighty wound, with sinews springing asunder and tendons torn apart. Glory in the fight was granted to Beowulf. Grendel, sick and dying, had to flee thence into the fen-fastness and seek out his joyless dwelling. He knew full well that the end of his life had come, the number of his days …

  Source: Adapted from Beowulf and the Finnsburg Fragment: A Translation into Modern English Prose, J.R. Clark Hall, London (Swan Sonnenschein) 1911, pp. 13–15 and pp. 43–8.

  The ‘History of the Danes’ of Saxo Grammaticus

  Not a great deal is known about Saxo Grammaticus, who seems to have been actively working on his history from about 1185 to 1208: the term Grammaticus means ‘man of letters’, and was applied to a ‘certain Zealander by birth, named Saxo’ by a fifteenth-century editor of his work. Saxo himself, however, tells us in the preface to his Gesta Danorum that he wrote his history at the behest of the powerful archbishop of Lund at the end of the twelfth century. He says the archbishop prevailed on ‘one of the least of his followers’ to assemble a history which would record the glories of Danish history, and chronicle the deeds of Danish warriors. The first nine books of the work are dedicated to legendary ‘prehistory’, and Saxo says that he assembled much of this material from the heroic poems of the Norse people and the antiquarian material gathered by Icelandic monks, whom he praises for their scholarship. His story of the foster-brothers who conclude a pact which will endure beyond death itself is to be found in a slightly different form in the Icelandic Egils Saga ok Ásmundar, where the Viking hero Asmund’s dead foster-brother is a Tartar prince named Aran. Although the notion of a pact against death which does not have the intended outcome has similarities to William of Malmesbury’s story of the Two Clerks of Nantes, the details in Saxo’s horrifying account draw primarily on the funerary practices of the Scandinavian world. The burial of horse and dog with their aristocratic master (in the Egils Saga a hawk is buried in the tomb as well, to be devoured along with the other animals); the depiction of the tomb as an underground domain which living men enter at their peril; and the gruesome evocation of the dead man coming to monstrous life each night and ravening after the flesh of his companion: in such vivid details there is both consistency with saga accounts of the activities of draugar and revenants, and basis enough for the wounded Asmund’s reiterated assertion, in the verses which conclude the passage, that ‘every living man fades once he is among the dead’.

  The Burial of the Foster-Brothers

  Book V

  Meanwhile Asvith died of an illness, and was buried with ihis horse and dog in a cavern in the earth. And Asmund, because of their oath of friendship, had the courage to be buried with him, with food being placed in the grave for him to eat.

  Now at this time, Erik [the leader of an invading Swedish army] had crossed the uplands and happened to draw near the barrow of Asvith; and the Swedes, thinking that treasures might be inside, broke the hill open with mattocks. They saw beneath them a cave which was deeper than they expected. To examine it, a man was needed who would lower himself on a hanging rope tied around his middle. One of the nimblest of the youths was chosen by lot; and Asmund, when he saw him lowered down in a basket into the grave, immediately threw him out and climbed into the basket himself. Then he gave the signal to draw him up to those above who were standing by and controlling the rope. They hauled up the basket in hope of a great treasure but when they saw the unknown figure of the man they had taken out, they were scared by his extraordinary appearance, and, thinking that the dead had come to life, they flung down the rope and ran away. For Asmund’s appearance was indeed ghastly, and his face was covered with blood.

  Asmund tried to call the men back, shouting that they were mistaken to be afraid of a living man. And when Erik saw him, he marvelled at the blood covering Asmund’s head, for Asvith the dead man had come to life each night, and in his continuous attacks upon his foster-brother had wrenched off his left ear; this had left him with a raw and unhealed wound. And when the bystanders asked Asmund how he had received such a wound, he replied:

  ‘Why do you stand aghast, you who see me colourless? For every living man fades once he is among the dead.

  Evil for the lonely man, a burden for the solitary, is found in every dwelling in this world. Helpless are they whom fate deprives of human help. The listless night of the cavern, the darkness of the ancient den, have taken all joy from my eyes and soul. The ghastly ground, the crumbling barrow, and the heavy weight of filthy things have marred my youthful grace, and drained my accustomed strength and power. Besides all this, I have wrestled with the dead, enduring the heavy burden and the grievous danger of combat. Asvith rose up and attacked me with his tearing nails, renewing with the might of hell a ghastly warfare in the midst of his own ashes.

  Why then do you stand aghast, you who see me colourless? For every living man fades once he is among the dead.

  By some strange permission of hell itself, Asvith was sent up from the world below, and with his savage teeth he attacked his fleet-footed horse and closed his terrible jaws around his hound. Then he reached out for me with his swift-slashing nails, tearing my cheek and wrenching off my ear. This is why I have such a terrible appearance, this is why the blood spurts from my ghastly wound. But the monstrous visitor did not escape unharmed: for quickly I cut off his head with my sword, and thrust a stake through his savage body.

  Why do you stand aghast, you who see me colourless? For every living man fades once he is among the dead …’

  Source: Adapted from The First Nine Books of the Danish History of Saxo Grammaticus, trans. O. Elton, London 1894, pp. 200–201. An edition of the Gesta Danorum Books I–IX, edited by H.E. Davidson and translated by P. Fisher, was published by D.S. Brewer, Cambridge 1979.

  The ‘History of the Events of England’ of William of Newburgh

  The Yorkshire canon William of Newburgh (1136–98) included in his Historia Rerum Anglicarum a collection of gruesome ghost stories – Prodigiosa, or ‘un
natural marvels’, is the way he describes them – which strongly resemble the accounts of monstrous revenants in the Scandinavian sagas. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that many parts of Britain (particularly the Scottish borders and the north of England, where William places the accounts contained in the second and third extracts from his history) were subject to Danish and Viking cultural influences. Similarly, as we have seen from Grendel’s appearance in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf, there is likely to have been a general belief in monstrous nightstalkers in Anglo-Saxon England which persisted into the later medieval period. William seems to have no doubt about the veracity of these stories, as his self-justificatory preface to the story of ‘The Hounds’ Priest’ makes clear. His accounts are noteworthy for the active part played by ordinary people in ridding their afflicted communities of the ghostly nuisances: quite as much as the clergy with their scrolls of absolution, it is the sturdy commoners with their mattocks and bonfires who are the ‘heroes’ of these stories. In this respect, as in the monstrous and corporeal nature of the ghosts which William describes, these stories have much in common with saga accounts of the dead returning to threaten the communities where they formerly dwelt.

  The Buckinghamshire Ghost

  Book V, Chap. XXII

  At this time in the county of Buckinghamshire, a most extraordinary thing happened. I was first told about it by the people of the neighbourhood, and afterwards more fully by Stephen, a venerable archdeacon of that district. A certain man died, and his wife, an honourable woman, and his family took care to bury him with full customary rites on the feast of the Lord’s Ascension. But the very next night he entered the bedchamber of his sleeping wife. She woke, greatly afraid, as he attempted to lie upon her in the marital bed. The same thing happened the next night, and on the third night the terrified woman struggled with her dead husband yet again before arranging for some of her family and neighbours to stay awake on watch with her throughout the night. When the dead man came back, he was greeted by the alarmed shouts of the watchmen, and, unable to cause any more mischief, went away. Repelled in this way by his wife, he became a nuisance to his brothers who lived in the same place, so that they, like his wife, arranged for companions to stay with them so as to fend off the danger. Still the dead man arrived each night, making as if to seize those who were sleeping, but the vigilance and strength of those on watch kept him away. Then he took to prancing among the animals in the byre and the fields around the house; this was known because of the restlessness and unusual movements of the beasts.

  The nuisance caused by the dead man’s nocturnal visits forced the entire community to set up groups of watchmen. By night every house kept vigil, with each of the villagers apprehensively waiting for his arrival. Then, in addition to these night-time revels, the ghost took to wandering by day as well, terrifying to everyone but seen by only a few in the full light of the sun (for if it met many people at a time, it was visible to only one or two of them, although the others were always aware of its presence). The terrified villagers debated as to what they should do, and having decided to take the advice of the church, they referred the whole affair to Archdeacon Stephen and his assembly. They in turn consulted the bishop of Lincoln, writing to him to seek his considered advice about such unprecedented events. The bishop was just as amazed as everybody else, but was told by some of his advisers that such things had often happened in England, and that the usual remedy (which gave comfort and reassurance to a frightened community) was to dig up the body of whichever miserable person was causing the nuisance and cremate it.

  Such a solution seemed to the bishop both unseemly and sacrilegious, and so instead he prepared a scroll of absolution and gave it to the archdeacon with the instructions that the dead man’s grave should be opened, the scroll placed on his chest, and the grave closed up again. In this way the dead man might have clear benefit from the actions of the faithful. All was done according to these instructions, and with the scroll placed upon the cadaver and the resting-place secured once more, the dead man never wandered again, and was kept from molesting and terrorising anyone else …

  The Berwick Ghost

  Book V, Chap. XXIII

  In the northern part of England a somewhat similar event occurred, equal in its prodigious nature to what we have learned was happening elsewhere at this time. At the mouth of the river Tweed lies the well-known town of Berwick, which falls under the rule of the king of Scotland. There a certain wealthy man who, as it later transpired, had been given over to sinful behaviour, died and was buried. However, with Satan’s help he kept emerging at night from his tomb and wandering here and there to the sound of loudly barking dogs. Every night he was the cause of great terror to the townspeople before his return at daybreak to the tomb. This went on for some time, so that nobody dared go out of doors after nightfall for fear that they might meet the monstrous visitor, and everybody in the town, whether of high or low degree, asked themselves what was to be done. The simpler folk of the town feared that they might accidentally run into the lifeless creature and be physically attacked; the more thoughtful were afraid that, unless something were done quickly, the air circulating around the town would become infected by the corpse and so lead to general sickness and death in the town. It was apparent to all that something had to be done, and so they brought together ten sturdy young men who dug up the offending corpse, dismembered it and burnt the pieces in a fire.

  Once this had been done, the nightly perturbations ceased and people who had seen the monstrous creature (maintaining that it moved as though with the help of Satan himself) confirmed that only when the corpse had been consumed by fire were they able to rest quietly again. Later, however, a large part of the town’s population was carried off by a rising pestilence. Although the sickness was general throughout England at this time, in no other place was it so fierce or prevalent …

  The Hounds’ Priest

  Book V, Chap. XXIV

  That the corpses of the dead, moved by some kind of spirit, leave their graves and wander around as the cause of danger and terror to the living before going back to tombs which open up to receive them, is not something which would be easily believed, were it not for the fact that there have been clear examples in our own time, with abundant accounts of such events. Nothing of the sort is reported in books of former times, which those of us who are inclined to study might meditate upon, and surely, since these ancient books recorded the everyday and matter-of-fact events of former times, they would not have been able to suppress accounts of stupefying and horrible events if indeed they had occurred. As for myself, it would be extremely tedious for me to have to write down all those things I have heard of which happened in our own times. However, I will now give an account of two such recent events …

  Some years ago the chaplain of a noble lady died and was buried at Melrose Abbey. Although he had taken holy orders, and should have been accorded a certain respect as a consequence, he tended to behave during his life in a secular fashion, playing down his role as the messenger of the divine. Such was his concern for hunting, and such was the vanity and indeed infamy of his way of life, that he was known to the people as ‘Hundeprest’ [‘The Hounds’ Priest’]. But if during his life he was smilingly tolerated for his human failings, the consequence of this indulgence became apparent after his death. By night, for instance, he would leave his grave and enter the very monastery itself, keeping people from benefiting from the holy place, and it was not possible to frighten or push him away. He also wandered around outside the monastery, groaning and murmuring in an alarming fashion outside the chamber of his former mistress. When this happened repeatedly, she confided anxiously in one of the brothers at the monastery, tearfully begging the monks through him to pour forth urgent prayers on her behalf. She was richly deserving of the help of that holy assembly because of her benevolence and generosity towards the monastery, and the priest promised to do what he could to help her.

  Returning to the monastery, he
brought with him another priest of particularly doughty character and two stalwart young men, so that they might keep vigil in the cemetery where the miserable chaplain had been buried. Fully armed, these four prepared to spend the night confident in each other’s company. Midnight passed, but no monster appeared, and so the other three left the priest who had organised the vigil and went off to a nearby house to light a fire to allay the chill of the night. Seeing that the priest was now alone, the demon judged the time right to try and break his robust faith, and rose out of his tomb. Glimpsing the monster at a distance, the man at first froze with fear, but soon his courage returned and, with no prospect of escape, he prepared to resist the attack of the evil creature as it came towards him groaning terribly. He struck at it with the battle-axe he carried in his hand. Groaning still louder, the wounded creature turned round as suddenly as it had come and retreated while the heroic defender chased it back to its tomb. The tomb opened to offer the creature refuge from its assailant and then closed behind it.

  When the other three who had been warming themselves over their fire arrived, somewhat belatedly, and when they heard what had happened, they prepared themselves at daybreak for the task of digging up the cursed corpse from the depths of its tomb. As they cleared away the earth, they saw many traces of blood which had flowed from the wound inflicted on the creature, and finally reaching the body, they carried it outside the confines of the monastery to burn it and scatter the ashes. I was told this story by men from the religious community itself, and, having no doubts about its veracity, have set down the facts as simply as I can …